This is Not Adoption Reform: Ohio Right to Life Proposes cheap & quick adoptions

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Bad news in Ohio.  Ohio Right to Life is ready to launch a new easy adoption  legislative project:  

The bill isn't filed yet, but  it gained traction Monday when the Columbus Dispatch  published:  Abortion foes focus on easing Ohio adoptions

Since the bill isn't up  yet, we can't say what it says exactly, so I'm going by the Dispatch report only.  Here, is a  rundown from Mike Gonidakis,  adoptive father of two and President of Ohio Right to Life:.  .

• Decrease the waiting time for adoption finalization from 1 year to 60 days (Note: this seems to be a mistake.  Under the ORC, adoption finalization can currently take place no less that 6 months after placement.)
• Decrease the eligibility time a man can file with the Ohio Putative Father's Registry (PFR) from 30 days  to 7.
• Require adoption agencies and adoption lawyers to inform fetal fathers (before the birth of the child)  that an adoption plan is being made; thus, giving them more time to file with the PRF (if they can find it)
• Increase the Ohio adoption tax credit from $1500 to $10,000 to be spread out over four years,  substantially offsetting the cost  of the adoption
•  Decrease "birthmother" fraud by requiring adoption agencies and adoption lawyers to make living expense payments provided by paps (prospective adoptive parents) directly to service providers (doctors, landlords, utilities), not to "birthmothers" themselves.  Under current law, these funds go directly from pap to "birthmother".  The  $3000 payment limit would not change.

This proposal has more holes than the proverbial Swiss cheese. Two months is far from enough time for ethical post-placement. follow-up and opens the adoption process to corruption, child abuse, and adoption fraud. even more than it already is.  When I was adopted finalization took approximately a year and  a social worker made at least three unannounced visits to our home between my placement and adoption finalization.. That is not too much to expect today. If you're doing it right, what's the rush? Combined with the PFR   provision (below),  the shortened time frame is no more than a new way to push dads out of the way and hide their children from them..

My other big concern is the PFR.  There is nothing to prevent a woman from claiming she doesn't know the name of the father or giving  a false name and contact information for the father, or just refusing to name him at all, or  naming several men as possible fathers (Hello, Maury!)   It  certainly doesn't require her to tell the putative father that she is even pregnant.   She can just weasel. Moreover, under current law, a man can register with the PFR any time after he has sex with a woman. (according to court rulings when a man has sex  with a woman he's put on notice). Although some men do get snookered, they currently  have plenty of the time to get on the books if they suspect adoption may be afoot. But since the PFR is unadvertised, does it even matter?.  ORTL needs to look at  the current scandals of Baby Veronica and Baby Deserai  among the latest adoption parade of horrors to see  where this will lead. (For more about the the legal situation of putative fathers and the Ohio PFR go to ericksmith.org 

The adoption tax credit sends a very bad message:  adoption welfare.   (What a boon for serial adopters!) What ever happened to  "if you can't afford a child, don't have one?"  bringing up the whole "deserving" issue. 
  
Welfare moms :     Off the dole you go! 
Adoptive parents:   On the dole you go!

I don't have an original source for this quote, but someone said recently in a tweet,  "welfare cuts + adoption tax credits is redistributive wealth." " I couldn't agree more. 

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There is, in fact,  nothing in this measure, as far as we know, that offers "opportunities" for women to keep their children.  Or for that matter opportunities for  them to turn their newborns in for adoption, unless you factor in the Draconian legislation that ORTL pushed through last session. These   new measures include diverting   state Planned Parenthood  funds to  evangelical "crisis pregnancy centers."   requiring abortion providers to  force clients to listen to  fetal heartbeats, and a ban on state-subsidized rape counselors  making  discussing abortion and making abortion referrals. Today the New York Times published a piece covering the full range of Ohio's  new anti-abortion regulations that explains the climate ORTL believes it has  created for   cheap  and easy newborn adoption.  

This bill is really about opportunities to make adoption cheaper and easier for paps..  Goindakis admits as much.  "“We’re trying to make adoptions better, cheaper and faster,”  he told the Dispatch.   "In Ohio, adoption is too expensive, too bureaucratic, inefficient at best, and there is too much hardship and heartache in the process.”

Hardship and heartache  for whom? 

I'm writing this quickly to get the word out.   I'll be writing more in depth later. I'm trying to get a pre-flie copy of the bill or at least a synopsis today.



