The situation in Iowa is something I’ve written about before, see First Nations peoples continue to decry the ongoing stealing of their children for adoption. There has been an ongoing activism campaign by Native Peoples around this issue for years there.

In the past month or so there has been some new coverage and important new developments.

Testimony was given to the recently created Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs during a two-day meeting at Four Directions Community Center in Sioux City, Iowa as part of the lead in to a bill that is being drafted for the 2011 legislative session.

Stephanie Woodward’s article from last month  Moving forward on child welfare issues, and Iowa Commission Takes on Child-Welfare Morass (over on the dreadful HuffPo) should both simply be read in their entirety as they provide a solid backgrounder and lots of important details.

This from the “Moving forward” piece perhaps sums the situation up best:

LaMere described the child welfare system as a “minefield” and stressed the problem’s pervasiveness. “Almost all our area families are touched. Hardly a day goes by at Four Directions when someone doesn’t contact us to say they’ve lost parental rights.”

I’m not going to even try to start pulling any further quotes out of the two pieces, just go read them.

The DesMoines Register also had a piece earlier this week, Iowa panel crafts bill addressing American Indian parental rights.

A state commission plans to introduce a bill during the 2011 legislative session that would provide a pathway to restore parental rights to Native American parents who have lost children through Iowa’s child-welfare system.

The proposal comes after a number of native families and advocates again voiced dissatisfaction with the state’s high rate of removal of Indian children during a two-day hearing in September before the Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs.

The state has for years had a severe disproportion of Native American children removed from homes in and near Sioux City, home to the state’s largest Indian population. The issue gained new attention after an article on the commission summit was published last week in Indian Country Today and Wednesday on the Huffington Post website.

The bill being drafted for consideration is modeled after one passed in Illinois.

It would provide a process for parents to regain ties with children after their rights have been terminated, provided “they clean up their act,” said Rachel Scott, spokeswoman for Iowa’s Department of Human Rights. Parents could appeal to have their parental rights restored if children had not already been adopted.

Therein of course, lies the key, if the child has not already been adopted.

Makes one wonder just how quickly First Nations childrens’ adoptions are going to be handled in Iowa from here on in.

As always, the onus is being put on the parents to “clean up their act” rather than the state to explain why it’s circumventing and terminating so many Native families parental rights in the first place.

When a state’s Department of Human Rights is down to chiding Families to “clean up their act” one really has to wonder just whose rights they’re looking after?

We’ll have to wait and see what the legislation looks like when it’s finally presented, but label me skeptical.

Finally, also see this piece, Four Directions Community Center extends its reach, about the Community Center itself and its annual Memorial March to Honor Our Lost Children that I mentioned back in my earlier post.

Four Directions’ major annual event is the Memorial March to Honor Our Lost Children, held each year on the day before Thanksgiving. Walkers proceed from South Sioux City, Neb., across a bridge over the Missouri River to Sioux City, Iowa, calling attention to Native children caught in the child-welfare system, including several who died while placed with foster or adoptive families.

…

Recent events at Four Directions included a two-day meeting of the Iowa Commission on Native American Affairs, a group of gubernatorial appointees that includes Yellowbank. The subject of the first day was child welfare and featured a training session by Indian Child Welfare Act specialist Allison Lasley, Meskwaki, who explained ICWA provisions for commissioners and invited guests, including Iowa human rights director Preston Daniels, a representative of the governor’s office, and members of the Native American Unit of the state’s department of human services.

To get readers up to speed, first a little history:

Ron has done a number of posts on CARE’s crap, including his latest, in which he nails the sappy overwrought emotionalism CARE is employing:

BB Church vs CARE, Nikfa and THE Adopton Institute, with one hand tied behind my back…

Marley also has a number of posts on her California Adoption Reform Effort tag, including her latest about the content of the CA bill itself:

CALIFORNIA: I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! BAD BILL HITS THE BOARDS!

