I’m not going to attempt to write around them as the comments speak for themselves, other than to confirm that the author was posting from Michigan.

comment 1:

Melissa Says:

I live in michigan and in 2001 I gave my son up under the save delivery law. I was 16 and had delivered him at home. I was terrified and called an adoption agency out fear she directed me to the hospital and told me to tell the emergency room staff safe delivery I had no idea what that meant or what was about to happen the social worker said she would meet me there ha of course she would. This law is full of holes. I have custody of my son now and hes 8 years old healthy smart and perfect but the battle of getting my newborn back was horrible the state had no provisions for what would happen if I changed my mind the adoption agency fought me so hard they even lied in court they tried everything to keep my baby they took advantage of me and the law it makes me sick to know that the same people who abused the law to begin with are now the ones running the training program. What an industry. I’ve read the statistics for michigan and your article right on I’m one of the the very few on there that wasnt a 40 yearold women who gave birth in a hospital. I never had any intentions on throwing my baby in a trash can nor did I want to abandon my baby under such a law but was in shock from delivering a butt breach baby and was terriffied because I hid my pregnancy. The adoption agency I dealt with was evil and self serving and repeatedly tried to talk me out of filing for custody telling how I would regret my child and it would ruin my life which none of that is true my son is the best part of my life hes an amazing little boy. Something needs to be done about these laws its being a abused by all people involved and it disgusts me this law was put into effect to keep young women from throwing newborns in trash cans not to circumvent adoption laws among other things its been used for . how can this law even be used for what its intended for when the young women it was created for arent even aware or educated on it. Which is probably why a young women was just on the news a couple days ago here in michigan because she threw her newborn in a dumpster. These laws need to be fixed .

and comment 2:

Melissa Says:

I also forgot to mention that i changed my mind the next day and made the adoption agency and the hospital aware of my decision right away but it took 5 weeks and cost my parents about 20,000 dollars to regain custody of my baby

Thank you Melissa, for taking the time to comment and drawing attention to the problems inherent to these legalized child abandonment schemes.

Lots of people assume that even in cases where the child is eventually reunited that there’s no real downside or cost to having these laws in place. Your story draws attention to the sheer effort, the time lost, and the financial demands to families such programs can create even in cases where the kids do eventually go home with their mothers.

Again, thanks for speaking out.

***

While the hemming and hawing, contemplating potential changes to Nebraska’s disastrous child dump law continues, the raw numbers of kids that have now passed into the Nebraska system by way of the child dump laws continues to climb.

Yesterday, (Sunday) two more boys were legally abandoned at hospitals. One boy was dumped in Omaha, the other in Lincoln, abandoned by his 51 year-old grandmother who had only recently been granted custody of him.

A day of inaction by legislators can translate directly into a lost family for kids.

The dump law never should have passed in the first place. Now that it has, every day without full repeal is an opportunity for destruction. Destruction of families, of a child’s history, of community ties, the list goes on and on. Those who advocate slapping some duct tape on this law, or somehow think they can retool it merely continue the existing track record of harm. Dump laws are by definition, unfixable. Playing with age ranges for ‘little dumplings’ just changes how soon the victims of these laws will be able to be vocal about what was done to them.

The ongoing harm caused by Nebraska’s particular variation on the legalized child abandonment law is not a case of ‘unforeseen consequences’. Those who actually bothered to read the wording of the law understood it was a recipe for disaster.

Lincoln Nebraska’s Police Chief, Tom Casady is quoted as saying:

“I’m rather surprised that Legislature didn’t see this coming because I can assure you everyone at the Lincoln police department saw it coming.”

The notion that Nebraska legislators ‘didn’t see it coming’ while politically useful, particularly to legislators themselves, at this point appears to be patently false.

According to Sen. Vickie McDonald (a sponsor on the Nebraska dump bill) precisely this possibility, that older kids would be entering into the system under the dump law, was understood to be one possible outcome and was discussed among (at least some) Nebraska legislators. See Teens Dumped at Hospitals Under Safe Haven Law (Originally posted back on Sept. 25th) for the following:

But at least one lawmaker who sponsored the state’s safe haven law knew it could be an issue.

Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul said, “We discussed the possibility of something like this happening, but we did nothing to address it thinking possibly it wouldn’t happen.”

Let’s be clear about this, it was discussed, and legislators “did nothing to address it” (emphasis added.)

Not altogether surprising, considering how some view the Nebraska dump situation as what the law was crafted to do, and thereby a positive outcome.

Easy for a term limited politician to spout off about, they’re not the ones who have to deal with the consequences of these dump laws.

With dumps laws now enacted in all 50 states, we as a nation find ourselves with states actively encouraging the legalized abandonment of children.

Speaking as a former child who (to the best of my knowlege anyway, sealed records being what they are) passed through the child welfare system, and as an adopted adult, I find this state of affairs revolting. It is a societal and legal abandonment of those least able to defend their own interests.

While the fretting continues in comments and columns around the country, real kids are day by day being dumped. They will live with the consequences of such for the rest of their lives. Even if they are eventually reunited with family, undergoing the process of legalized abandonment is not something they’re likely to forget, nor fully forgive anytime soon.

Most of those proposing anything at all be done about this sorry mess are advocating Nebraska’s dump law be brought in line with other baby-dump laws across the country. Which is to say, they don’t want victims of these laws who can go on the evening news and tell people what it feels like to be abandoned. They would rather the laws affect those too young and too voiceless (physically, politically, etc) to defend their own interests.

Baby-Dump laws are about pushing the consequences of such horrendous legislation down to those too young to even begin to fight back. As I mentioned in that earlier post, prior to Nebraska upping the age limit, the oldest of the legalized abandonment kids, from Texas, the first state to pass the then called “Baby Moses Laws”, would today be approximately nine years old. The 18 year lag between being dumped and reaching age of majority is more than enough time for the legislators who created the mess to go on about their lives, the direct consequences of such never touching them.

So by way of updating the Nebraska scope of the problem to date, Bastardette has put together an invaluable timeline/roster/status tally (updated to the below in this, her most recent post):

Here’s the revised dumpee roster:

September 1: Male 14–left by mother at Omaha police station. Currently in foster care.

September 13: Male 11–left by grandmother–another report says mother–at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha; currently in foster care and partial hospitalization.

September 13: Male 15–left by guardian aunt at Bryant Medical Center West, Lincoln.

September 20: Pregnant female 13 left by mother at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha. Returned to mother.

September 22: Male 18, turned himself in to hospital in Grand Island; too old for foster care, but can receive services.

September 24: 9 siblings, 1-17 (left by father, Gary Staton, at Creighton University Medical Center ER).

• female, 1
• male, 6
• male, 7
• female, 9
• male, 11
• female 13
• female 14,
• male, 15
• male 17
• An 18-year old sister who does not live at home was not abandoned. All these children are now in foster care and several relatives have requested custody Background checks are underway here and here. Go here and here for video of home and neighbors.

September 24: Male 11–left at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha.

September 24, Male 15–left by guardian uncle at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha; uncle plans to relinquish guardianship.

October 5: Male 12–left by guardian grandmother at Brian LGH West, Lincoln

October 5: Male 12–left at Immanuel Medical Center, Omaha

Note that this comes out to 18 kids, not the “16″ the papers are now using based off the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services list of cases to date (link to a PDF). The Sept. 1rst police station dump is not being counted as police stations are not authorized dump sites, none-the-less, for the kid involved it most certainly was an abandonment. The other case not being counted in the ‘official’ list of cases to date is the September 22, 18 year-old male who turned himself in in Grand Island.

Being a Bastard based blog, I base my count on what the kids themselves are experiencing, I’ll note if they are dumped at a non-authorized site, but I feel it’s important to remember those dumped, even if left off the State’s official tally. It was no less a dump for the 14 year-old boy (Sept. 1) just because he was left somewhere other than a site mandated by the Nebraska law, he is no less abandoned by his family, no less in foster care as a result of the dump law than any of the other kids. Ask yourself this, had the Nebraska dump law not passed, would his mother have abandoned him at the police station?

