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The industry’s “National Adoption Day”- a day celebrating the loss of adoptees’ civil rights

Sure, I could write a new post, with new examples torn from this year’s headlines, but honestly why bother? I’ve said it all before. See my post from last year- “National Adoption Day:” a celebration of sealed records & inequality” instead. Along with this mass spectacle of kids being stripped of their civil rights and […]

NaBloPoMo II – National Adoption Month 2010 – #NAdoptAM

(Just as at the end of last month, this is a second post in a single day, be sure to scroll down to my earlier post, How the other half lives- off adoption as well.) This post marks 61 days straight of blogging, two NaBloPoMos back to back. For those of you who have gotten […]

Children hidden in plain sight

In this day and age, in modern America, many people believe it would be all but impossible to keep a child, let alone five children “off the books” so to speak, but sure enough, it most certainly still happens. Yesterday’s Washington Post contained an account of precisely that having happened in York Pennsylvania, a mere […]

When pregnancy provides “evidence” of having broken the terms of your parole: Jail followed by death

La’Tasha Mayes, with the New Voices Pittsburgh, leads a protest down Grant Street, to show support for the family of Amy Lynn Gillespie, who died in January after she developed pneumonia while incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail – Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette Amy Lynn Gillespie died in a hospital still in custody after being transferred from […]

First Nations peoples in Iowa & Nebraska hold 8th Annual Memorial March to Honor Lost Children

Today’s a good day for me to shut up and let First Nations people speak for themselves. I will merely point out where I’ve written about these annual memorial marches before to provide some background and links to additional resources, let readers explore the news links for themselves, and then close with a few brief […]

Harvest, Bounty, Gratitude

Blogs don’t have acknowledgement pages or other such,  but I wanted to simply say thank you tonight to those who have supported me both as a Bastard and specifically in this writing. Some readers stop by from time to time, or are very specific about what they seek and take from my blog. If they’re […]

Australia grapples with surrogacy & fertility/reproductive tourism

Just a brief post this evening pointing readers across to this article, Childless couples face jail as part of international baby ban as one of many possible entry points discussing the unfolding story in Australia. Unlike the United States, Australia has been feeling its way forward much more cautiously concerning issues of surrogacy and what […]

Another reason the catholic church continues to oppose open adoption records: Priests’ secret kids

I’ve blogged before about how the prospect of adopted people regaining access to their original birth certificates is opposed and seen as a threat by the catholic church. See, Prospect of open records makes IL Catholic Conference fearful of potential lawsuits and how in the course of that, the Illinois Catholic Conference outright admitted that […]

On the passing of B.J. Lifton

This is the post I don’t want to have to write. Roughly two days ago B.J. Lifton passed away. I’ve been grappling with what to say and how to say it ever since. More to the point though, I’ve been stewing on this post since the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC) […]

“National Adoption Day:” a celebration of sealed records & inequality

Over roughly the past week 4,500 kids have been adopted as part of America’s hypernatalist “National Adoption Day” (“NAD”) rituals, the vast majority of them have also had their records permanently sealed. Each year this so called “National Adoption Month” (“NAM”) builds to a frenzied peak culminating in courtroom based media friendly spectacles of mass […]