Those who prefer the “adoption” language take up every square inch of media real estate with National Adoption Month. (What began with a focus on foster kids and has shifted towards the adoption industry’s marketing of infant adoptions) and its spawn, such as the wretched National Adoption Awareness Month and efferts overseas such as the UK’s National Adoption Week.

Meanwhile, over in the realm of the theologically based adoption movement, it’s all “orphans” all the time.

Yesterday for example, was the church based evangelical adoption marketing program quaintly titled “Orphan Sunday.”

It seeks to drive up demand among lay couples churchwide to either “hunger for” or impulse shop for “orphans” as part of a christian movement growth strategy.

As I’ve said many times before, the means by which to grow a movement are relatively limited:

• high internal to the group birth rate (and desperately attempt to keep as many “in” as possible over their lifetimes)
• gain converts (which christian evangelists readily admit is high investment for low returns, particularly once a target reaches jr. high school or older)
• and/or get a hold of someone elses’ kids, which in this American context means both foster and adoption.

Naturally, along with these come other enabling subculture hindrance taboos complete with generated phobias such a:

• preventing or eschewing contraceptive use
• rejection of the morning after pill
• tribal efforts to intercept any information that may interfere with both conception (such as sexual knowledge and understanding)  and pregnancy continuation (likely health risks, etc)
• and of course, abortion deterrence at every level

“Orphan Sunday” marketing efforts then fit into that broader framework.

It is an annual event when the very concept of the world’s so called “orphans” being not only the church’s “responsibility” (not governments, nor secular alternatives) but actually being the church’s god granted entitlement already, and thus kids are portrayed as merely waiting for the church to “come & get ‘em.”

Entire ministries have been built off these core concepts, to the point that yes, there are those who receive their weekly paycheck and groceries as a result of selling churches and churchgoers on the notion of collecting other people’s children from around the world.

Along with that come video producers, ever on the lookout for human misery and wide eyed children who are photogenic, and their ilk, along with christian adoption agencies always at the ready to set up a marketing materials table out in the vestibule.

Also central to these events is the idea of getting teens and children of the congregations involved in an effort to shape their fundamental attitudes towards adoption, pregnancy, other people’s children around the world, evangelism, and voting habits at a young age.

In case churchgoers just couldn’t get enough of those adorable starving children photos, today, then was World Orphans Day, whose mission statement is perhaps a bit more explicitly politically focused, aiming at getting governments on board.

See the following excerpt:

Only a large scale and sustainable political, social and moral awakening and movement by global governments, NGO’s and religious groups can address this.

As I said, it’s all orphan everything, all the time.

Why?

Because “orphans” (unlike “Bastards”) are theologically useful.

“Bastards” the to biblically biased, can mean anything from “illigitimate children” to “children produced as a result of having sex with those of other tribes”, but no matter the nuances of the interpretation,  sooner or later, those who base their lives around the book run headlong into Deuteronomy 23:2,

A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.

Which of course comes after the section on how those with various male genital injuries are likewise, not welcome.

The Brick Testament has not portrayed our Bastard specific verse, but their visual portrayal of  Deuteronomy 23:1 certainly covers our situation as well:

Simply put, if we’re “Bastards,” the “not welcome” sign should ultimately go out were these people ever actually chose to live out what their book actually says.

I’ve joked in the past about printing up “exempt” cards to hand out to overzealous evangelists, who by and large have never actually bothered to think about the implications of the various proscribed classes listed  in Deuteronomy.

What part of “Not so fast, go read your book, I’m a Bastard, and therefore not allowed in!” do they so consistently fail to understand?

“Orphans” on the other hand, serve as nothing short of a biblical mandate.

You want to get the crowds riled up, just mention the word “orphan.” All the more so if you have those in any given church dealing with infertility issues of their own.

Not unlike Disney, the book relies on “orphans” as plot devices at almost every turn. We’re remarkably useful.

Bastardette just did a post yesterday covering some of the nuances of certain theological uses of orphans, see:

God’s Heart Adoption: An Adoption Theology Cheat Sheet

Those who want to play the “Orphan” game have plenty of verses to chose from.

They tend to quickly step over inconvenient verses like Exodus 22:22

Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan.

Or Exodus 22:24:

My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.

Or other not dissimilar verses about ensuring there be “justice” for the orphan (see Exodus 24:17):

Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge.

Or the even more strongly worded Exodus 27:19:

Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.

(to pull just a couple I happened to have handy)

and instead, jump headlong into sermon notes and resources pushing adoption (link opens a pdf) in the modern American interpretation of the word complete with sealed records and identity forfeiture.

See, we’re simply too useful, to let reality intrude.

I’ve written before (in this case, in relation to adoptions from Vietnam) about the magical number inflation these orphan evangelists engage in.

How they conflate lay ideas of what an “orphan” must mean for churchgoer mobilization purposes, with the actual legal definition that pertains to intercountry adoptions, thus ensuring kids with surviving parents or other family often willing to take them in, suddenly get rebranded as “orphans” to feed that newly generated market demand:

…terminology such as “orphan” in international adoptionland does not necessarily refer to ‘a child whose parents are dead’ or ‘a child bereft of parents.’ “Orphan” in relation to international adoption law has a very specific meaning.

Children adopted internationally after being designated “orphans” often have one or both parents still alive (and yes, in some cases even still seeking them, as often parents are lured into signing paperwork and leaving their children at ‘orphanages’ with promises of it ‘just being for a short duration’, perhaps until the parent has more money to care for the child.)

While the idea of a child whose parents are now dead tends to be the non-technical/non-legal definition in lay or common use, “orphan” as relates to international adoption has a very specific technical meaning embedded in international law in relation to the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act and a set of criteria laid out in its definition of an “orphan.”(WAY too huge to lay out here, instead use this search tool of the document, searching on the term “orphan.” “Sec. 1101. Definitions” contains the technical definition of “orphan” for purposes of international adoption.)

“Orphan” is not the only linguistic stumbling block, Look here for a definition of how “Abandonment” is defined in relation to the USCIS Guidebook for international adoption and how that begins to pose a new set of issues in relation to Vietnamese adoptions. (The entire guidebook is well worth glancing through.)

The 145 million children worldwide “orphaned or displaced” number that evangelicals fling around so casually as justification for anything they might want to do next “for the sake of the orphans” must also be viewed in full context.

It’s from the U.N.’s 2008 ESTIMATE based on 2007 numbers.

Specifically, it comes from The U.N’s “The State of the World’s Children” report. Here’s a link to the executive summary (link opens a PDF.)

As an aside, isn’t it hysterically funny to watch wingnuts who otherwise reject, demonize, often outright hate the U.N., viewing their efforts in outright competition with the U.N. for access to kids, then turn to the U.N. for such when they need “big numbers”?

All the more so in that UNICEF’s position on adoption can hardly be considered supportive of any notion of the adoption free-for-all so many christian ministries salivate at the thought of.

But again, what criteria has the United Nations used to generate those numbers?

See the way the U. N. describes what their estimate number constitutes:

children have lost one or both parents due to all causes

Similarly, also see another of the U.N.’s reports from that same year: specifically see footnote 1 on page 13 of The Global HIV Challenge: 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic (link opens a PDF):

Contrary to traditional usage, UNAIDS uses “orphan” to describe a child who has lost either one or both parents; the organization uses the terms “maternal orphan”, “paternal orphan”, and “double orphan” to describe a child who has lost its mother, father, or both parents, respectively.

So what then are the “orphans” in this number?

In some cases, those numbers can simply represent kids who lost a single parent.

We’re not talking about 145 million kids with no parents, or ” in need” of new parents.

Quite often, we’re talking about kids with one parent, just  more often than not living in poverty.

These are viewed as exploitable people, deemed worthy of little more than having their children taken and provided via the adoption market to “good christian, heterosexual, two parent, wealthy American homes” instead.

Leave it to an evangelist to inflate their numbers, using kids in poverty as a justification to mobilize modern American largely suburban churchgoers.

The mythical “orphan crisis” is built upon a lie.

A misuse of statistics in an effort to generate adoption demand, and a desperately desired spike in the now crumbling inter-country adoption market.

As I wrote just this past week:

The 2004 peak of 22,990 has now been nearly cut in half over the past six years.

and

This has left the adoption industry scrambling, consolidating, engaging in scams and fraud, and pushing “bargain basement” adoptions from African countries such as Ethiopia and Uganda, essentially a “two for the price of one” steal compared to prices from before the adoption market crash.

Agencies are being squeezed out as the desperate race to make kids available to the adoption process folds in on itself.

There those who stand to gain by inflating these numbers, both the adoption industry and the christian movement growth efforts. More often than not the institutions themselves, individual agencies and the like represent both under a single roof.

When the American government then pushes adoption as both domestic and international policy, over and over again, it ends up pushing what is essentially a theological stance and theologically aligned institutions.

You want genuine Justice for the orphan?

Let kids grow up within their own families, keep their identities intact, and refuse strip mine pregnant women, or Mothers and Fathers of their children. Refuse to participate in the global trafficking in children.

Lest (the believers among you) find yourselves “cursed.”

Or, at least your names cursed among Bastards and their Families.

In the course of writing my post about the baby dump law in Mississippi, After almost a decade, Mississippi “safe haven” legalized child abandonment scheme still fails, last week, I dropped a quick e-mail on Marley Greiner/Bastardette to ask about any history relating to the dumps in Mississippi she might have or overview statistics she might have pulled together in the course of her work.

For years Marley compiled and authored the Baby Dump News (or BDN,) a weekly e-mailed round up of media reports and other information pertinent to newborn abandonment, infanticide, “safe haven”/”Baby Moses” legislation, and related matters.

As many states don’t compile statistics on these matters, and even those that do had numbers that time and again proven incorrect when compared with even newspaper reports, Marley’s tracking during this first decade of the dump laws provided critically important documentation.