TWITTER:   Twitter fried my account and I was forced to start a new one.  Besides tweeting The Daily Bastardette I tweet  (and retweeet) about adoption issues, civil rights, freedom of the press,  the corporate state, plus some local stuff. Join me there! Daily Bastardette @DBastardette.

Demons of Adoption Awards 2013:: Voting Open!

Nominations are closed and the voting begins.

Select the most deserving Demon of Adoption for 2013.

 I know it's a difficult task  Competition sponsor Pound Pup Legacy, has gathered an array of  stunning nominees this year:  Nightline Adoption (Capobianco agency), Gladney Center, Adam Pertman, (Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute),  Both Ends Burning ("christian" child grabbers),  Children and Families First, and a satanic host of other duplicitous bottom feeders. And to think that Beelzebub didn't even purchase their the dark souls! Our nominees  simply turned them over to him. Here are the nominees with links to their webpages (thanks to Pound Pup)

• Raymond W Godwin and Nightlight Christian Adoption: for their role in the baby Veronica case;
• Supreme Court of the United States: for their decision in Adoptive Couple v. Baby girl;
• Lifeline Children’s Services: for assisting evangelical adopters to complete international adoptions when other somewhat sane agencies object;
• Frances Fitzgerald (Irish Minister for Children and Youth Affairs): for attempts to promote inter-country adoption outside the Hague Convention;
• Adoption Advocates International (AAI): for their involvement in the adoption of  Hana Grace-Rose Williams;
• Gladney Center for Adoption: for the placement with the Shatto family that led to the death of Russian born adoptee Max Shatto (Maxim Kuzmin);
• Both Ends Burning Campaign: for producing the documentary Stuck and the promotional bus tour associated with this movie;
• Christian Homes And Special Kids (CHASK): for their role in assisting parents to "re-home" their unwanted adopted children;
• Lutheran Social Services of Illinois: for employing social worker Elizabeth Thomas-Colwell who was formerly a licensed social worker (LCSW) in the state of Illinois. There is reason to believe that she was involved in poor practices and potentially illegal adoptions;
• Children in Families First (CHIFF): for its slick marketing campaign supporting and driving legislation (Children In Families First Act of 2013) to turn back the clock on inter-country adoptions by providing authority to USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security to bypass the Hague Convention Regulations, current US Immigration laws, and International Standards on Child Welfare;
• Adam Pertman: for claiming to be a critic of the adoption system, while at the same time promoting the interest of the adoption industry;
• Mardie Caldwell: for maintaining baby farms, which are categorized by race;
• Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute: for giving their seal of approval to persons and organizations that promote the interests of the adoption industry and pushing agency friendly legislation in Congress.

As always I'm torn.  So many  obscene child harvesters,  but only one winner. I may put off my vote for a few days while I think about it.

Go to Pound Pup Legacy for details and a discussion on nominations and the  online ballot

Happy Voting!

Our Future is in Our Hands: a message from Ron Morgan: Support James Lane

The recent news stories,
documenting  adoptee abuse in great detail, is an opportunity for us to strike for our rights.  While I'm writing up Bastard Nation response  I'm posting a very important message from Ron Morgan. Take the fire and run with it! 

Ron Morgan:

Well, it’s happened again. The media reacts to a breaking story revealing the maltreatment of adoptees by interviewing a bunch of non-adoptees. PBS gave Adam Pertman of the Adoption Institute a forum to react to the bomb-shell Reuters “re-homing” series, and you know what he said?

“Derp, I didn’t know!!!”

This is why it is CRUCIAL for us to support candidates who understand, embrace and advocate for Adoptee Rights. James Lane is a Late Discovery Adoptee running for New York City Public Advocate. James Lane deserves our support.

Don’t sit on your hands while so-called experts and self-described advocates use their positions of POWER to pontificate about our rights!

This is NO JOKE, people. As adoptees our future is in our hands. Write letters, demonstrate, button-hole your legislators, but take a couple of minutes to click on the link below and DONATE to an adoptee running to be our ADVOCATE! Donate to James Lane today!

https://votejameslane.nationbuilder.com/donate

And if YOU ARE INTERESTED IN RUNNING FOR OFFICE, let’s talk….

Donate to this candidate votejameslane.nationbuilder.com Help Elect The Green Party's First Candidate for Public Advocate of New York City

James talks about his adoption and adoptoin secrecy here 

NOTE:  You do not have to be a resident of New York City or New York State to donate.

Spread the word!