While you’re there, be sure to note Maryanne’s comment on Marley’s piece:

maryanne said…

I am mad as hell! I am a member of the CUB Board and we were flat out lied to to get us to support CARE’s bill. We were told in an email from Jean Strauss that they were going to introduce a clean bill, with the proviso that it “might” have to be modified somewhere down the road. This clearly not what happened; CARE did not even try to introduce a clean bill, but came out with this travesty.This group deserves no support from anyone who cares about adoptee rights.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:45:00 AM EST

If this is how the bill’s “supporters” are interpreting current events, I’d say CARE has a rocky road ahead of it.

The full text of CA AB 372 as introduced can be found on the California Open page.

Read it and judge for yourself, but simply put, it is not by any stretch a clean open records bill.

As Marley pointed out in her latest piece CARE felt the need to add this disclaimer of sorts to their webpage concerning the bill:

(a word about reading a bill: Legislative language, and the language of statutes, can be confusing. The language is based upon existing legal code which encompasses thousands of pages that are all interrelated. The chane that we are requesting will allow adult adoptees over the page of 18 access to their original record of birth. The text herein is written by the legislative counsel for the California Assembly and is written for lawyers, not for lay people. What’s important is that it cretes a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records.)

In other words, it’s a nice little condescending pat on the head, saying essentially, ‘there, there all you adoptees, it’s in legislate-ese, just TRUST US, it doesn’t mean what you thought you read, see? It’s now a “rights” bill, trust us!’

Which of course is ultimately not what it is. This is not a rights bill, this more of the usual conditional psuedo-access predicated upon desires and whims.

Again, Bastards buying that old “trust us” line, I’ve still got that old CARE bridge on the wrong coast to sell ya … .

Bastards have every reason to begin asking the hard questions when someone begins selling us the just “trust us” line in relation to legislation.

These are people’s real lives CARE is being so CARE-less with. The consequences of getting it wrong means real people left behind, screwed over, and trapped behind walls of lack of access.

In Ohio, I’m precisely that class of “left behind” Bastards. Had I been born just a few years earlier, or perhaps a few years later, my chances of actually gaining access to my authentic records would be quite different, but as it stands now, purely due to a “political compromise” I’m locked into those middle, and fucked over, years.

Messed up legislation has real world consequences to those bargained away.

And that is precisely what the CARE bill does, set up a new and damaged system going forward. If their bill were to pass Bastards would be left begging judges for scrubbed of identifying information (unless such is deemed necessary to assist in establishing a legal right) copies of their paperwork.

It says so right there in the CARE bill:

The name and address of the natural parents shall be given to the petitioner or requester only if he or she can demonstrate that the name and address, or either of them, are necessary to assist him or her in establishing a legal right. In all other cases, that information shall be redacted from all records and information provided, including a copy of an original record of birth.

CARE’s pre-emptive answer to such is of course, another pat on the head, ‘there there, you just don’t understand it, TRUST US!’

Trust people who have the unmitigated gall to write such into a bill and then try to proffer it off as a bill that “creates a legal right for adult adoptees to get their birth records”?

Like hell!

Yes, by and large I’m pointing my readers to others writings on the CARE-tastrope, in part because

• Ron himself is a California adoptee (as well as his previous work with California Open)
• and Marley in her Bastard Nation work as a “9-year member of CalOpen Partners” is also in a position to have something to say here.

Both of them not only have something to say about this monstrosity, they come from places to know of what they speak.

What I have to say is mainly in support of the good work they’re already doing.

None-the-less, being a left behind Bastard myself, who has petitioned the court for my records repeatedly, let me tell you, I at least hold out hope that if the judge were to actually sign off on allowing me my own paperwork, it would at least be complete, not routinely redacted by law.

CARE is thus taking a bad situation and ultimately making it worse, setting up NEW roadblocks. This is not merely a bad bill, it’s actively counterproductive.

Living as I do on the other end of a not altogether dissimilar process in Ohio, let me be the first to tell you, “compromises” that create new obstructions and make the already bad situation worse are no answer.

Between both the Ohio House and Senate there was but one sole dissenting vote cast by Sen. Jeff Jacobson (R.)

The expansion bill SB 304, now sits on Governor Ted Strickland’s desk awaiting his signature.