In many ways, she tracked the rise and growth of the baby dump industry, it’s proponents, it’s opponents, and the week in and week out unfolding saga through webpages, blogs, emails, legislative hearings and newspaper articles. In the course of this tracking, she became somewhat an “inadvertent” expert on what was actually happening across the country in relation to such.

He response to my brief email stunned me, within mere hours of my request, she had come back to me with all the issues of the BDN with information about cases in Mississippi as well as additional places to search for cases. (This was more than I possibly could have hoped for.)

With the help of my partner, Mike, we went back through our digital archive of the Baby Dump News (as to date, only archives from 2007 are available online) and pulled these news reports.

Obviously these cannot by their very nature give a full picture of what has gone on in Mississippi as some untold number of neonaticides are simply never discovered.

In other cases, those of abandoned kids, or bodies found, again, it then becomes a question of whether or not the story was reported, or even if it was reported, whether the news article was found in the course of Marley’s research.

There may well be other cases that were reported on not cataloged below.

Some states have routinely been folding border babies, (kids born in hospitals and never taken home by their parents) into their  “safe haven saves” statistics, but in theory at least, according to one of the articles Marley found,  the Mississippi law should not be including them in the totals.

As to whether or not the state’s totals contain other oddities or not, we’ll likely never know. Reporters simply take them at face value.

These days, tools like google alerts (which first went live in 2003) have certainly made doing this kind of research much easier, but there’s still no substitute for solid research and looking beyond those numbers at what the genuine circumstances involve.

Unfortunately what we’ve found in other states is that even if border babies were not originally folded into “safe haven” statistics, over the years they may come to be.

So bearing in mind the limitations of what these links represent, here is what I’ve been able to mine back out of Marley’s work:

• BABY DUMP NEWS, June 13, 2002 V. 2, #20
  MISSISSIPPI
  Jackson Clarion-Ledger, May 22, 2002
  Life sentence in death of newborn is upheld
  http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0205/22/m17.html

  JACKSON-- Conviction of Lindsay Kathryn Welch upheld by Mississippi Court of Appeals.  Welch was a student at Mississippi State when she gave birth in her dorm room.  Prosecutors claim she let baby die and then put the body in the trash.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, October 27, 2002, v2, #40
  MISSISSIPPI
  WAPT-TV, Jackson, October 25, 2002
  Newborn drop-off law nets 6 babies in first year
  http://www.thejacksonchannel.com/news/1741097/detail.html

  JACKSON--Six babies left in Mississippi hospitals since state's safe haven law went into effect more than a year ago.  Four left in Hinds County, one in Union County and one in Harrison county.  (No mention if these were authentic safe haven drops or boarder baby abandonments.) One has been adopted and the rest are in fostercare waiting for adoption finalization.  Gloria Thornton Salters, of DHS, says without any apparent authority, that if not for the law, the children would have been left to die.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, November 3, 2002, v2, #41
  MISSISSIPPI
  Biloxi Clarion-Ledger, October 29, 2002
  Newborn drop-off law saves 6 lives in state
  http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/state/4372401.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

  BILOXI--Longer version of last week's article.  Under law hospitals can ask questions about child' health, but cannot ask who the mother is or where she is from.  Law does not include mothers who give birth in a hospital and decide to abandon their children there.  In those cases, mothers are required to be registered at hospital under their names and to sign waivers to turn over their babies.   If mother wants to reclaim baby shortly after legal abandonment state reportedly will work with her and have her attend classes.  None of the mothers who left babies under the state's program have tried to get them back.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, November 17, 2002, v2, #43
  MISSISSIPPI
  Jackson Clarion-Ledger, November 16, 2002
  Conviction stands in baby's death
  http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0211/16/m16.html

  JACKSON--Mississippi Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal of Lindsay Kathryn Welch in the death of her newborn found in a trashcan in 1999.  Claimed illegal search of her garbage left outside of home after police received tip about baby.  Welch, a former U. of Mississippi student is doing 8 years in prison.

• BABY DUMP NEWS,  January 19, 2003, v3 #3
  MISSISSIPPI
  Jackson Clarion-Ledger, January 18, 2003
  Police hunt for body of infant believed discarded
  http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0301/18/m07.html

  CLEVELAND--Police search landfill for infant believed to have been hauled there after being placed in dumpster.  19-year old Delta State University student triggered search after she sought medical treatment shortly after giving birth.  Says baby was stillborn and born off campus.  Mother, described as distraught, is cooperating with authorities.  According to article, as of October 2002, 6 babies have been dropped-off under the safe haven program.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, March 16, 2003, v3 #11
  MISSISSIPPI
  Jackson Clarion-Ledger, March 16, 2003
  Abandoned-baby laws criticized
  http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0303/16/m06.html

  JACKSON--Mississippi Special Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Carroll Hocker disagrees with EBD report.  Says 9 infants, 6 of them in 2002, have been safely anonymously abandoned in state.  Feels that they weren't found dead is good sign.  7 have been adopted and 2 are in prospective homes.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, November 30, 2003, v3 #48
  MISSISSIPPI
  Jackson Sun Herald, November 25, 2003
  Mississippi calls newborn program a success
  http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/7346294.htm

  JACKSON--Puff piece on MS SH law.  Claims that 13 babies have been dropped off and another 3 were dropped off and retrieved.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, April 25, 2004, v4 #18
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. Jackson Clarion-Ledger, April 20, 2004
     Dead infant found in bag
     http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040420/NEWS01/404200380/1002

     JACKSON--Newborn found dead in garbage bag at Madison County landfill.  Unclear how baby died or how long it was in bag.

  2. WLBT-TV, Jackson, April 20, 2004
     State law protects unwanted newborns
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1797624&nav=2CSfMQOB

     JACKSON--Review of state SH law and its history.  Ol' Miss Medical Center clinical nurse Kelly Joyner says several infants have been dropped off since law went into effect July 2001, including one in March.  Special Asst. AG, Elizabeth Hocker says that 11 babies "have been turned over to  hospitals instead of abandoned."

  3. WLBT-TV, Jackson, April 21, 2004
     Baby in garbage had just been born
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1801075

     JACKSON--Autopsy indicates baby was suffocated and case now treated as homicide.  Police have a few phone tips; mother could face capital murder charge.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, May 2, 2004-, v4 #19
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. WLBT-TV, Jackson, April 25, 2004
     Deceased newborn found at dump site
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1811998&nav=2CSfMZE6

     JACKSON--Update on landfill case.  (BDN v4 #18).  Police ask public assistance in solving case.  Reward of up to $1000 offered through Crime Stoppers.

  2. WLBT-TV, Jackson, April 26, 2004
     Cops hope DNA will identify infant
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1812871&nav=2CSfMZrd

     JACKSON--Detectives following up tips received after Crime Stoppers broadcast. DNA tests ordered on body. Jackson Police Department planning funeral and burial.

  3. University of Mississippi Daily Mississippian, April 28, 2004
     ERs take unwanted newborns
     http://www.thedmonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/28/408f726849f17

     OXFORD--Officials publicize state's SH law.  Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jackson has had at least one drop-off.  Hospital doesn't offer counseling services for mother but does referrals.  Family Crisis Services in Oxford  says women who SH are "under a lot of stress" and FCS would offer them counseling services.   "We would ask them to sit down and discuss the reasons why they're doing this.  We want to offer them counseling before they make such a drastic decision."  Assistant Police Chief says if women tried to drop off baby at police station, they would be referred to FCS.  Fire chief says he has never had an abandoned baby case in 32 years with department.

  4. WLBT-TV, Jackson, April 30, 2004
     Donations pour in for newborn's burial
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1824085&nav=2CSfMga3

     JACKSON--Jackson-area residents continue to donate funds for funeral arrangements for baby.  Plot donated; Peoples Funeral home offers services and other arrangements; music teacher  purchases burial outfit.  Police chief believes baby may have come from Madison or Rankin County.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, May 16, 2004, v4 #21
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. WLBT-TV, Jackson, May 12, 2004
     Services held for abandoned infant
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1859273

     JACKSON--Update on landfill /Baby John Paul Doe case BDN v4 # 18, 19, 20). Account of baby's funeral; quotes from those who attended.

  2. Jackson Clarion-Ledger, May 12, 2004
     Tiny casket weighs heavy in "significance"
     http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040512/NEWS01/405120364/1002

     JACKSON--Feature on Angela Washington, who returned home from hospital after suffering miscarriage on day she learned of discovery of  Baby John Paul Doe's body.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, May 30, 2004, v4 #23
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. Biloxi Sun-Herald, May 20, 2004
     Baby boy abandoned at church door
     http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/8708522.htm

     GULFPORT--Newborn boy,  Baby Matthew,  left on doorstep of St. Matthew Evangelical Lutheran Church.  County Prosecutor says he's been in DA's office for 14 years and never heard of an abandoned baby before. Police Lt. Alfred Sexton says that abandonment didn't comply with SH law, but may be in the "spirit of the law."  Child welfare workers say it is usual for babies to be abandoned in public places; usually left in hospitals.

  2. WLOX-TV, Biloxi, May 23, 2004
     Counselor wants compassion for mother of abandoned baby
     http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=1888715

     GULFPORT--Rachel Nilsen, from Pregnancy Resources of Mississippi in Ocean Springs  hopes that authorities aren't hard on person who left baby at church.  Admits it would have been better  to drop  off baby in "the care of a responsible adult" but believes there's a "real possibility that this person felt that they could not care for this child and they wanted  to put this child in some good hands."

  3. Biloxi Sun Herald, May 25, 2004
     Charges in baby case await investigation
     http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/8751943.htm

     GULFPORT--DA declines to press charges in Baby Matthew case pending outcome of final investigation.  Mother known but not yet named.  Unclear if she is asking Youth Court for custody and if charges will be filed after Youth Court judge rules in case.  Relative of mother called Sun Herald on Saturday saying mother was very scared and panicked and asked if she could be arrested for abandonment.  First baby abandonment in Harrison County since 1993 when a girl was found dead on I 10.  DHS says 14 babies have been SH since law went into effect.

