FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY

Swimming Against the Tide

2012-01-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

Dr. Joe Mercola is renegade. He has been called every hateful name: charlatan, snake oil salesman and dangerous.

He is a medical doctor who started as a traditional physician, treating patients by writing prescriptions. After ten years he realized that all he was doing was treating symptoms and not the cause of illness and disease. He began to study alternative health solutions such a vitamins. In this sense he is very much like social workers such as Annette Baran who became vocal opponents to the methods they had been taught and were considered the status quo. He and they rebelled against the artificial in favor or nature! Against the money-making methods and for the people-helping ones!

After a decade or so of being an alternative medicine guru - loved and hated - he has become an activist to fight the established pharmaceutical companies and organizations such as the AMA that support the pharmaceuticals. In this sense I directly relate. Unlike Baran or Villardi, I did not come to adoption via professional path. But like Mercola I have made the step from helping individuals to seeking to change the system itself.

I co-founded the original Origins, an Organization for Mothers who lost Children to Adoption in 1980 in New Jersey. I was one of five co-founding mothers who held search and support groups in homes, libraries, etc. Similar groups for mothers and adoptees were held all over the nation, pre Internet. Our focus was SELF-HELP, much as Dr, Mercola's initial focus was helping his patients get healthy.

Over the years I assisted in hundreds and hundreds of family reunifications and worked with hundreds of others on their post reunion relationships. Then, like Dr. Mercola, I moved on to fighting the "system", with my first book, shedding light on...The Dark Side of Adoption in 1988. From there I moved to fighting the INDUSTRY of adoption with my second book in 2007.

Self-help is still needed and will be even if we eliminate all unnecessary adoptions because there will always be a small number of necessary familial separations and replacements in alternative care and those people will need still support in dealing with that tragedy.

I see the analogy of medicine very clearly in these different aspects of adoption reform. Self-help vs reform vs activism mirrors research and treatment. versus is really not the correct term because they are both necessary. If all we did was research cancer or HIV of crippling diseases, we would surely be ignoring those in need. Likewise, if all we did was treat, we would be treating these diseases treating eternally - good for the pharm cos - but not for people. We need to treat those afflicted, research the causes..AND, fight against those who profit by keeping us dependent upon the "cures" to our woes when they could be eradicated.

My hope for adoption reform is that each adoptee or natural family member who initiates a search or is found, pay it forward by:

helping others search
supporting others in reunion or those fearful of a search and reunion
speaking out publicly via letters-to-the editor, local news coverage, or at your church and among friend and family. Help "normalize" family reunification after adoption separation.
support equal access legislation!

If you are a reformer, involved in search and support and/or working on legislation (or have) I hope you would also work to expose the exploitation and coercion in the adoption industry. If you are earning any money or even just clout from doing searches but are pro-adoption, you are part of the problem. You are in essence an ambulance at the base of a cliff!

We need to use our experiences to speak out against the industry - against adoption being used to meet a demand instead of the best interest of children and families.

Remember: Smoking was once considered sexy and sophisticated and was glamorized in movie etc.

Remember: It was once OK to on slaves in the US and later it was Ok to segregate schools and other places. Couples were arrested for dating interracially.

Surrogacy, Adoption and the Commodification of Children

2012-01-03T10:02:00.000-08:00

Recently a "news" report - the kind that is more concerned with whop in Hollywood is marrying, jailed or breaking up - reported on a celeb couple who had a baby "via surrogacy." It was said as if the baby was born via cesarian. This is how nonchalant we have come about the practice of paying for babies - or for the eggs, or sperm or the "rental' of one's womb.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is defined as "a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction. And yet it is very much reality. The book describes a point in time when fertility rates are so low, fertile women are kept as slaves of a sort to bear children for the wealthy and infertile.

No. Save your fingers commenting. I am not suggesting that all infertility is a result - directly or indirectly - of delayed childbearing. While a good percentage of it is, many other causes are likewise preventable such as weight (too high or too low), smoking, abortions, STDs, environmental contaminants..... Still, I am not implying it is not a grievous loss. I am simply stating that it is MEDICAL problem that is being treated with special solutions and that a good deal of it is very preventable. As Vanessa Grigoriadis at New York Magazine wrote:

The fact is that the Pill, while giving women control of their bodies for the first time in history, allowed them to forget about the biological realities of being female until it was, in some cases, too late. It changed the narrative of women’s lives, so that it was much easier to put off having children until all the fun had been had (or financial pressures lessened).

Bianca Dye admits:

I’m the walking stereotype of the career gal that… I dunno… just forgot.
I got busy, dated dickheads and didn’t realise my time was REALLY RUNNING OUT!

Too greedy looking at what else was on the menu, I suppose. I never really committed to that: “must find hot, successful guy, must marry him, must buy house, must have baby.”

These rather simplistic views of the forgetfulness of women are countered on Feminsiste, with:

...yes, it is true that many women have trouble conceiving as they age. It is something that women have to think about — fertility isn’t forever, and if you want to birth your own babies, you have to make sure you fit that in . A lot of women don’t want to be pregnant until they’re in their 30s, when their fertility is declining. That’s not nothing.

So, it's not so much 'forgetting' as 'choosing' to delay. And then one has other 'choices' one can make. Today, we have a mega billion dollar industry to provide eggs, sperm, wombs, frozen embryos and living children...a veritable shopping mall of choices for those who were simply too busy to think about childbearing, or wanted to avoid stretch marks or whatever reason. It's as simple as forgetting to thaw something out for dinner and calling a take-out! You simply have to decide if you want Chinese, Ethiopian, or something you can pass off as home-made.