Aging up would merely condemn yet more kids to enduring state sanctioned legalized child abandonment. It would expand and further embed legalized child dumping into the Ohio infrastructure and schools.

Other states have faced similar attempts at expansion, California for example has time and again been faced with attempts to age up that have each time been refused, (see CALIFORNIA: THE TERMINATOR TERMINATES “SAFE HAVEN” BABY DUMP EXPANSION AGAIN.)

Marley, over on the Daily Bastardette also has an incredible piece up today about the dump-law mess in Ohio and first person recounting of the reactions opponents of the legalized child abandonment bill have received:

OHIO: LAME DUCKS SELL OUT FAMILIES, EXPAND SAFE HAVENS. CONSIDER ABANDONMENT A GIFT FROM MOM! (I STRONGLY recommend readers follow the link across.)

Her piece also details the broader background of the dump law landscape in Ohio and makes it clear, some of what Ohio is counting as “safe haven” cases are likely nothing more than boarder baby cases folded in to inflate the statistics. (See my earlier piece on how New Jersey is folding boarder babies into its “safe haven” stats.)

***

Governor Strickland needs to hear from opponents of the “age up”. (Ultimately the dump laws themselves need to be repealed.) For the purposes of this bill however, contacting the Governor and urging he not enlarge the already failed legalized child abandonment program is a starting point.

He can be contacted via his webpage contact form.

Phone- General Info: (614) 466-3555

Fax- Fax: (614) 466-9354

Or snail mail-

Governor’s Office
Riffe Center, 30th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215-6108

As time is of the essence, I advise contact via e-mail and phone calls with faxes or letters as a form of follow up.

***

This is a copy of the brief note I sent through Governor Strickland’s contact page back on 12/10/08-

I am writing to urgently request you reject increasing the age limit on Ohio’s “safe haven”/legalized child abandonment law.

The legalized child abandonment expansion bill (SB 304) is a tragic expansion of an already disastrous policy.

It is bad enough that state encouragement of child abandonment has already become woven into the fabric of Ohio law and school curriculums, the expansion bill potentially increases the number of babies who will endure the lifelong effects of child abandonment.

I am an adult adoptee, born and raised in Ohio, who has spent several years researching the effects of legalized child dumping. Dump laws cause lifelong damage to kids, their families and communities.

They should be repealed, not expanded.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

-Lauren Sabina Kneisly
co-author of Children of the Corn (http://cornkids.blogspot.com/)
Reporting, Theory,and Opinion on Legalized Child Dumping in Nebraska

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.

I’m not going to get into the whole McCain/Obama thing in this post, though I may before the election.

In this post, I only want to focus upon the sheer nerve it takes to be a Compulsory Pregnancy Advocate whining about ‘fake birth certificates’.

Those who want to eradicate access to abortion have for decades now conflated “adoption as an alternative to abortion,” when abortion is a (pre-birth) reproductive decision and adoption is a (post-birth, now you have a separate child with their own constitutional rights) parenting decision.

They view adoption as the “best possible outcome” to non-consensual pregnancy, going so far as to legislate state based bribes to pregnant womyn. (Although bear in mind $500 is minuscule, a mere token, practically nothing compared to what a baby can fetch on the open adoption market.)

Adoption is often viewed as THE preferable outcome to many pregnancies for compulsory pregnancy advocates.

Ok, they’re nuts and a threat to human autonomy, but whatever. The bottom line remains, I’m their oft desired outcome.

Demographically I embody much of what they want. (A sealed records “white”, blondish, adoptee given to a heterosexual two parent home.)

Well guess what?

I have a (state) falsified birth certificate. My birth certificate is provably fake.

At least the only one I’m able to access, the one I’m required to use in day to day life.

The genuine record of my birth has been state impounded, locked away, and barring a change in state law, rendered inaccessible to the persons to whom it pertains.

These same abortion eradication obsessed, vehemently pro-adoption zealots are precisely the same people who in state after state have legislatively fought adoptees trying to regain access to our own authentic birth certificates (access we used to have prior to changes in the state laws.) The CPA movement, although not a monolith, are the people primarily responsible for maintaining sealed records in American adoptions.