  4. Biloxi Sun Herald, May 29, 2004
     Baby law not well-known
     http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/local/8790050.htm

     GULFPORT--Info piece on Mississippi SH law; complains that schools don't teach how to abandon your baby in the curriculum.  Anon. caller to Sun Herald asked where they could find poster and hotline number, and paper finally learned that Attorney General is responsible for publicity.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, June 13, 2004, v 4, #25
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. Biloxi Sun Herald, June 8, 2004
     Focus on drop-off law grows
     http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunherald/news/local/8865803.htm

     JACKSON--Update on landfill/ Baby John Paul Doe case (BDN v4 # 18, 19, 20, 21).  DNA evidence rules out suspect in newborn's death.  No details.

  2. Jackson Clarion Ledger, June 9, 2004
     Police back to square one in dead baby case
     http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040609/NEWS01/406090351/1002/NEWS01

     JACKSON--Information on state's SH law.  Says 14 babies have been "saved" since law went into effect 7/2001.  Beth Casey, counselor for Harrison County Youth Court wants SH publicity to target high school and college students.  "Your high schoolers and college kids who become pregnant all too often try to conceal their pregnancy rather than tell someone.  People need to know that churches are not a safe place according to state law."

• BABY DUMP NEWS, June 20, 2004, v 4 #25
  MISSISSIPPI
  JacksonChannel.com, 6/17/04
  Autopsy slated for infant found at UMC
  http://www.thejacksonchannel.com/news/3429856/detail.html

  JACKSON--Body of newborn girl found by workers sorting sheets at University Medical Center; not full term and officials suspect it was stillborn.  Looking for parents.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, June 27, 2004, v4 #26
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. WLBT-TV. Jackson, June 21, 2004
     Dead baby at UMC may have been put in laundry accidentally
     http://www.wlbt.com/Global/story.asp?S=1954849&nav=2CSfO3fn

     JACKSON--Update on UMC case.  (BDN v4 # 26).  Body found in laundry determined to be stillborn; may have been placed in laundry by mistake.  Investigation continues.

  2. Jackson Clarion-Ledger, June 23, 2004
     Investigation confirms stillborn mistaken placed in UMC laundry
     http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040623/NEWS01/40623002/1002

     JACKSON--Simultaneous stillbirths at UMC caused mix-up which led to one body going to laundry instead of pathology.  No criminal charges expected.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, August 8, 2004--v 4 #33
  MISSISSIPPI
  
  1. Greenwood Commonwealth, August 3, 2004
     Woman suspected of killing her baby arrested by police
     http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12591564&BRD=1838&PAG=461&dept_id=104621&rfi=6

     BELZONI--Lasalle Denise Brown, 24. arrested on Humphreys County warrant in investigation of disappearance of newborn.  State HS called authorities when they learned that her newborn could not be located after Brown's boyfriend, Calvin Stowers, 39, removed baby from residence and she had not seen the baby since.  Stowers already charged with murder and is in jail.

  2. Biloxi Sun Herald, August 6, 2004
     Search suspended for body of missing newborn
     http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/9336304.htm

     BELZONI--Police suspend search for baby's body; claim they have enough evidence to carry case.  Brown says she saw Stowers put baby in garbage can.

• BABY DUMP NEWS, May 29, 2005
  MISSISSIPPI
  Spero News, May 23, 2005
  Mississippi pro-lifers intervene
  http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=32&idsub=120&id=1441

  NO DATELINE--Feature on Mississippi anti-abortion radical Roy McMillan who was found naked and abandoned at birth in a shoe box on the steps of a church.

2007- (online)- Marley appears not to have found any articles relating to Mississippi.

2008- BDN ceases publication. Marley was kind enough to search through her personal files for that year, but has found no articles relating to Mississippi (yet).

2009- still working, but did send across the sad case of  Theresa Clincy  who abandoned 2 kids: 1, a 3-month old on a porch. The kids were able to remain in the family, living with her sister according to the last few piece.

There are a number of articles about the case and WAPT in particular had a fair amount of coverage.

• March 11, 2009: Boy Who Found Abandoned Baby Honored At School
• March 15, 2009: $25,000 Bond Keeps Abandoned Baby’s Mother In Jail
• March 18, 2009: DA To Revoke Probation For Mother Of Abandoned Child
• April 1, 2009: Abandoned Baby’s Mother Awaiting Mental Evaluation
• April 13, 2009: Abandoned Baby’s Aunt Cares For Sister’s Children
• April 24, 2009: Abandoned Baby’s Aunt Keeping Family Together
• July 22, 2009 Single Mother Asks For Help For Jailed Sister’s Kids

2010- I will handle this in a separate post (or posts) later this week as the latest cases certainly deserve a post (if not posts) all their own.

But the (at least) three cases I’ll be working with will be those of:

• Linda Nash who stabbed her newborn to death. The baby was born at home; Linda says she didn’t know she was pregnant.  She’s a Type 2 diabetic, and an adoptee.
• the dead baby found in a suitcase earlier this summer
• and this latest child abandonment of a (live) child left at a Salvation Army donation drop off, outside the legalized child abandonment system

Again, the post really represents the work Marley has done over the course of a decade. I simply wanted to provide some background context to the Mississippi piece I was writing. On any one of these cases there are a number of articles, some of which are listed here, some of which aren’t.

Mississippi is but one case study of how these laws simply have not achieved what they promised they would. Children are still abandoned and dead babies are still being found. Women are still going to jail and families are still being torn apart.

Kids are being stripped of their identities, family history, context, medical histories etc. in a gross violation of their human rights.

Even of those women who do bring their kids to a baby dump site, their post-birth health and safety, let alone parental rights, physical and psychological needs are all too often considered secondary to “catching” a kid (most of whom, in Mississippi at least, appear to be entering the adoption system.)

It’s a mess, but a mess far too many people are just fine with.

(At least until some of these kids grow up and are old enough to speak on their own behalf, that is.)

Now that Illinois’ disastrous HB 5428 has been signed into law, (it’s now known as PA 96-0895) simply by looking at the new law it becomes clear, some untold number of adoptees will have their requests for their original birth certificates, or attempts to register with the registry rejected by the state. Yet the state appears to have no interest in hearing from or about those so intentionally left behind.

No provision has been made to track those rejections nor build statistics how many requests are being turned down. (Let alone offer those rejected any form of redress.)

Until now.

Mary Lynn Fuller (of Illinois Open) is beginning to compile some of the stories of those the state of Illinois is rejecting access to their Original Birth Certificates (OBCs) to or refusing to register in the IARMIE (Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange.) She’s attempting to build some basic statistics on just how many are being turned away and what their circumstances are.

She can be contacted via email- mlfuller65@comcast.net.

If you can help spread the word about Mary Lynn’s effort to do this basic data collection, please share her effort far and wide within your social networks.

This is terribly important work, as many legislators believe they just ‘restored’ adoptees civil rights and believe the new law has ‘fixed’ the situation. Tragically, nothing could be farther from the truth. But without the data to show what those turned away are experiencing, those rejected will be left to suffer this injustice as if it were nothing more than a ‘personal problem’.

These rejections are not ‘personal problems.’  They are the result of a systemic flaw, inherently built into the new law, and precisely what many of us who have been blogging about the legislative wrangling in Illinois for years now warned was about to happen before the law passed.

Bastardette has added her take on Mary Lynn’s effort here:

Attention Illinois Original Birth Certificate Rejects! Act Now!

As Bastardette put it:

You can read Mary’s latest blog about Illinois here. Note that although Mary is a grandmother, and her first mother is dead, she is not yet old enough and thus responsible enough to qualify for her own birth certificate–despite what Feigenholtz says to to the contrary on her own webpage.

Representative Sara Feigenholtz, who sponsored and pushed the bill can say  “Today, we’re opening a new chapter in adoption history in Illinois where we can finally say that all families are created equal” ’til she’s blue in the face.

Even the most straightforward reading of the law makes it clear enough, today Illinois families and adoptees remain locked behind multiple doors of state constructed unequal treatment.

What’s important at this point, is to bring together and compile the stories of those who AS A CLASS OF PEOPLE are left to endure that inequality, and bring their plight to light.

Rather than remaining voiceless, each trapped by the legislation’s fatal flaw, adoptee rights advocates both in Illinois and across the country are trying to ensure that PA 96-0895 is not the end of the road in Illinois as this new law merely creates a whole new set of problems, problems we warned were inherent to it before it passed. None of us are giving up.

We don’t view this latest version of the mess in Illinois as any kind of “end point” nor do we consider the matter “settled.” If anything, we foresee that for a class of adoptees and their families, this is merely another chapter, and the problems therein are only just beginning.

Proving that, though, becomes a matter of individuals being willing to speak out. Of data collection. And of not giving up.

We recognize there’s a long haul ahead of us, all the more so in that once legislators pass a bill, they use their work on it as an excuse to refuse to revisit the “issue” for years to come.

As they refuse to track the consequences of the law, it falls to the directly affected to do so.

With the evidence of PA 96-0895’s failures in hand, we will continue to push for nothing less than genuine equality for adopted people and their families in Illinois.

Because when it comes to genuinely restoring human, civil, and identity rights, no one should be left behind or forgotten.

Illinois Adoptees with One Foot in the Grave. Hark! Your Original Birth Certificate is on its Way.

Перевести на русский

The big news tonight is that Russia has put a freeze on all US adoptions until Russia and the US can come to an agreement on terms relating to those inter-country adoptions, (most likely adding additional follow up for Russian children, who remain Russian citizens after adoption) and sign a treaty to that effect.