If there’s any one thing my blog tries to do consistently, it’s remember those so often forgotten or hidden in (or out of) the ‘official’ tabulations.

To date, we’re talking about 18 kids who would not have undergone the abandonment process were it not for the reckless and destructive passage of Nebraska’s falsely named “safe haven” law. Legalized abandonments are not “safe havens” for kids, they’re just a new and less paperworked point of entry into an already overburdened child welfare system.

Nebraska, like the other 49 states has gotten into the dreadful business of making it easy for those with custody to rid themselves of kids, and in so doing it fails those kids, disregarding both their longterm needs and ultimately their short term needs as well.

This is just another form of (already) failed social experimentation with the lives and relationships of kids hanging in the balance. The longer dump laws stay on the books, the more kids become part of the legalized abandonment experiment.

In Nebraska with its child-dump law the casualties to date have been kids. In states with baby-dump laws, the casualties are babies. Whether newborn or child, abandonment deprives these people of building blocks necessary to them, particularly later in life. The state should never set out to set up systems that intentionally deprives a subset of citizens of basic things other citizens not only have, but consider the bedrock their lives are based on.

No matter what pretty language child-dump advocates attempt to wrap their toxic legislation in, the bottom line is child abandonment is never good for kids.

Some days I feel like I’m down to stating the obvious.

***

Once again, I end my post by asking for what I really want, an end to legalized abandonment laws. Nothing short of full repeal, in Nebraska and across the nation.

Because there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ legalized abandonment law.

Every abandonment is a failure.

Kids deserve better than abandonment.

***

Finally, I have LOTS more writing about the Nebraska situation I’m trying to get to. That said, the situation is evolving far faster than I could ever blog it.

In the mean time go over and read some important posts on Bastardette. She is doing a tremendous job of writing about the dump laws from her own angle, (I’ve ’starred’ “*” her recent Nebraska related posts):

* NEBRASKA FIASCO CONTINUES: 2 MORE DUMPED AT HOSPITAL (October 6, 2008)

* NEBRASKA FIASCO: BASTARDETTE GETS A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH NCFA’S TOM ATWOOD ON NEBRASKA TEEN DUMPS AND ‘SAFE HAVEN” LAW (October 6, 2008)

CALIFORNIA: THE TERMINATOR TERMINATES “SAFE HAVEN” BABY DUMP EXPANSION AGAIN (October 2, 2008)

“A LITTLE HAYWIRE:” BABY DUMP PUSHER TRIVIALIZES ABANDONERS AND ABANDONMENT (Sept 30, 2008)

* “I DON’T WANT ANYTHING TO HAPPEN TO KIDS LIKE IT HAPPENED TO ME” NEBRASKA ABANDONMENTS REACH 16 (Sept 28, 2008)

* BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME: NEBRASKA DUMP FIASCO (Sept 26, 2008)

WARNING AUSTRALIA: SAFE HAVENS COMNG YOUR WAY? (Sept 24, 2008)

AFTERWARDS, read down through the rest of this.

On some of the comment threads on dKos and elsewhere about the Senator’s passing, expressions of gratitude from adoptive parents have appeared a few places. So tonight I took some time to write about the former Senator and his adoption specific legacy.

Let me state from the outset, that I am an adult, adopted in Ohio. Further I support the restoration of adoptee original birth certificates which the state has for many of us sealed away from us; I support open records.

So, since others have brought it up, I feel it’s important to say a few words.

Yes, the former Senator was involved in many aspects of adoption related legislation, as an example, Metzenbaum sponsored the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994 which barred racial discrimination in adoptive placements.

That has led to ongoing discussion about whether or not cross-ethnic placements have been a positive thing or a damaging thing.

(Me? I’m not touching that one with a ten foot pole. Being legally barred from knowing my ancestry, but being darn clear on the paleness of my own skin, I just don’t feel I have terribly much to say on the subject, other than how some of the orphan train placements were little more than a form of forced labor for some children and how ‘indian boarding schools’ were well, in my opinion, nothing short of an intentional form of cultural genocide.)