Now why would that be? Could it be that sealed records must be maintained to cover the very deeds and potentially crimes committed in a portion of adoptions? In essence sealed records cover the tracks of those who did what they did to make adoptions happen. Sealed records ensure the puzzle pieces cannot be put back together.

Compulsory pregnancy scoundrels (CPS?, Nah, no need, it’s synonymous with CPAs) such as Jack Wilke have been instrumental anti-abortion/pro-sealed records adoption marketers (see for example his opinion piece “Strong confidentiality rules encourage adoptions” in the April 9, 1996, The Cincinnati Post attempting to co-op womyn’s “confidentiality” for adoption industry purposes.)

These are the real people fighting for the (state mandated) systematic creation of fake birth certificates.

So the anti-abortion idiots want to whine about phantom notions of “not being an American citizen?” well I’ve got some adoptees I’d like you to meet. Here are some Adoptees who either have been or are facing deportation. Note the dates, adoptee deportments have actually increased under this Republican administration. Then of course, there’s always Joao Herbert.

Wingnuts push for adoption constantly, yet do nothing in the face of Bastard deportations.

Apparently their take on “family values” includes deporting Bastards.

Compulsory Pregnancy Advocates including those who pass their days outside of womyn’s reproductive health centers attempting to redirect womyn trying to gain abortion access into their Coercive Pregnancy Indoctrination Centers (or CPICs, a federally funded vital part of the intake path into christian movement growth based adoptions) now dare whine about even the notion of a “fake birth certificate” or even the notion of “not an American citizen?”

Oh, please!

It takes genuine audacity to be both the movement primarily responsible for the creation of tens of thousands of faked birth certificates, and responsible for bastards being deported, and yet still utilize such themes as fodder to whine about in a presidential campaign.

***

By way of an epilogue, care to guess what would happen if a sealed records Bastard were to try to run for President?

Our provably false birth certificates, could lead to no end of speculation.

(Then again, if a real Bastard were to run for President, I can only hope our state falsified paperwork would be one of many reasons they would be running.)

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the revised dumpee roster:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Every abandonment is a failure.

Kids deserve better than abandonment.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment law went into effect July 18th, 2008. 73 days ago.

The first two kids dumped in Nebraska under the new law, (over the weekend of Sept 13-14) a tween and a teen, were abandoned just over two weeks ago.

Over the past 16 days, 16 kids have been abandoned. (Yes including the sad case of the father who abandoned 9 at once.)

Nebraska legislators should be ashamed.

Speaking as an adoptee coming from a sealed records state, I have no way of knowing whether I was abandoned or spent time in foster care of not, but what I do know is that kids, particularly minors are going to internalize this and live with the Nebraska’s legislators’ social experimentation for the rest of their lives.

At least one story over the past few weeks pointed out that a counselor working with a dumped kid said the hardest part was for the kid to understand that this wasn’t their fault.

Kids are not inanimate objects. Kids are not things to try a policy out on and if it doesn’t work, leave those directly affected to deal with their (state created) ‘personal problems’. Only to head back to some mythic drawing board to ‘tweek’ these laws and try again, as if do-overs don’t matter. Dump bill 2.0 is not going to fix the problems inherent to any dump bill. It will only to subject the next batch of kids to the next bad batch of legislation. The kids can’t walk away from the consequences. Subjecting them to this unnecessary level of trauma is unconscionable.

Kids are not legislative lab rats.

Kids deserve better than abandonment.

If Nebraska abandonments are primarily going to be used as a state mediated way to plug families into support systems, (which should not be faith-based non-profits), then cut out the abandonment step. Make access to genuine support available long before things escalate to the point of child abandonment.

Do not put kids through this emotional ordeal, (nor ever even possibly,) require parents surrender the parental rights to gain access to help.

No state should be in the business of actively encouraging child abandonment, ever.

And yet today that’s precisely where we stand. All 50 states shamefully abandoning all basis of best practices in child welfare, adoption, and genuine concern for the kids as actual individuals and instead telling parents the answers to their problems lies in abandoning their children.