To those of us who have been following the circumstances leading up to this suspension over the course of years now, none of this comes as a surprise, particularly since Russia had come right up to this brink in the last major US/Russian adoption related incident, (see my posts on Dmitry Yakolev.)

To understand the process by which things came to this critical point, one first has to understand the broader context.

Marley Greiner/Bastardette has been tracking some of the Russian adoptee murders and other forms of abuse, such as the high profile case of Masha (”Allen”) who was adopted by pedophile Matthew Mancuso on her blog “NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO/Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten. A memoriam for Russian adoptees abused and murdered by their forever families.”

Be certain to see her overview Cases: Forever Family, Forever Dead.

Scrolling back through the posts and cases provides a great deal of background to how this level of frustration and anger has built over time.

Also be sure to see her overview of the consequences (and lack thereof) to the adoptive parents, The Russian Adopted Dead: a review of killers and sentences.

I have also done a scant few posts about some of the Russian Adooptees: Masha, Dennis Uritsky here in Maryland and somewhat more in-depth coverage of essentially the last major international incident concerning American adopters of a dead Russian adoptee, the sad death of Dmitry Yakolev/ Chase Harrison.

With that as backgrounder, we then come to the events of the last 24 hours.

Start with this lengthy video segment from Russia Today,

Clearly, each and every system in place to prevent such failed one by one, falling like dominoes.

After the 11 hour flight from DC back to Moscow he was brought to the Russian Education and Science Ministry Thursday afternoon by a man who had apparently been paid $200 by the adoptive mother to meet the boy’s United Airlines flight when it arrived. He had been adopted a mere 6 months ago.

While it’s unclear what Artem had been told about the trip, we have details such as these beginning to emerge:

The online website Gazeta.ru said the child had almost completely forgotten how to speak Russian during his time in the United States, and answered questions posed to him in his native language in English. He said his adoptive grandparents were “good” but his mother was “very bad”, claimed the website. During his time in the US, he had been given a new name – Justin Hansen.

Allegedly he was told by his adoptive mother, from Shelbyville, Tennessee, that he was going on an excursion to Russia and would return home to the US in a couple of weeks. “His adoptive mother beat him and pulled him by the hair,” said Pavel Astakhov, the Russian president’s human rights ombudsman. “Reminding him of her makes him cry.”

At the orphanage in the far eastern town of Partizansk, where the child lived before he was adopted, teachers denied that he had psychological problems. “He’s a smart, clever kid,” said Svetlana Glukhovtseva. “He took in everything we taught him very well.”

Anyone with a shred of empathy can sympathize with the betrayal he must have felt upon realizing that far from some kind of “excursion,” his new “forever mommy” had decided to ship him off as if taking the boy to a returns department.

The Russian media is running with the “returned purchase” meme and I’m convinced, it’s a very valid analogy. They, like many of us Bastards, recognize the American adoptive mother is attempting to pass Artem off as nothing more than ‘defective merchandise’, and are furious at the callousness of her these actions.

There have been promises of an investigation here on the American end to see whether or not any laws were broken, I can only hope such would take into account not merely the actions of these individuals, but the entire system that enabled this human rights travesty.

Children are not objects.

They should not be treated as such.

They should not be purchased, nor purchase-able.

Artem was not treated as a family member, he was treated as little more than an allegedly ‘broken item’ shipped back to the manufacturer.

Now that he’s back in Russia, the Russian media are reporting he will likely go back into the child welfare system after first receiving physical and psychological examinations and some counseling. The language barrier alone may make him feel all the more isolated in his home country.

Bastardette blogged about Artyom Saveliev / Artem Saveliev /Artem Justin Hansen’s flight last night,  LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE: RUSSIAN ADOPTEE DUMPED ON PLANE, SENT BACK TO RUSSIA

Throughout the day today, she has posted several updates:

First an initial update that includes a variety of images relating to the case: Artem’s official adoption listing profile on the Russian government website prior to the adoption, and “after pictures” both with his “Forever Family” adoptive Mommy, Torry Ann Hansen and upon arrival back in Russia at the Domodedovo Airport. Bastardette also includes the image of the note that was sent with Artem on his journey to the ‘returns department.’

ARTEM SAVELIEV/ARTEM JUSTIN HANSEN: A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Later on, she added a second update about the Renton Washington agency that placed him, WAPAC, World Association for Children and Parents. WAPAC is Council on Accreditation (COA) accredited and a Joint Council on International Children’s Services (JCICS) and National Council for Adoption (NCFA) member. Earlier today, the Russian government suspended WAPAC’s Russian operations.

She also points out the possibility that Torry Hansen may have been elligible to adopt the boy at a greatly discounted price at the time.

As WAPAC was in Washington State (and ultimately responsible for the placement) and the Hansens live in Tennessee, there have been some questions as to who did the home study.

See Bastardette’s post:

SAVELIEV/HANSEN AGENCY IDENTIFIED: WORLD ASSOCIATION FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN

I don’t have video up at the moment, but Bastardette also appeared on Russian Today this afternoon to speak about the case. Other American adoptees are also speaking out about this case.

In this link’s video segment you get a feel for the American Home the boy was placed into.

Meanwhile on the American end, pieces such as this are appearing attempting to put forward a bit more of the adoptive Mother Torry Hansen and Adoptive Grandmother, Nancy Hansen’s perspective on the incident:

Russia threatens to suspend US adoptions after woman sends 7-year-old boy back to Moscow alone

The article also contains preposterous nonsense such as this from adoption industry lobbyists, NCFA, desperately trying to maintain Russia as a sending country:

“Child abandonment of any kind is reprehensible,” said Chuck Johnson, acting CEO of the National Council For Adoption.

NCFA associated individuals have been key to how the baby dump laws, (often call “Baby Moses Laws” or “Safe Haven” laws) legalizing child abandonment came to pass here in the United States. For this latest incarnation of NCFA to decry child abandonment is for them to deny their own organizational history!

But clearly there’s another, more pertinent reason NCFA and JCICS are issuing releases and working hard behind the scenes on this case right now, even above and beyond their desires to keep Russia a “sending country”, WAPAC is one of their own.

Neither NCFA nor JCICS mention that WAPAC is their own member agency (see here and here), as they desperately run around try to sell the it’s an “isolated incident” line, pretending that this latest outrage is not situated firmly within a vast pattern of ongoing history of cases pertaining to what Russian adoptees have suffered at the hands of their American adopters: abuse, starvation, beatings, murders, being adopted by a pedophile, left to die in hot cars in summer, and now sent back alone on an international flight.

“Isolated incident” my ass.

Go see this piece from CNN in which the adoptive granmother claims she was following online instructions from a lawyer:

Nancy Hansen, the Tennessee woman who put Justin Hansen on the plane in Washington, insisted she did not abandon the child, but was following instructions from a lawyer she found online.

and

When the lawyer she found online advised her the adoption could be reversed, Hansen booked the flight and paid the fee for a steward to escort Justin through the airport, she said.

She hired a driver in Moscow she found online to pick the child up from the Moscow airport, she said. She found “safe references” for the driver online, she said.

She then prepared a letter for Justin to present to Russian officials, which included a photo of the driver, whom she identified as “Arthur,” she said.

and we hear from the agency, World Association for Children and Parents for the first time:

The Seattle-based agency which Hansen said her daughter used to coordinate the adoption said it found out about Justin’s return only Friday.

“We were alerted to this situation by our branch office in Moscow, Russia, and are shocked and saddened by this turn of events,” said a spokeswoman for the World Association for Children and Parents.

In the 1 percent of the cases where the dissolution of an adoption has been needed, the agency “has always supported and worked closely with [adoptive] parents to assist the child in moving into a new adoptive family,” she said.

See this comment left over on Bastardette’s blog by an anonymous commenter for more details.

NEW JERSEY: ANYTHING TO GET A BILL PASSED. WE LEAVE EVERYBODY BEHIND!

BASTARD NATION’S LETTER TO NJ HOUSE SPEAKER JOSEPH ROBERTS, JR–PLEASE OPPOSE A 752. ADOPTEE DESERVE RIGHTS NOT FAVORS!

NEW JERSEY: MY CAUSE IS BETTER THAN YOURS. ADOPTEES V GAYS

The core of it all is of course, yet another broken bill, designed to leave some behind, constructed upon the false notion of parental vetoes that does real damage to existing adoptee rights.

One either excepts the basic premise that adopted people should receive equal treatment under law to non-adopted people, or they don’t. Sadly, the proposed legislation in New Jersey is predicated upon the notion that we are somehow ‘different’ and thus deserving of ‘different’ treatment.

The New Jersey bill, A752, has opened the door to complete non-sequiturs like “parental medical information” which simply have nothing to do with a genuine effort to restore Bastard access to our Original Birth Certificates (OBCs). Bastards regaining access to our OBCs doesn’t grant us access to parental medical histories, it merely restores to us access to our own documentation that the State had allowed access to originally, only to later confiscate and refuse us access to.

Just as non-adopted people get no family medical history when they request a copy of their Original Birth Certificates, neither should such be falsely folded in to concepts of adopted people’s restored access to ours. Doing so only attempts to conflate search and reunion issues into the genuine civil rights issue of records access.

Restored records access is what Bastards demand of the State. We demand such based on the premise that adopted people should be treated equally under law to non-adopted people.

Family medical histories are what some of us MAY ask of our relatives. Such requests may be granted or denied. Under law we have no “right” to be granted a medical history. Sharing such is at the discretion of our relations. Just as non-adopted people likewise have no inherent legal “right” to be granted such by their families.

Ethically, of course, sharing what information is available is likely morally preferable, but such interpersonal relationships and what information is or is not passed between individuals should not be state mandated.

As I’ve written here time and again, individual medical histories and family medical histories are up to individuals to decide whether they chose to share or not.

At the core of the Bastard rights position is the demand that we be free to live our lives without undue governmental intrusion into our interpersonal and family affairs, asking only we receive the same treatment as non-adopted people.