Ohio Birthparent Group - Sept. 2013

September 2013

Sep

ROAR Campaign for Adoptee Rights Like birthparents, adoptees have historically been excluded from the policy processes that shape their adoption experiences. Many OBG birthparents have been active in the 2013 ROAR Campaign for adoptee rights, which kicks back in gear this month for the Fall legislative session. We hope you'll join us in supporting the rights of all Ohio adoptees to have unconditional access to their original birth certificates. Find out how to participate in ROAR's grassroots action campaign! Grandparents & Adoption General Adoption Support Meeting Tuesday, September 10th, 7-9pm Karl Road Library This month, our general meeting will focus on the experiences of birth grandparents and adoptive grandparents. How can grandparents best support adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents? In what ways can we support the grandparents in our lives? What unique rewards and challenges frame the grandparent experience in adoption? Co-sponsored by Adoption Network Cleveland, this meeting is open to the public. Learn more... Birthparent Support Meeting Please Note Location Change for September! Sunday, September 22nd, 2-4pm BEXLEY PUBLIC LIBRARY Open to birth mothers and birth fathers only, this meeting is a private space to meet others who understand this life-long journey. Learn more...

Demons of Adoption 2013: nominations now open!

It's that time again! Pound Pup Legacy has sent  out the call for nominations for its prestigious Demons of Adoption Award 2014. This is the seventh year the award has been issued.  Acknowledging the large adoption bottom feeder population  from which to choose and the tough decisions  ahead, Niels Hoovgeen, keeper of the pup pound writes: It will be tough this time around. Over the last years we have dredged the cesspool named Adoptionland and condemned the practices of such agencies like: Bethany Christian Services and LDS Family Services, such trade associations of adoption service providers like the National Council for Adoption and the Joint Council on International Children's Services, and even showed our utmost contempt for the United States Congress. No feather weights by any means. Although nominations opened only yesterday, Capobianco, Inc took the far lead already.  Other early contenders include Gladney Adoption Center, Adoption Advocates International (Washington State),  Irish Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald, and baby broker Jennifer Potter. Go to the nomination site to nominate and support your personal "favorite" bottom feeding adoption demon. Nominations close September 30, and voting will follow shortly. Feel free to forward the news! Cross posted to The Daily Bastardette. and Bastard Nation.

Jean Paton: Biography of the mother of the US adoption reform movement to be published this fall!

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but when in the mid-1990s when I first got seriously involved in adoptee rights, I had never heard of Jean Paton.

My ignorance was disabused at the Seattle AAC conference (I think it was 2000) E. Wayne Carp, who had just released his pioneering work Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption was  first day keynoter.  Among the special guests that day was  Jean Paton.

As I remember it, some of us Bastard Nationals were running around with little homemade "nametags" with Bastards are Beautiful" handprinted on them with a magic marker--mainly as a dig at the goody-2-shoes AAC crowd and, of couse, to advertise ourselves.  Someone, and I don't remember who, (maybe it was Jean) pointed out that this phrase  was not original with Bastard Nation. It was an original Jean Patonism.

Well, who was Jean Paton?  Only the mother of the adoptee rights movement in America! That's who!

It was almost like opening your OBC and learning that you had a name and a history.  As a trained historian I was shocked to learn that I hadn't done my homework. I knew about Joanne Wolf Small,   B J Lifton, ALMA and a few other historical anecdotes but not Jean Paton, Orphan Voyage and the roots of our movement. I  think I actually started to cry a little.  We weren't in a vacuum.  Hells bells!  The movement had started 40 years (now 60 years) earlier and we were just hearing about it now!

I was fortunate enough to meet Jean that day. She was up in years  but spry and sharp as ever. We talked for awhile and she  approved of Bastard Nation. I didn't have any further contact with her until Measure 58 passed in Oregon and she sent us a congratulatory note.

I've learned much about Jean since then, but now there is an opportunity for all of us to learn much more.

 This November, Jean Paton and the Struggle for American Adoption  Reform will be published by the University of Michigan Press.  Written by Wayne Carp, (who incidentally authored Adoption Politics:  Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58.  the book  is a full length biography of Jean and the birth of the adoptee rights movement in the United States..  Jean worked with Professor Carp to see this book brought to fruition, but unfortunately passed away before she could see it publication.