Yes, in time I will get to other posts, filled with links and details and quotes and all that important stuff, but for this one singular moment, this is a post without citation. This is a post purely about expressing rage.

What Nebraska legislators have done in their mad rush to pass SOMETHING is fuck over 16 kids.

It’s past time to stop. What they have done is fundamentally wrong. How many more kids are going to have to endure these political schemes?

These were parents who needed access to services, but not at the cost of even potentially losing their children. Not at the cost of putting any child through this. The ‘cost’ of linking up with what support may or may not be available must not be a kid wondering why ‘mommy doesn’t love them anymore?’ (Enough so as as to abandon them at a designated dump site.) The assumptions in that are all wrong, but the scars are real.

‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy’ in reality, if these past two weeks are any indication, often loves the kid fiercely, but in the end, feels they have no other alternative than to utilize the dump law.

Child abandonments are evidence that the ’system’ is failing these families.

When a child is dumped it is no ’save’, it is evidence that the system didn’t work, so much so that someone felt this was all they had left.

Dumps ’save’ nothing for these children. They break trust. The trust between parents and children and between citizens and the state.

Nebraska can do better. All 50 states can do better.

Child abandonment is evidence of a severely broken system. Passing the hard effects of that down to children, those least able to cope with such is nothing less than a cowardly shirking of duty. It is the ugly admission that some people feel the problems are simply ‘too big’, and rather than tackle them, they leave kids to deal with the consequences, personally, as best they can.

Dump laws are intrinsically bad for kids. They are intrinsically harm based.

It’s time to stop mumbling about the possibility of coming up with ‘new and improved’ ways for the state to encourage child abandonment and instead realize that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ child abandonment law.

Child abandonment is never a ’success’, it is nothing to be cheered, let alone promoted.

Every Child dump is evidence of things gone horribly wrong, of broken systems, of desperation, of regret, and of the state failing its families and children.

Now that we’ve seen the raw face of legalized child abandonment, and what it does to kids, be they 18 or infants, it’s time to strip these abominations out of our states.

Repeal them now.

Nothing less than full repeal.

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Nebraska has finally realized its in over its head.

They opened the floodgates by passing the most egregious legalized child abandonment law in the country, a law that allowed children up to age 19 to be dumped. The kids can be dumped for any reason, by anyone who has bodily custody of them.

Some of us Bastards wrote at the time what an incredibly bad idea this was, and that it was simply a matter of time before Nebraska found older kids being dumped.

Well, so the past 24 hours have seen ELEVEN kids dumped in Nebraska.

As I wrote in my previous post, Nebraska, like any other state, simply has no facilities nor mechanisms, nor long term solutions to fully deal with what these kids would require. They passed the legislation without building any of the necessary structures to even begin to deal with them.

Now the kids are pouring in and people are left stammering ‘but… but, THAT’S not what we INTENDED!’

All intentions aside, Nebraska now has 11 kids who would not have been abandoned were it not for this ill-conceived legislation.

My policy recommendation, dump the legislators and the legislation, not the kids.

Instead of blogging in detail about all of the events of the past 24 hours, I’m simply going to point readers at these two pieces, UPDATE: 2 More Kids Abandoned; 11 Total In Past 24 Hours (and the video that accompanies it) and this AP piece 9 siblings among 11 kids abandoned under Neb. law, as but two of many possible examples.

Be sure to note this quote from the AP article:

Todd Landry, director of the state division of Children and Family Services, said that in nearly every case, the parents who left their children felt overwhelmed and had decided they didn’t want to be parents anymore. None of the kids dropped off so far have been in danger, he said.

The video in the first piece reiterates, the nine kids, ranging from age 1-17 were not in any immediate danger.

These kids weren’t “saved”, they were dumped.

Abandoned by both their father and the state of Nebraska.

Also be sure to check out this article, Mom Accused After Dropping Off Teen At Police Station. Among the more Orwellian aspects of the dump mentality, we find this lovely little redefinition from the mother in question:

“I hope he knows I love him and I didn’t abandon him. …I hope he knows he can come back home and I want him,”

Clearly even the dumpers have no idea what the legal ramifications of an abandonment under Nebraska’s law (had this actually been one, but she picked a non-authorized site) would mean.