When states then insist upon entangling medical histories into state mandated requirements, they do little more than CONTINUE the ongoing pattern of state interference and control over ourselves and our families’ lives. Simply put, it’s none of the State’s damn business. It’s an interpersonal matter between us and our families- just as such is under law for non-adopted people.

Again, all we seek is equality. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.

Deformers in New Jersey are creating what would be a catastrophe instead, attempting to put our families into the position of being essentially state blackmailed by the State itself into handing over personal and family medical histories, should they desire a lack of contact.

A752 is not an adoptee rights bill, it’s a false conflation of a bill that attempts to push medical histories and reunion issues into the discourse about our authentic need for restored access to our own records, our demand to be treated just like other non-adopted citizens.

It sets up precisely the systems that are the hallmarks of deform bills: false and interpersonal issues conflated in, and separate class of Bastards left behind in the wake of the bill.

Speaking as one of those left behind by Ohio’s contortionist deforms, I know firsthand what it means to have some people get theirs at the direct personal cost to people like myself. It’s why I will never support anything other than a pure restored access bill that leaves no one behind.

Anything this “compromised” bill would manage to pass in the short term will have lasting detrimental repercussions for those left behind for decades to come.

Horrible excuses for legislation such as New Jersey’s A752 say a very great deal about those supporting them. As I pointed out in my WTF page one of the clear indicators of a Bastard is that they are not in it merely for what they perceive as something that might get records for themselves, nor for some short sighted ‘quick fix’ that leaves other Bastards standing beside them screwed and left behind at the end of the day:

An adoptee who is cognizant of and cares about ‘class Bastard.’ I.E. an adoptee who either inherently understands, or has moved beyond caring about issues of equality and access from a purely personal position of merely wanting equality for themselves, to understanding “personal solutions” are not the solution. A Bastard understands that ‘compromising away’ the person standing next to you in an effort to get something for oneself is simply unthinkable. We don’t jump in to get ours now by putting the Bastard standing next to us off with promises of “we’ll come back for you later.” A Bastard understands to the core of their being politically and interpersonally, “we leave no one behind/no one gets left behind or forgotten.” All of which is to say, Bastards have learned a number of lessons from history and incorporated such thinking into their everyday, perhaps now second nature, actions.

If the so called “activists” in NJ claiming to represent NJ adoptees haven’t figured that out yet, they’ve forfeited any genuine claim to representing any adoptees other than themselves and their own personal interests: they’ve presented a selfish half-assed piece of crap legislation that not merely leaves other adoptees behind, but also once again, sets a model that will could (and likely would) be used by other states to screw yet more adopted people.

When you’re willing to settle for what amounts to table scraps instead of human rights, you should not be the least bit surprised when what you get table are scraps instead of human rights.

I, as an adopted person, oppose New Jersey A752.

Sadly if that’s all it did, it could be dismissed as yet another lousy compromised from the get go bill. Merely the latest in a very long string of such. Sadly, that’s not all it would do. Instead it goes further, going so far as to actually erase existing OBC information for kids who go through the state’s babydump (or so called “safe haven”) process, for example.

Marley has laid out the core of some of the mess it would create (emphasis added by me),

Sponsored by NJCare, (aka The Krampi) A752 (aka The Krampus Bill) is one of the worst throw-our-rights away bills on record. The bill, of course, contains the compromiser’s favorite compromise, the “birthparent” disclosure veto.

But wait, there’s more!

In order to make this veto work, the state extorts a family/medical history from closeted parents. Kind of a pay to play scam. If parents don’t submit the government mandated snoop form in 60 days, then The Bastard gets the obc. Sounds like a violation of HIPAA to me.

But wait, there’s more!

A752 also contains the whiteout “alternative” that will give adoptees, slapped with a veto, an “original birth certificate” that’s been mutilated by a government censor with a glob of white-out smeared over identifying information including their own names, and the parental addresses at the time of birth.

But wait, there’s more!

The Krampus Bill automatically seals the obc of all persons anonymously dumped under the state’s “safe haven” law, even if one or both parents are identified on the obc (one of baby dumping’s dirty little secrets). See, a safe haven dump, coerced out of a confused parent ” is a legal assumption of an on file and notarzied “disclosure veto.” Tough, but at least you weren’t thrown in a dumpster. That receptacle is reserved for your rights.

Finally, Krampus includes a fiscal note of $90,000 from the General Fund to finance the cost of a national advertising campaign to warn biological parents that their bastard may be hunting them down with the adoptee-requisite drywall hatchet in hand. Be sure to get that veto on file while you still have your hands to write with.

It would create a whole new ‘right’ of sorts for parents (”of origin”) that sets them apart from all other people. The ability to have our paperwork modified and to demand adopted people go through an intermediary whether we want to or not.

NJCare board member Carol Barbieri, writing of A752 in the Asbury Park Press goes so far as to claim those not wanting contact “will be left alone” as a result of their bill, relabeling such a sick form of “protection”:

For starters, it gives birthparents who wish to remain anonymous a year to file a notarized “request for nondisclosure” letter with the state. Their name and address will be omitted from the adoptee’s original birth certificate. If a birthparent doesn’t want contact from an adoptee, they will be left alone.

Currently no such protection for birthparents exists in New Jersey. Furthermore, if a birthparent wants to reunite with an adoptee, he or she gets to choose how they would like the initial contact to take place — directly or through an intermediary.

All of which firmly inserts state interference into the ways in which adults conduct their interpersonal affairs.

Adopted people’s constitutional and human right to free association, would now be explicitly circumvented. We would be forced down chutes of predetermined contact or lack thereof with government serving the role of enforcer over our interpersonal relationships.

This holds no resemblance to any known concept of adoptee equality, instead, adopted people would form yet another new class, a set of people with what amounts to a pre-emptive restraining order set against us and interpersonal contact not based on any standard of prior actual behavior but merely on our EXISTENCE as members of a a class of people, those adopted and ‘nondisclosured’.

This is precisely the sort of pre-emptive restraining orders on interpersonal contact we’ve seen over and over down through the years out of the usual opponents of Bastard rights. To see such instituted on the back of any notion of an “adoptee rights bill” would be a damn sad day indeed.

Anyone who thinks this New Jersey bill does no harm has missed the horrific details contained therein.

Furthermore, if Bastards settle for utter garbage such as this, the odds of New Jersey ever being adding the roll of honour of states that treat adopted persons equitably under law are slim to none. No state that has settled for “compromised” legislation has ever come back and become a state authentically supportive of our full equality.

The United States according to Bastard Nation-

(Alaska and Kansas never sealed their records away from their adopted citizens. Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire and Maine have each entered the roll of honour over the course of the last nine years.)

If New Jersey passes this bill it will instead join the list of states that rather than moving towards equality for adopted people, have chosen to protect the interests and secrets and lies of those with much to hide and much to answer for.

For adopted people themselves to side with such interests, putting forward bills that maim our demand for full equality under law is nothing short of an embarrassment. They side with those whose hands are dirty over those of their own class and long term interests. Such shortsightedness belies any claim to speak for adopted people as a class.

They have been “bastardized” by the State and wish to continue precisely such patterns of discrimination.

There is no shame is asking for what you really want, restoration of rights for all adopted people and genuine equality under law.

Conflating in search and reunion interpersonal issues, state enforced pre-emptive restraining orders, record nullification for those entering the system via the babydump mechanisms (a nice little X-mas bonus, cleaning up an oversight on the part of the dump pushers by piggybacking on a supposed ‘adoptee rights bill,’ nice that. so yup, an ‘adoptee rights’ bill that will actually take an eraser to a class of Bastard’s OBCs) , and granting new powers to parents (that will utimately come down to the State’s whims in interpretation) all at the direct expense of adoptee human and constitutional rights is unacceptable.

Such junk legislation should go only one place, the nearest shredder.

This bears no resemblance to adoptee rights instead, in a truly Orwellian fashion, it guts our existing rights and takes white out to “Dumpee’s” (or “Dumplings”) OBCs.

It’s yet another ‘I hope for mine, screw the costs to others’ bill.

If New Jersey activists came back with a real access restoration bill next time out, I’d gladly blog, write, and work in support of such, but when the best NJCare appears to have to offer at the moment is white out for a new set of OBCs, it’s past time to let this bill die.

I leave readers with the contact information for the Speaker,

Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, Jr,.
Brooklawn Shopping Plaza
Rt. 130 South & Browning Rd
Brooklawn, NJ 08030
Phone: 856-742-7600
(No fax number listed)

email him via his web page: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/members/bio.asp?Leg=16 (cut and paste) (hit the email link.)

Ask that he allow A752 to die.

After all these years of work, it’s long past time, New Jersey needs a genuine bill that restores adopted people’s equality, not a piece of legislation that will ultimately gut what few existing rights we have left.

]]> http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/12/12/new-jersey-let-a752-die-the-conflation-of-family-medical-history-with-authentic-restored-access-and-preemptive-restraining-orders-among-other-nightmare-senarios/feed/ 2 http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/12/08/belated-high-praise-for-the-nablopomo-truly-daily-bastardette/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/12/08/belated-high-praise-for-the-nablopomo-truly-daily-bastardette/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:10:56 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/?p=1465 This is one of those posts that’s been on the back burner brewing here for a bit.

I’ve known Marley/Bastardette for a number of years now and I find I always come away from time spent with her having learned something. It may be  something deeply nuanced in relation to the intricacies of adoption policy and politic, or it may be something as marvelously “mundane” as her turning me on to a classic film. Other times we talk about music or history or she recommends another book to add to my seemingly endless reading pile.

Always, she leaves me with new ideas to chew on. Her humour, wit, and willingness to dare the outrageous have inspired me time and again.

Spending time with her down through the years has always been time I’ve treasured.

So when I heard she had taken on the task of tackling NaBloPoMo, I knew we were all in for a treat.

