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/2008/12/09/announcing-seca-stop-encouraging-child-abandonment-working-to-repeal-the-legalized-child-abandonment-laws/ http://www.babylovechild.org/2008/12/09/announcing-seca-stop-encouraging-child-abandonment-working-to-repeal-the-legalized-child-abandonment-laws/#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:58:29 +0000 Baby Love Child http://www.babylovechild.org/2008/12/09/announcing-seca-stop-encouraging-child-abandonment-working-to-repeal-the-legalized-child-abandonment-laws/ (Please distribute freely, keeping links intact.)

Last Friday, December 5th, 2008, the SECA web-page finally went live. (http://www.stopdumpingkids.com/)

SECA, short for “Stop Encouraging Child Abandonment,” is a concept that has been a long time coming.

From the first of the legalized child abandonment laws passed in 1999 until now, efforts to repeal and stop the dump laws have suffered from a lack of an alliance dedicated to focusing primarily on the issue.

Before SECA, responses to dump laws had been piecemeal, portions of existing organizations’ broader missions. Over the years numerous organizations have opposed and testified against the legalization of child abandonment, and individuals have contacted legislators and worked against legalized child dumping. But, there had been no one place dedicated to dismantling the evolving child abandonment infrastructure.

Thus, SECA has finally been created.

Stop Encouraging Child Abandonment works toward nothing less than the full and permanent repeal of laws that legalize child abandonment.

We feel it is not the proper role of any government to encourage child abandonment as policy.

We approach this work firmly grounded in a human/civil/identity rights perspective. We support kids, women, and reproductive autonomy.

The need for SECA had become apparent over the past nine years, but the child welfare crisis in Nebraska with its law legalizing the abandonment of older children finally made it clear to the broader public, a formalized response to legalized child dumping is necessary.

Since the beginning, the consequences of such laws have been clear to those of us “in the field.” With bills rushed through state legislatures and policy and legal criticisms by and large dismissed, the general public simply never had reason to even think about the consequences of “safe haven” laws. Most people had never heard the voice of a kid who had been legally dumped. They had never seen the desperation of mothers and families utilizing the legalized abandonment laws.

Nebraska changed everything.

Nebraska’s older kid dumps, and the state’s eventual age down of eligible dumpees from 18-year olds to those 30 days and younger has solved nothing. It has merely attempted to put off dealing with the inevitable consequences “safe haven” laws create until the infants abandoned under the new law grow old enough to speak for themselves.

The child welfare abandonment disaster across the United States, legalized everywhere except Washington DC., is far from over. It is just beginning.

Out of that context, SECA was born, not so much a formal organization, for now more of a collective voice of allies, organizations, bloggers, and individuals among others working together towards the repeal of the dump laws.

If you are interested in working against the legalized child abandonment laws, or already are, SECA can serve as a resource in that work.

We can be contacted through the SECA contact page.