Nebraska has intentionally created a child welfare disaster.

Now legislators want to go back and modify the ’safe haven law’ /baby Moses law/ “baby”dump law, a little like closing the barn door after the horses have left.

There is no ‘fixing’ these laws. Even should it be modified to apply only to “newborns” (define and prove that one…) or kids in ‘imminent danger’ (again proving that one will be no end of tricky) it will STILL deny infants their identity, circumvent all best practices in child welfare and adoption, and create a class of kids relinquished in a ‘paperfree’ manner.

Just because newborns are too young to voice their demand for their own rights doesn’t mean they should be denied them.

There is only one child-centered course of action for Nebraska to take, full repeal of their child dump law.

Passing this initial travesty was shameful, an abandonment of the state’s duties to its children, and has ALREADY resulted in kids hastily dumped into the already overburdened Nebraska foster care system.

Someone get these kids a lawyer, they’ve got one hell of a case.

***

Or, to mix my metaphors, pull a thread, any thread… .

As always, what should take ten minutes to blog, doesn’t. Taking a minute or two to follow up on some of the links out of any given news article tends to lead deeper and deeper.

It’s not bad enough that Nebraska has become the official national dumping ground for children (up to age 19) whose parents or guardians no longer care to care for them, nope, now as we get a rare peek at the system the dumped kids go into the picture becomes clearer still.

Rather than the state, which has made collection of said little dumplings possible, dealing with the aftermath of the events it set in motion, instead, once the kids are dumped they are outsourced entering into private and non-profit structures for likely ‘reformative therapies’ or redistribution. In essence, the state of Nebraska makes the whole mess possible, then hands off the day to day dealing with the kids to a private non-profit entity.

So by way of ‘a thread’ to pull on, let’s start here, Neb. Law Lets Parents Dump Kids Of Any Age (& see video on left side of page.)

Mere days after the first two Nebraska dumps (two boys aged 11 and 15) we now have two more to report, a 13 year old girl left at a hospital over last weekend and a 12 year old boy who was abandoned at a police station. The latter being important as Police stations are NOT designated dump sites under Nebraska law. Thus the Mother who dumped the boy is now facing charges in civil court (I will blog about that separately, later.)

So the Nebraska dump total is four kids in under a month none of which are under the age of 11.

Shame on Nebraska. Time to dump legislators, not kids.

Apparently Nebraska being the adolescent abandonment capital of the United States is just fine by some legislators:

Neb. State Sen. Brad Ashford says he’s “not surprised,” but has no regrets about the law.

Do these legislators not understand that the state encouraging child abandonment is an act of betrayal of its responsibilities towards some of its most legally vulnerable and politically disadvantaged citizens?

Why, pray tell is Nebraska insistent upon making it as easy as possible to rid oneself of one’s child?

Shouldn’t states instead be making it more difficult to abandon children?

Apparently not.

Reading down through the article another important tiny detail caught my eye:

Kids who are dropped off are brought to an organization called Project Harmony for evaluation, Kauffman explains.

So, by way of pulling a bit more on the thread and continuing to watch the proverbial sweater unravel, we find Project Harmony is a nonprofit, designed to work in partnership with the state. Under normal circumstances, it specializes in dealing with kids in circumstances of sexual and physical abuse and neglect.

Abandoned kids are going to be dealing not with issues of incest or sexual molestation, but with a different sense of profound betrayal, that those closest to them, often parents or other relatives in essence getting rid of them permanently, ending all legal claim to parenting or guardianship responsibilities. (Perhaps after the initial shock wears off, they may also turn their anger towards the state for making such not only possible, but easy.) I know of no program anywhere that specializes in the feelings those kids (up to age 19, remember) are going to be dealing with.