Get her talking, and sooner or later listeners (or readers in this case) are going to stumble headlong across new ideas or even old concepts that leave them thinking.

The promise of a truly *DAILY* Daily Bastardette has always been inherent, but trust me, as a fellow blogger, I understand how maintaining such, even over the course of a month is no small feat. (Closest I’ve ever come is 20 some odd days in a single month around the Nebraska big kid dumps.)

So this past November, The Daily Bastardette pulling 30 blogs in 30 days was just a bit like sitting down with a cup of coffee and opening the paper each morning used to be (back in the age when ‘Dinosaurs roamed the earth’ and ‘news was actually printed on a thing called “paper” and was delivered daily to one’s abode.)

The Daily Bastardette this past November served as the perfect anecdote to the nonstop cotton candy sticky sweetness of the all-marketing-all-the-time National Adoption Month.

For those of you who may have missed it, you missed the development of a body of work over the course of a single month the likes of which you wouldn’t find in the course of a year on many an adoption related blog: humour, history, media criticism,  original research/investigative journalism, community connections, theory and international content. Or put more simply perhaps, everything that the Daily Bastardette is, condensed down into a nutshell, a single month long extravaganza.

Marley is a true Bastard treasure, a genuine preserver of the rich Bastard-centric history that surrounds us all, even as it continues to unfold day in and day out all around us.

This post then is both a small personal ‘thank you’ and a celebratory ‘well done old girl!’

***

Browse at will, the November ‘09 body of Bastardette’s posts-

HAPPY NATIONAL ADOPTION AWARENESS MONTH: JOIN ALT.ADOPTION ON FACEBOOK! Nov 1

UPDATE: JEAN PATON BIO Nov 2

3RD ANNUAL DEMONS IN ADOPTION AWARD WINNER: BETHANY CHRISTIAN SERVICES Nov 3

NATIONAL ADOPTION AWARENESS MONTH RESOLUTION: SURPRISE! WE’RE NOT IN IT Nov 5

GALLERY OF HEROIC ADOPTEE & BASTARD LEGENDS Nov 6

BASTARD NATION BEST PRACTICE 12 YEARS LATER: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-DEFEATISM IN ADOPTION REFORM BY DAMSEL PLUM Nov 7

MY LAME MAD MEN BLOG Nov 8

OHIO ABANDONED BABY CASE SOLVED: WE KNEW IT! HOAX! Nov 9

HOAXES CANNOT PIMP BABY DUMPING Nov 10

11-11-11: PVT . FRANK LAWRENCE RIP Nov 11

HAWAI’I: THEY’RE BACK–MORE MORONISY Nov 12

MY FIRST ADOPTEE: RONNIE BURNS Nov 13

CONGRATULATIONS DON CHAON! Nov 14

THE GREAT LIE. THE GREAT CAT FIGHT. ONE OF MY FAVORITE ADOPTION FILMS Nov 15

MORE FILM–THAT HAGAN GIRL: YOU THINK YOU’VE GOT PROBLEMS. BE GLAD YOU’RE NOT MARY! Nov 16

UK FLIM-FLAM: THE FERTILITY SHOW Nov 17

ADOPTION IS A FEMINIST ISSUE: DAWN FRIEDMAN TAKES ON THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR ADOPTION Nov 18

ABC NEWS LOOKING FOR ADOPTEES: DISCRIMINATION Nov 19

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION Nov 20

THE AAC AND ADOPTEE RIGHTS: A REPLY TO THE EXAMINER Nov 21

MARLEY MISSING FROM SHELTER Nov 22

JOAN WHEELER IS A BAAAAD GIRL! Nov 23

FIND MY FAMILY: WHERE’S THE RECORDS? Nov 24

“SAFE HAVEN” SURVIVOR Nov 25

THANKSGIVING: I’M GRATEFUL FOR CELEBRITY ADOPTERS! Nov 26

KITTIES SPEAK OUT ABOUT ADOPTION Nov 27

“FIND MY FAMILY” REDUX Nov 28

TROY DUNN TALKS ABOUT GLADNEY AND RECORDS Nov 29

BABYKLAPPE NEIN DANKE! GERMAN ETHICS COUNCIL SAYS NO TO BABY DUMPING Nov 30

MORE DETAILS EMERGE ON BOX BUTTE CASE; LAWMAKERS STILL DON’T GET IT

(Yup, this may be the shortest post in BLC history.)

Marley has all the details in her useful post, MOTHER PANICKED, REGRETS “SAFE HAVEN:” 1ST POST-NEBRASKA FIASCO BABY GOING HOME.

Within 48 hours, both parents had come forward requesting the return of their child.

This portion in particular, pertains to the infant’s current custody arrangements:

On July 23, under a plan arranged by HHS, Butte Box County Judge Charles Plantz (left) granted legal custody to the agency while the parents undergo genetic testing and psychological assessment. Plantz made it clear in his order that HHS should proceed with its plan to place the baby with his biological mother while its investigation continues. The maternal grandmother is taking a leave of absence from her job to help care for the infant and his mother. The Star-Herald says the grandmother will move into the mother’s home, but the Herald-World says the mother will move into the grandmother’s home. The father will be allowed easy access to the infant.

According to court documents, Larry Miller, the baby’s court appointed guardian ad litem said, “NDHS believes this arrangement will provide safety for the baby.” Hospital officials filed an affidavit in which they said they believe it would be best for the mother and baby to be together so the mom could nurse and bond with him. (Note: court documents are not available to the public; information on them comes from news reports.)

Marley’s post covers many aspects of the dump scheme and points out some of the ways Nebraska is attempting to grapple with the genuine needs of these families in the aftermath of the older kid dumps.

She also brings forth a crucial point from her years of research:

In the nearly 10 years I’ve researched legalized dumping I have not found one single case where a parent or a family member who petitioned for return was denied.

and goes on to explain some of the potential reasons why:

I believe there are two reasons for this:

• Child welfare workers by in large do not like “safe haven” laws and except when thwarted by legal anonymity laws that binds their hands, hold a higher child welfare standard than do politicians and amateur do-gooders via counseling, education, and informed consent whether the final decision of the parent(s) be reunification, kinship care, temporary foster care, or adoption.

• The state fears if victims of “safe havening” are not returned, except for good cause, a parent or relative will seek legal redress. Since “safe haven” laws are already dancing on thin ice, the chance of overturning a law on constitutional grounds given the right circumstances in any state, is good. Not only would costly time-consuming litigation be necessary, but if the plaintiff were successful the entire law could be overturned, and adoption placements of safe havened children be vacated. If the case goes up the law ladder far enough, the entire Ponzi scheme could collapse throughout the country. Keeping families in tact post-dump, then, is simply utilitarian even if it is the right thing to do.

For more on the constitutional problems with “safe haven” read Erik L. Smith here and here.

I actually wasn’t planning on blogging about it, but in light of some of the lunacy campaigning surrounding the movie, I figured another Bastard voice tossed into the fray might not be the worst thing.

So my two cents, in seven acts, since so many have asked.

(And just to get it out of the way upfront: yup, pigtails, not unlike a certain blogger you might know… .)

ACT I

Yeah fine, movie.

Get OVER it already.

Plenty of people out there hear the word, “Orphan” or read about the upcoming flick, and assume this somehow is some kind of reflection on them, their industry, their christian evangelism efforts, their adopted kids, or whatever.

It has become nothing less than a sick form of ultimate adoptionland Rorschach test, with plenty of people (many of whom are not adoptees themselves) taking offense.

Seems what any one given person sees in the poster has far more to do with who THEY are than the product itself.

All of adoptionland sees what it wants in it.

And lots of people are in for a bit of a surprise by that measure.

But how do you sit these people down and say “you know, your narcissism aside, for once, it’s not all about you” is just a losing game.

Particularly when there’s cash and media to be gained by their course of action.

Look, I’m a Bastard, an ‘orphan’ if you must, and in all honesty, I could give a rat’s ass.

The squeeky wheels of adoptionland have panicked over Orphan, convinced it will destroy adoption.

Meanwhile, idiot adoptees are running around wanting “Orphan” T-shirts and “adopting” the film’s protagonist, “Esther” as some kind of adoptee heroine, convinced her “evil deeds” all stem from adoptee lack of access to our original birth certificates.

Far as I’m concerned, these two polar extremes deserve one another, both factions are completely nuts.

No, the arrival of “Esther” on the scene does not mean no one will ever adopt again, and that worldwide, unwanted (and now supposedly feared due to a movie) children will be stacked up like so many Tribbles.

That’s the lie at the heart of the Anti-Orphan whiner’s rant, that supply will outweigh demand if the movie goes forward.

This in a land where demand (for a certain kind of a adoptee that is) outstripped supply a LONG time back.

Nor is she any kind of Bastard superhero.

Those “adopting” her as one of us are equally, collectively, off their rockers.

As I said, all these folks, deeply invested in their own projections as they are, are in for a bit of a surprise come tonight.

The various pro-adoption factions, from secular left, to evangelical right have all found a fundraising friend in Orphan. Question is, of course, has the studio found a friend in them to help its marketing efforts? Who’s using whom, and does it even matter at this point?

ACT II

Then there’s the whole hoopla over the “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own” line. The whiners whined, the studio pulled it. Now the whiners want pro-adoption materials included in the DVD sales, adoption cross marketing tie ins at theaters etc.

Me? I think removing the line was cowardly.

Further, I think the line, spoken by Ester the Orphan actually does strike at a certain Bastard truth:

Not only IS it hard to love a Bastard as your own, I personally feel it SHOULD be.

Huh?

Yeah, you heard me, right.

Adoption takes an extraordinary effort of extraordinary people. It is not and should not be, and should not be marketed as easy.

Adoption is a special circumstance. It is not ‘just like everyone else’ and there are aspects of it that are absolutely difficult.