Instead I want to narrow in on what I feel to be the unfortunate aspects of the Senator’s adoption legacy, yes written from where I sit, as an adult denied my own birth certificate by State law and ongoing State interference. That said, no doubt your mileage may vary.

Being an adult adopted in Ohio, some of his work on adoption is one of the very few places I had some disagreements with him.

Particularly his work in the late 80’s on the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988, a forerunner to today’s “Baby Moses Laws”/”Baby dump laws”/”Legalized infant Abandonment laws”/”Baby Safe Haven Laws” (spearheaded by the National Council for Adoption, an adoption industry lobby created specifically to ensure adopted people’s original birth certificates remain forever sealed to them, after already having been confiscated by the State upon our adoptions, thus lobbying to permanently erase our genetic and historic identities.)

While the bill was being done in the name of helping children with AIDS ‘abandoned’ in hospitals, it was a NCFA lobbied bill that created precedents, both in terms of children labeled “abandoned” and in terms of State grants to adopters, which today, at NCFA’s urging has expanded greatly into tax breaks for adoption etc. (Unfortunately, the primary beneficiaries of such tax breaks it turns out are not those most in need of such to finance an otherwise impossible adoption, but instead the tax breaks are going to the the already wealthy.)

Again, while all this is being done ‘for the sake of the children,’ NCFA with it’s extensive connections to the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, Anti-abortion Catholic groups, WAL*MART and Mormons has been no friend to adopted people or first parents.

And unfortunately, Howard Metzenbaum, like many well intentioned people was a friend to NCFA, perhaps not understanding that NCFA represented the industry, not adopted people or our families (plural).

Sadly, it was perhaps the most glaring example of where Howard sided with industry rather than the directly affected, and I can’t tell you how deeply that saddened me (read my diary from earlier tonight on Senator Metzenbaum’s passing if for one instant you think he wasn’t a personal hero to me.)

His ties to NCFA were heartbreaking to me, yet it’s likely that no one ever explained to him precisely what it was he was supporting. The first adopted babies of the baby-scoop-era didn’t reach adulthood until roughly 1960, and many didn’t find their political voice on adoption issues and sealed records, nor really found organizations etc until the 70’s and 80’s.

NCFA awarded “Friend of Adoption” awards that eventually grew into their “Adoption hall of fame”. Howard Metzenbaum was one of the first recipients back in 1982.

Am I blaming him? No, at the time NCFA was working very hard to appear ‘non-partisan’ and ‘evenhanded’ in its political ties. Unfortunately, that was not, and to this day ever more clearly is not what NCFA is. Now that the former head of NCFA, Bill Pierce has died, and wingnut infrastucture has become yet more institutionalized, NCFA’s ties to that ever developing wingnut infrastructure have grown and become far more visible.

NCFA was founded after the Draft Model State Adoption Act (DMSAA) was produced in 1979 by a Carter administration advisory committee. The adoption industry (agencies, Catholic Charities, politically connected powerful agencies such as Gladney in TX- which today has many Bush family ties) studied the DMSAA, saw the “open records” provisions, and by means of re-entrenching their permanent secrecy stance (which conveniently covers any misdeeds they might have been involved in) reacted by creating NCFA to lobby and ‘educate’ in Washington.

I consider it tragic that Senator Metzenbaum, who so often sided with the whistleblowers, the disadvantaged, and in his abortion access advocacy, the side of womyn who were pregnant, was convinced to champion to very legislation that silenced womyn’s voices, and disempowered adopted children, now adults by siding with those who held real control in so many situations- the industry.

All of which is to say, that when people use words like ‘adoption’ rather than jumping to conclusions that they must be ‘doing good work’, it becomes that much more important to do due diligence.

On the other hand, was Sen. Metzenbaum aware of who he had sided with? Was he pro-sealed records?

I hope not, for if he personally was, it creates a very uncomfortable ‘exception’ to the rest of his life’s work.

At this point we’ll never know. That doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate the man for so MANY of the other things he did, yet question this one area.

He will always be, to a degree a hero of mine, but when it came to adoption, best intentions aside, his actions and the ‘legitimacy’ his presence provided are to me at least, heartbreaking.