Issues of sexual abuse and legalized abandonment are worlds apart. Trying to adapt programs specializing in the former to occasionally deal with an abandoned kid coming through will only serve to increase the kid’s sense of isolation. Further, I can think of few things more isolating than taking a dumped 15 year old and putting him a room full of stuffed Tiggers and Winnie the Poohs, prior to enduring an interviewing process. As the abandoned kids enter the system one by one, they will have no ‘peers’ to decrease their sense of isolation, square pegs in round holes manufactured for someone else.

The bottom line remains, there are no facilities for dumped teens because until Nebraska did something unbearably stupid, legalize teen abandonment, such was not actively ENCOURAGED by any state.

But sliding the dumpees over to Project Harmony serves another purpose as well. The older dumps are being reframed (just as they were being before the legislation passed) as being ‘at risk of child abuse.’ The false notion/marketing took on the theme that dumping the kids of any age was critical as it would ‘prevent abuse.’ Is it any wonder then, that the initial dumpees under the new law are being passed off into a system that focuses on dealing with abused children? Doing so reinforces the false mythology and enables the lie of these kids as ’saved’ to go forward, despite the fact that clearly what little of the stories of these kids we’ve seen in the media tell a very different story.

These were not kids in ‘danger’ their lives were not ’saved’ by being dumped. They were kids their parent or guardians were exasperated with, and refused to deal with any longer. There was no hitting, there was abandoning, an abuse no doubt many of these kids would consider far worse than any hitting.

But the mythology overrides, so off into the land of abused kids and Pooh bears they go.

Where there is no genuine harm or genuine risk, mythologies of potential risks to be ’saved from’ preventatively are created, so that every dumped child can be reclassified a ’save’.

To get a feel for the overwrought emotionalism ( & overt religiosity) Project Harmony is apparently willing to utilize, wander over to their media page and click on the Collin Raye Video, “The 11th Commandment,” (though a quick word of caution is in order, those having endured incest or domestic violence may find this video distressing. For that matter, sane people may find the video distressing, just not necessarily in the way the producers intended. Ironic, for an organization supposedly built around the notion that having to retell or re-experience such abuse is to be minimized at every opportunity, it is after all, part of their raison d’etre.)

Project Harmony also has a specific outreach/training focus on Raising Child Abuse Awareness in Faith-based Communities, (not the least bit surprising considering the number of kids who are abused in church or other religious contexts.)

For more of an overview of their program and how interwoven into the community structures Project Harmony is also be sure to see “Speaking of Children” Media Coverage (on the same media page) WOWT’s Heartland Focus. (And don’t even get me started on John Walsh.) As Project Harmony is intentionally co-located with, and interwoven with local state structures they receive:

rental income from Omaha Police Department and Child Protective Services.

It is very intentionally designed to blur the lines between state structures and private non-profit entities, envisioning such as a “partnership”.

Looking more closely at Project Harmony, on its purpose page, we find a list of “partner agencies,” one of which is Child Saving Institute.

Ok time to give that thread another yank and watch the sweater unravel further still. So what’s the “Child Saving Institute?” Well to quote one paragraph from their history page:

Child Saving Institute can trace its origins in the Omaha community to 1892 when Rev. A.W. Clark realized there was more need to help neglected, abandoned children then the men and women he intended to reform. Due to the hazards of pioneer life, epidemics, and poverty, many children were left in need of parental care. With the help of his wife, Sarah, Rev. Clark admitted the first child, a small seven-year-old girl, to the Boys and Girls Aid Society, which he soon changed to the Child Saving Institute. In 1911, with the help of a $25,000 pledge from George Joslyn, the entire Omaha community celebrated the agency’s move to a debt-free, state-of-the-art orphanage. For the next 65 years the agency provided services from that facility including a safe haven for abandoned children, adoption, and a home for unwed mothers.

Well, we’ve certainly come full circle here, haven’t we?

The orphanage and maternity camp of yesteryear still with us in its modern form.

Child Saving Institute, or CSI, maintains many of those same functions, with a program laden with infant adoption, adoption, interracial adoption, fostering, foster adoption, and “pregnancy counseling” (note the block at the bottom of the page, the “success story” result of their “unbiased counseling” is in adoption plan). CSI is ‘one stop shopping, among the services they provide are adoptive parent recruitment and home studies. They are listed among “abortion alternatives” in various directories.