Glossing over those, failing to acknowledge them, and otherwise sweeping them under the rug tries to drive any encountered ‘bumps’ under the rug as well, morphing them into mere personal problems, rather than acknowledging that those adopting and adopted face certain situations that non-adopted people and non-adoptive parents do not. We do so as classes of people, not only as individuals.

It is hard to love an adopted child as much as one’s own, it should be, and yes, it should take the extra effort.

Adoption and its aftermath for the people affected, takes work.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, who says it’s all easy and rainbows and pink candy cotton fluff is the real problem here, not a line in a movie that for all of about one second managed to speak a Bastard truth.

But not to fear, it’s been cut.

ACT III

In this post at least I’m not going to go into the particulars of the various Anti-Orphan factions nor the pro-Orphan folks.

Marley/Bastardette has been tracking some of the Anti-Orphan lunacy though, and I’d advise exploring her coverage to date,

“ORPHAN,” ESTHER, AND US: ADOPTION MUCKETY-MUCKS LOOK STUPID AGAIN

ADOPTION MUCKETY-MUCKS CONTINUE TO ACT STUPID OVER “ORPHAN”

ORPHAN: THE ADOPTION INDUSTRY AND BELTWAY WINGNUTS SQUEAK THE WHEEL

ACT IV

See the thing is, whining is cheap and easy.

If some of these nuts were at all serious, they’d be doing a bit more than mere webpage creation or whining at any microphone they can worm their way in front of.

Take the example of Queer Nation. As some of you might remember, when the Bisexual Bashing and rape glamorizing film “Basic Instinct” came out in the early 90’s, Queer Nation launched its nationwide “Basically, It Stinks!” campaign, complete with plot spoiling “Catherine Did It!” materials.

The Queer Nation focus on Basic Instinct (BI) was always about far more than just a single movie, it was a teaching example that QN focused upon as part of its broader agenda of exposing Hollywood’s ongoing pattern of homophobia.

Queer Nationals out in California got a hold of the script and production schedule and repeatedly disrupted.

Among the more creative actions was showing up with American Flags and “honk if you support our troops” or “honk for the 49ers!” as the film crew attempted to work in San Francisco.

From the start, a media campaign was launched criticizing Hollywood’s portrayals of Queers.

When the movie was finally released, QN members descended on theaters with flyers doing educational campaigns, using lines from the movie’s script to pull the rape scene out into the light of day, allowing people to evaluate it outside experience of the film.

There were attempts to gum up theater ticketing lines at single screen theaters running the film by attempting to buy movie tickets with (Queer as a) three dollar bills featuring famous Queers. While no tickets could be purchased with such, the amount of time wasted on dealing with activists ensured patrons missed start times, and cut into theater profits.

Theater goers often had to pass through picket lines and chants of “Catherine did it,” “Basically, it stinks!” or “We’re here, we’re groovy, we wanna see our REAL Queer lives in the movies.”

Domestic Violence and anti-rape materials or even a booth were set up, using the film as an educational activity. Cars in theater parking lots were flyered, stickers were made. At least one theater was treated to dead fish in its heating and cooling system, making the “Basically it stinks!” quite viceral.

Come the Oscars, Queer Nationals enacted a massive plan on many fronts and managed to get inside and disrupt, creating a rare unscripted few moments of national television.

All of which is to say, if you’re going to take on Hollywood, go big or go home. Don’t whine on webpages and attempt to fill column inches in the remaining dead tree print media.

But then again, as I said, sometimes, everything you’re whining about might just turn out to not be all about you at all.

Besides, unlike Queers fighting against their own appropriated images being utilized by Hollywood and thus working on their own behalf, many of those whining about Orphan are most certainly not Orphans themselves.

Some are members of the adoption industry, others have built their ministries on the backs of those ever useful orphans, and still others are academics, some are those desiring adoption normalization (both adoption as “normal” and THEIR adoptions as “normal”, not distinct from other forms of childraising,) and an (often overlapping) subset are adopters. But in their noisemaking ‘on behalf of’ orphans, they ultimately tend to appropriate our voices.

Real orphans and adoptees have no uniform position on the film.

So, no I may be a Bastard, but won’t be mounting an all hands on deck campaign to ‘do something’ about something as irrelevant as Orphan.

To do so would mean mounting a full scale campaign against Bastard and adoptee depictions in media, and once you take that on, you can pretty much start with Disney and work from now until forever.

Which, not surprisingly is precisely what some of these same whiners have done, a bit more scattershot perhaps, but from Stuart Little on to the Esthers of this world, some of these groups have come to realize that being upset on our behalf can fill one’s organizational coffers.

ACT V

This current noisefest in adoptionland is little more than providing one hell of a distraction from real things happening in adoption, like women in Guatemala on a hunger strike, trying to regain their children stolen for American adoptions.

ACT VI

Are there genuine reasons to critique the damn film? Sure, and they’re plenty ‘horrific’ all on their own.

To name but a few (Quotes are taken from the PDF online production notes) :

Adoption as fix all and replacement

How about the idea of the adoptee as replacement child for a miscarriage (that over and over again is labeled an “unborn child,” (propagandistic language like that alone is enough to lose my horror film dollars.)

…Kate, a wife and mother and recovering alcoholic who recently endured a stillbirth in her third trimester. “She has a gaping hole in her womb and in her heart,” …

Clearly Kate is a model potential adoptive parent.

“She lost a child in childbirth. She’s an alcoholic, and she almost lost another one of her children because of it. She’s tortured.

Sounds like Kate’s relationship with her husband, John is no winner either.

“At its core, this is a family that was broken. Kate has extreme guilt over Max’s accident, the drinking, and even the stillbirth. Despite trying to get past all of that, John’s still not sure he can trust her, and even blames himself.”

The notion of adoptees as family fixes, and interchangeable replacements and how normalized such has become culturally here in the US is plenty scary.

The idea of bringing home a new adoptee to “heal” a marriage, is likewise, a disaster waiting to happen. The two in combination, though is pretty much precisely the kind of profile that should, at least until these crises are past precluded gaining a child. But no, both in the movies and real life, getting a hold of a kid is easier than it perhaps has any business being.

Referring to the stillbirth (here propagandistically referred to as a “child”) classic ‘transference’ language is used, take all that love for your wished for child and heap it on an adoptee.

…she’s trying to persevere and to heal her marriage and her family. Her choice to adopt is an act of kindness. She needs to do something with all the love that she had in her heart for that child…to give it to somebody in need.

Do tell, what kind of homestudy is that?

‘We’re grieving like there’s no tomorrow, and our marriage is on the rocks, oh and I almost let my other kid die, but give us a new kid, it’ll make everything all better… .’

Hmmmm, how about instead, you first work through your grief and pull yourselves together before you even begin to consider taking on some other kid. A kid who will need to be approached on their own terms, who has their own needs, and is a person in their own right, not an interchangeable cog in a machine.

But no, rather than telling such potential adopters ‘now might not be the time, you have some work to do first’, seems there are plenty of folks willing to find them a kid, the proverbial ‘Oh, that one didn’t work out? No problem, we’ll just get you another.’

Yeah, adoptees as replacements, or as a therapeutic means for adults to work out their own shit and family dramas? Yup, that’s pretty scary alright.

But rather than focusing on the everyday horror that is replacement child procurement, the act of getting an adoptee replacement is viewed as ‘good’, it’s just the details of which one they selected that makes things ‘bad.’ Had they chosen some other kid instead of Esther, we’d have a Hallmark or Lifetime channel movie instead.

Added bonus? One of the kids almost died while under the mother’s care.

Kate, still healing from her loss, is a recovering alcoholic, and her drinking has led to near-tragedy in the past when their daughter Max nearly drowned on her watch. John continues to fight the urge to blame his wife for what might have happened. The fractures in their relationship run deep, making them vulnerable and giving Esther an opportunity.

Yup this is precisely who were I a social worker (or nun) I would want to entrust a troubled child to.

The whole Russian adoptee crap

Or how about the idea of psychopath dangerous murderous Esther as a Russian adoptee?

Because Esther is supposed to be of Russian descent, and because the character Max uses sign language to communicate, Fuhrman was also busy behind the scenes learning both sign language and an accent for the role. “It was a lot of fun learning sign language,” she says. “And I liked the accent because having a different voice changed me a bit and helped me become the character.”

Right down to the costuming.

“Esther’s silhouette is what makes her Esther—her ribbons, the traditional sort of Russian dresses that she had.

In the real world, it’s American adoptive parents murdering their Russian adoptees at a rather remarkable rate, not murderous Russian adoptees going after their American adoptive families.

Americans have certain ‘built in’ feelings about Russians, yet one has to wonder, how would the same story play were the adoptee Ethiopian?

Biological determinism and Essentialism

Or the way the film has written both womyn and children from an ‘essentialist nature’ or biological determinism viewpoint; that womyn are ‘natural nuturers’ laden with maternal instinct, for whom family comes first willing to dump their careers overboard, forsaking such to raise children, that the Mother is “fighting for her family” etc.

Kate is also a gifted pianist. We learn she had a career teaching at a prestigious music school, and she gave that up to raise a family. But her son couldn’t care less about music and her daughter is profoundly deaf and can’t hear it. However, the biggest impact on her was the loss of a child, followed by Max’s terrible accident, a near-drowning she could have prevented had she not been drinking.

She becomes a womyn defined purely by her act of motherhood, or lack thereof.

In addition to the thriller aspects of the film, Killoran was also drawn to the mother-child relationships at the heart of the story. “I think Kate is a wonderful portrayal of a woman trying desperately to do right by her children, whether biological or adopted. She just wants the best for them.”

and

“There’s just something really primal in that mother-child relationship,” says Johnson, “so I felt like that was really the best relationship to exploit and corrupt; to take what should be the most natural bond in the world and turn them into enemies. And I gave the mother a troubled background so that when she starts saying there’s something wrong with Esther, everyone has reason to doubt her because she’s not the most reliable person.”