Jean Paton and Wayne Carp

Professor Carp had unfettered access to Jean and her archives (an historian's dream) He  writes of his experience:

Over the course of the next several years, I received her vast correspondence, which she sent me. I could hardly have imagined the extent of it: it was a biographer’s Eldorado. Jean had made an onion-skin carbon copy of every letter she ever wrote over a period of fifty years—filling some 50 or more boxes— and had carefully filed away almost every sheet of paper in a complex system of file folders. Paton’s own writings range from a discussion of being suckled at the breast of her mother for the first four months of life to discussions of every aspect of adoption reform to reports of her health weeks before her death. In between are drafts of memos, essays, and articles she never published; reviews of her books and media notices of her travels; account books; typewritten notes of books she read; a detailed diary she kept between 1950 and 1953; memos of every phone call she received related to adoption reform; and even sixty-year-old college papers. Just as important for this study, Jean kept every letter, Christmas card, search group’s newsletter, and solicitation she ever received. These materials include inquiries from triad members seeking advice about how to reconnect with their original families, triad members requesting guidance on how to organize search and reunion groups, and correspondence from publishers, editors, and congressmen. Except for me, (and Jean, of course) no one has read this enormous corpus of Jean Paton’s work.

The  University of Michigan Press has already set up a webpage for the book.  More importantly, Professor Carp has published his own webpage: The Biography of Jean Paton: the Mother of the Adoption Reform Movement.  The page includes out-takes from the book (parts that needed edited out for space or other considerations,) photos, documents,  information on book events, and other material.  Material is being added periodically.  An adjunct Facebook page, The Biography of Jean Paton, went live on Monday,

You can order an advanced copy of the book amazon.com

This is a much needed and important addition to the growing corpus of adoption studies. We can't wait to read it.

Photos courtesy of E. Wayne Carp.

Mary Gauthier to Perform in Columbus! Please Join Us!

Save the date!

 Distribute Freely!

 The great bastard bard Mary Gauthier will be performing here in Columbus on May 18.

I first ran into Mary  over 10 years ago on WCBE.  I'd never heard of her.  I don't remember the name of the song that was played and the word "adoption" wasn't mentioned once. But Wowza!   I shouted  "that's about being adopted." It was.  And I googled her. Since then I've been a big fan.  Her May 2010 CD The Foundling, is a tour d' force of her own adoption experience:

The  songs (on The Foundling) tell the story of a kid abandoned at birth who spent a year in an orphanage and was adopted, who ran way from the adopted home and ended up in show business, who searched for birth parents late in life and found one and was rejected, and who came through the other side of all of this still believing in love

--but speaks to us all no matter what our experience.

It was named 3rd top CD of the year by the LA Times.

My personal favorites are the title cut and "Blood is Blood".  What bastard can't  appreciate the absurdity of: adoptaspeak:

When I was a child

They told me, she loved you too much

She didn't keep me 'cause my mother

Loved me too much

She left without a trail

She didn't leave a trace

Blood is blood and blood don't wash away

Blood is blood and blood don't wash away

An excellent interview with Mary was published in Pennyblack Music.com.

Mary is a big supporter  and active member of the adoptee rights movement. During the 2010 National Adoption Month she blogged: 

There are so many people involved in the Adoptees Rights Movement. There are birth mothers who have grown and changed and come to a place where they want to meet their children, or have lost the chance to meet their own but recognize how valuable the knowledge of origin could be to the children who do seek. There are adoptees who are working together to counteract the shame and deep loss they’ve experienced, and to co-create a world where children are no longer seen as commodities. There are adoptive parents who see in their children their true natures, and honor them by letting the children keep their original names, taking them to where they came from, keeping in contact with birth parents when possible, showing them, quite literally, that their love for them does not hinge on them pretending to be something they are not.

These brave souls are working towards one of the last to be recognized civil rights issues – the right for human beings to know their origins, for all adoptees to know where they came from, to have unrestrained access the their own birth certificates. As of now, we do not have that right. In all but 6 states, adoptees birth records are sealed shut by the state, and upon adoption birth certificates are re-issued…. with adoptive parents names on them.

Of course Mary is about  and writes about much more than adoption.  She's a story teller with a genuine voice, no matter what he subject. Her work is admired by Bob Dylan and Tom Waits:  An earlier (2007) CD, Between Daylight and Dark was universally praised:

“If she keeps this up, one day she may assume the mantle of Johnny Cash,” raved the New York Daily News; while the Boston Globe praised Mary’s “particular blend of toughness and vulnerability that puts her in a league with Bruce Springsteen and Steve Earle.

Mary will perform at: 
549 Franklin Avenue
olumbus, Ohio 43215
614-645-7469
8:00 PM
(For old timers, it's the Shedd Theater at the Old Players Theatre)

Go here for ticket information and orders.

Bastard Nation supports Mary Gauthier and her work.  If you're in the Columbus area we hope to see you there!