If substance abuse is one of the ‘reasons’ the dumpers dumped the kid, then perhaps Project Harmony will pass the kid along to Child Saving Institute’s Journeys Substance Abuse Treatment program. Agencies accredited through CSI’s program include other non-profits and faith based programs, Catholic Charities for example.

(To gain some useful historical background about the conditions pregnant womyn in Nebraska endured, go take a look at Adoptee grateful for Nebraska Industrial Home. The article also includes a small mention of how in 1953, Child Saving Institute along with the University Hospital, were viewed as a means to pick up the slack when the state finally voted to close the Nebraska Industrial “Home”. Begun in the 1880’s, the Nebraska Industrial “Home” was the first and only state funded maternity camp in the nation at the time.)

Child Saving Institute, has located in a building that formerly housed Women’s Services P.C. clinic, a womyn’s reproductive health clinic that had offered abortions. (Interestingly, CSI also has a Planned Parenthood as a nearby neighbor.)

Finally, as we stand amidst our pile of yarn, contemplating where our sweater (and adoption best practices) went, we return back to the original article, to find what lies at the heart of the matter, the shadow that while constantly present in these dump bills/baby Moses laws one usually only catches fleeting glimpses of, Bill Pierce’s notion of “non-bureaucratic placement”:

Are there alternatives for parents who are having problems with their teenagers at home?

“There are,” Bloom says, “but it’s very difficult. A parent could institute a relinquishment proceeding. But that could take a lot of weeks or even months, a lot of expensive legal bills.

Apparently REAL adoptions are just considered too much of a hassle for some, too much paperwork, too long, too “expensive” for parents to even contemplate.

The instant gratification of washing ones hands of a kid permanently far more desirable.

As to who precisely benefits by such, other than the parents or guardians, and in what ways remains to be fully examined.

The rabbit hole just continues down.

***

Again, I advocate nothing short of the full repeal of all babydumping/”Safe haven”/baby Moses laws. Kids deserve better than abandonment.

*

Just a real quick post tonight urging readers to head on over and read Bastardette’s James Dobson Cries Me a River.

She’s done a great job of picking apart some of the intentional conflations. Healthy White Infants (HWIs) being lumped in linguistically with with foster kids for example.

Of course the myth being proffered of ‘access to abortion as driving down adoption rates’ is just that, a myth.

Though in a country wherein every time a womyn exercises her reproductive autonomy; whether that be to refuse to bear or to self parent, should we be the least bit surprised to then hear institutions advocating on behalf of prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) decrying womyn for not breeding on behalf of their constituency? Thus we come to the labeling of womyn exercising their reproductive autonomy a “sad situation.”

The idea of womyn being nothing more than there to provide “womb services” for the infertile objectifies womyn and reduces them to nothing more than their reproductive capacity, a capacity others wish to tap for their own ends.

Infertile couples are not entitled to other’s children. Womyn must not required to breed children for the infertile. Legislation designed to force womyn down those lines should be decried and opposed by those who support individual autonomy.

Both the Dobson empire and NCFA are no friend to womyn’s genuine autonomy. (The sooner various “pro-choice” organizations get that through their heads the better.)

The other crucial piece of course is that both NCFA and Dobson’s empire are not merely speaking of adoption for PAP’s sakes. They are also speaking of adoption as a tactic of movement growth, beyond any given couple or individual. Both view adoption in eugenic terms, ‘fit’ PAPs and ‘unfit’ PAPs, with the primary dividing line being tribal; based around a statement of faith & visibly heterosexual and church sanctioned married lifestyle.

All of which resides in the realm of the demand driven adoption. This is about the demands of infertile couples and the social movement many of them are a part of which is currently looking to and utilizing adoption as a means of movement growth.

Lost in such are the autonomy, the genuine needs, and the desires of womyn and Bastards, of any age.

If womyn are objectified down to their reproductive capacity for others’ uses, Bastards are likewise objectified, both to merchandise to be bought and sold only to ‘fit’ PAPs, and tallied as but another notch on the evangelists’ bedposts.