The biological children, particularly the daughter character are portrayed as everything Esther is not, genuinely innocent and good.

Sign language was necessary because Kate and John’s younger daughter, Max, is deaf. The filmmakers cast first-time actress Aryana Engineer, just six years old, in the part. “Aryana was really special,” offers Collet-Serra. “She was so innocent and so full of life. In one sense, this movie is about protecting this young girl’s innocence, so that really needed to come through.”

Then there’s Esther the Orphan herself, who, looking so young, obviously must, by her very nature be considered “innocent,” “angelic” even, because that’s what children ARE. Except of course, in every sense of the word, she isn’t.

Downey notes, “The character of Esther starts off one way—you have to believe that she’s this sweet, angelic girl, who’s had a bit of a difficult past, but is excited to be part of this new family. Then you realize, no, she’s pretty evil, and she has intentions. And then you go deeper into why she has those intentions.

Likewise, much of the focus on Ether is the constructed tension between “childhood innocence” and the evil child, who has infiltrated that most sacred of institutions, the family home.

In a film, when you have an evil kid who does evil things, you start small and more subtly than you might expect in a horror movie. Little things start happening, and before you realize it you have an enemy inside the house, this little girl manipulating the situation.

The Essentialist “Nature” of Orphans in Hollywood and Bastard as intruder from within

Then there is the essentialist Hollywood portrayal of orphans themselves, starting with “The Bad Seed.”

The Orphan is portrayed as potential snoop, or as potentially being where they don’t belong, always around the corner, listening.

But the Coleman house was almost to scale, and also an open design with different angles and walls built for specific psychological purposes, or to hide some of the violence taking place. “We wanted a house that was open in order to get the sense that Esther could always be around the corner listening.” Jeff Cutter, the director of photography, lit the house with the same intention. “Jeff created pools of light so there was never a sense that you were able to see who was in the room; Esther could be there and the others not know it,” says Collet-Serra.

Thus they intend she be transformed into a pervasive presence, a presence that makes those around her not even safe in their own homes. She becomes “the enemy on the inside.”

“Tension and fear go hand-in-hand,” says director Jaume Collet-Serra. “The horror aspect comes in with the brutal violence the family and others face in fighting this little girl, this enemy on the inside.

and

Producer Susan Downey states, “We were definitely trying to tap into a primal fear that people have about what they allow into their homes, or into their lives. And I think with the best intentions Kate and John open their home to Esther, and they get completely undermined by this girl. That’s something that I think will get to people, that hopefully will create fear in viewers. But I think also that the mistakes these characters have made in their past come back to haunt them because they allow this girl to get in there and find out their darkest secrets.

The plot centers around the notion of a child’s essential nature as that of innocence, movie villans such as Esther, then are made ‘horrific’ in their violation of such notions of essentialism.

“I think a villain like this is interesting to watch,” states producer Joel Silver. “You wouldn’t want to see her in the real world, but it’s fun to see her in a movie. She’s a psychopath in the shape of a little girl who will stop at nothing.”

Stylistically they wanted “innocent” yet “rotten to the core.”

“Things that look okay, things that look completely, excruciatingly normal, are normally things to stay away from,” warns actor Peter Sarsgaard. “Even the way Esther looks—she looks like this neat, clean, perfect little girl—but of course she’s rotten to the core.”

Much as the filmmakers love to insist they’re doing something new, the heart of the matter is that it’s been done before in endless variation. Stories about orphans and those adopted, relying upon secrets and lies to provide essential plot twists are an all too familiar story. While I can appreciate the screenwriter’s love of the genre starting with “The Bad Seed” that hardly means such ‘twists’ are all that special.

Working from a story by Appian Way’s Alex Mace, screenwriter David Leslie Johnson wrote the script. “David’s screenplay delivered,” attests Silver. “He really made the story and the characters come to life.” For Johnson, it was a labor of love. “I’ve loved the genre ever since I saw ‘The Bad Seed,’” he notes. “It’s one of my favorite horror sub-genres—the evil child. There’s something very visceral to it. Viewers have a strong reaction, whether it’s a child being corrupted by the devil, or whether it’s just a bad kid…we’re very knee-jerk in our reaction to it. And I didn’t want to do it in a way that it had been done before. I wanted to find a new way into it, to bring a new angle to the subject matter. I came up with the twist at the end, the secret, and sort of worked backward from there.”

Bastard lives would be useless to storytellers were it not for our built in secrets.

And everybody has a secret— Kate has secrets in her past, John has secrets in his. Even Max is being forced to keep secrets. Of course, Esther has the biggest secret of all.”

Some of us would prefer to see real Bastard lives without secrets up on the big screen, but then what would be the draw? An orphan with no hidden twist? Why make such a film. Where’s the commerical appeal?

ACT VII

But my most stinging criticism of Orphan?

I grew up in the 70’s and ’80’s. I know a good horror film when I see one.

I also know a BAD one when I see one, if it’s bad enough, I’ll pop some popcorn and settle in!

From late night double chiller theater with Fritz the Nightowl, to festivals at the Drexel, to the local drive ins, I got my fair share of horror flix both good and bad.

But those in the mushy middle? Regardless of budget if the storytelling and plot devices relegate it to a predictable average, it’s forgettable at best.

House of Wax, (also directed by Jaume Collet-Serra) didn’t suck quite as much as most of the recent crop, it had moments that hearkened back to some of the classics, but the Golden and the Silver ages of horror are unfortunately behind us now.

Orphan, far from “showing us something new” built on the frame of the Bad Seed genre, instead gives us more of the same; a “bastard” doing the see-saw act between “angelic” and “evil,” a broken mother turning to her maternal instincts and fighting for her family against an intruder, a husband who finds his wife untrustworthy, and two biological children, the boy who questions the presence of the adoptee and a girl whose “innocence” must be protected, all set against a snowstorm.

Kick in a nun, a spooky orphanage and a good biblical name like Esther and we’re off to the races.

Far from taking the genre and challenging assumptions, or pushing boundaries, audiences will instead be given yet another helping of gender and role stereotypes. Constructs of family and home are front and center in ways that again, do not challenge the dominant paradigm.

All of which is tethered to hypernatalist notions such as the miscarriage now reframed into a missing “child” in the family whose absent space must be filled (by an adoptee) and guess what? Now you have a recipe for a movie that floats along on the tide of what Americans already think about themselves and what they already want.

These bedrock assumptions are all around us in the everyday, from what roles and expectations are for womyn on into our adoption international foreign policy.

The best horror films rely on more than a mere ‘twist,’ they challenge audiences assumptions, about who they are, about what is possible, about the value of “safe” and about what “family” means.

For Orphan to provide a genuine surprise, it would first have to transcend pretty much everything laid out in the production notes.

But twists like that are once in a director’s lifetime if they’re lucky.

And horror fans as of late, have by and large not had fortune on their side.

Yes, Orphan has a secret.

But it takes more than a secret to make a film that ascends and becomes a true classic.

]]> http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/24/orphan-theres-something-wrong-with-adoptionlands-desire-to-project-its-crap/feed/ 8 http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/22/nebraska-first-baby-dump-after-the-fiasco-and-age-down/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2009/07/22/nebraska-first-baby-dump-after-the-fiasco-and-age-down/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:53:11 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/?p=818 Marley/Bastardette has the details in her blog post,

NEBRASKA: POST-FIASCO BABY CATCH– ‘NO QUESTIONS ASKED”

Both her piece, and this have been crossposted to our Nebraska blog chronicling NE’s series of legalized child dumps, Children of the Corn.

Monday evening a baby boy was left at Box Butte General Hospital in Alliance under Nebraska’s aged down new dump law created over the legislative special session. (Nebraska law, originally accepted older kids, but was “aged down” in the wake of their “big kid” dump fiasco that made international headlines.)

This marks the first legalized infant abandonment in Nebraska since the final “big kid” dump in late November ‘08.

Quoting Marley’s piece,

According to Nebraska Health and Human Services Chief Executive Officer Kerry Winterer (RIP Todd Landry), in an HHS press release:

“It’s important to gather information like family medical history to meet this child’s current and future needs,” he said.

Officials asked that anyone with information call the HHS office in Gering at 308-436-6559, the Box Butte County Sheriff’s Office at 308-762-6464, the Alliance Police Department at 308-762-4955 or the Nebraska State Patrol at 308-632-1211.

While it appears the “fiasco” taught Nebraska at least a little about the vital importance of preserving at least a few scraps of information for the kid, clearly Nebraska has yet to learn the broader lesson:

EVERY SINGLE LEGALIZED CHILD ABANDONMENT MARKS A FAILURE:

• a fundamental failure of the state to protect the long term interests and human rights of these kids.
• A failure of the state to treat these instances as what they are, marking a crisis for the parent (s), be that psychological, economic, covering over traumatic events such as incest or domestic abuse, etc.
• The state inexcusably providing what amounts to a “make it all just go away” vent, whereby underlying core issues, and genuine needs, are simply ignored. The kids themselves are left to deal with the legacy of such.

Monday marks yet another sad day, a day on which the State of Nebraska failed one of its most vulnerable and least able to protect their own interests, and a day when whatever family this child once had is left to disappear into shadows with their own lifetime’s worth of a festering secret that can never be rectified.

Nebraska had an opportunity after seeing what legalized child dumping or what is oh so politely reframed as “safe haven,” meant to those old enough to speak of their own experiences of being “legally abandoned.” An opportunity to dismantle its dump system. Instead they chose to preserve it, aging down to those unable to speak about their own experiences. In essence, Nebraska found a way to silence its most directly affected and experienced critics, at least until they grow older, long after this crop of politicians leaves office.

No, this is not some “greater good,” this is not a “save,” nor should this act be celebrated. This is nothing more than rot from within. Shame on Nebraska for maintaining its system of secrets and lies, pushing the lifelong consequences of such down onto a newborn.