As in Handmaid's Tale, women are very much divided by class: Haves and have-nots. The Haves have "rights" granted them by their wealth to "have" anything they want, including the eggs, sperm, embryos or children of others. And they can play it any way they choose. They can play martyr like Sandra Bullock who after being burned by her bad-boy husband (as much of a shock as being burned by fire) went on to adopt a little Black baby alone, granting her status second only to Mother Theresa. Her one alone trumps Madonna's two and whatever number Angelina the collector is up to now.

For the most part the Haves are admired. But what of the have-nots? They are looked at with a combination of varying and alternating amounts of pity, contempt, disgust, unselfishness, admiration (even if solicitous at best), and/or bravery (even if insincere)....not unlike what one might say aloud as stepping over a homeless person lying in a puddle in a doorway, who one might even toss soem loose change to.

It's interesting to note that women profit, or are thought to profit, from a service other women need or want and are unable or unwilling to provide it is often deemed illegal or immoral. The same service given freely - or with more subtle exchange of payment - is often highly regarded. Sex for instance is expected of a married woman and a disgrace for a "woman of the night", hooker, call-girl, prostitute or "loose woman." Cleaning one's house, shopping. walking one's dog, cooking, and "minding the children" can all be bought for a meager wage. So why not carrying the pregnancy? Not only are women who hire women superior to their employees, but "Johns" are far less legally or morally punished for their participation in the hiring and paying for sexual favors. In many parts of the world it is considered part of male "privilege" despite the exploitation of the service provider. The celeb couple who had their baby 'via surrogacy' was simply availing themselves of a service as one might hire a limo and driver for a special night out on the town, or keep one on staff if one was in the income range to do so....despite the fact that a surrogate mother risks her life in the endeavor.

Oprah missed the boat totally on this one as she sat laughing about a petite 4foot Indian woman carrying a child for a 6foot+ American man and his wife. She thought it hysterically to think about that big baby coming out of that tiny woman, without a thought to the fact that it could literally tear her part or kill her. Nor did the fact that the indian surrogate mothers interviewed were shunned by their communities bother her one iota. She saw it as a win-win because the indian woman were able to buy homes with the money earned risking their lives - homes they may not be able to afford the upkeep of.

While the motives of the have-nots are questionable -- maybe she's doing it for the money or maybe she just really loves being pregnant and helping others have babies -- the motives of the haves are never in question. Their want of a child is normal, natural and not at all selfish (as a younger women wanting to keep her own baby is). Whatever means they choose is their choice to make and is perfectly justifiable without question. They are looked on with total understanding, compassion, a tiny tad of pity but in a very empathetic way and many of their choices are admired, exalted, praised as altruistic and humanitarian.

All this despite the fact that surrogacy is far more about narcissism than about wanting "a child."

She (or he) who is "deserving" to be a mother (or father) is she (or he) who can afford to choose her time, and means of doing so. If you can afford a Rolls Royce is your privilege to own one. If all you cna afford is a used Ford, so be it. others, take the bus or walk. Children are status symbols. If you are in a class with Jay Leno then being a collector is perfectly acceptable as are Jolie's children. It's also OK if you flaunt religion as your reason, as for instance the Duggars do. But don't try to compete with the big boys if you are poor or unwed like in infamous "OctoMom."

DESERVING to be a parent in the US today is judged by one and only one standard is all about what you can AFFORD and doing it without being a "burden" on society.

Yet here's the big IRONY to that argument: Adoption in the U.S. is subsidized by your tax dollars. And not just adoptiosn that woudl remove children from foster care and thus decrease tax payers burdenes. No, ALL adoptions are entitled to a tax credit of $13,360 (http://www.nacac.org/taxcredit/taxcredit.html). This tax credit is payable to the adoptive family if they have no other tax burden, which essentially means they get PAID to adopt a baby. Additionally, they are then able to claim the child as a dependent, EIC, and deduct child care expenses, if incurred.

Two corrections to the comparison chart above. regarding "fees" - while it is illegal to pay a mother directly in an adoption, the massive loophole is calling it paying he medical expenses despite the fact that any expectant mother would be entitle to Medicare. The second correction is that while NJ challenged surrogacy and put some limitations on it, it is not illegal in the state.

The major difference between surrogacy and adoption, from the standpoint of the natural/original mother, is intent. For the adopting parents the intent is the same. they want a child. But for the mother bearing the child the intent is extremely different and important to bear in mind.

Only a paid surrogate conceives a child with the INTENT to let it go to others. It is a conscious CHOICE she makes, though financial pressures are likely involved, especially for foreign surrogates. The word "choice" is erroniously used to describe a woman who finds herself uninentionally pregnant and conidered adoption. It was not her chpoice to become pregnant nor was it her choice to have a child she is unable to care for and MUST let go to another. She is not giving someone a 'gift" - she is entrusting them with the care of her child, which unfortunately means forever under current US law. It means forever and it requires the eradication of the original mother and father and all connections to the child. Even so-called open-adoption begins with relinquishment of ALL rights and a falsified birth certificate listing the adopters as the parents of birth. State committed fraud.

And the biggest problem with both is inadequate informed information about the consequences to the woman and her child.

Why is it, I wonder, that it's "a baby, not a choice" when pr-lifers are talking about the possibility of terminating a pregnancy - ending the "life" of an unsustainable fetus...but it's a "choice" to buy ovum and sperm...the basis of human life, and it's a "choice" to rent a womb and contract - pre-birth - to buy the baby? Why are these simple "choices" that we report as if someone chose a blue car over a red one?

DEBUNKING ADOPTION MYTHS

2012-01-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Kate Middleton is among the latest to express an interest in adoption as an ac of altruistic humanitarianism. But is it? Are there really thousands of "orphans" "languishing" in institutions in need of care or is it all propagandized hype produced by lobbyists for the mega billion dollar adoption industry?

Bookmark this page and send a link to it to any and all who have consumed the Kool-Aid and are under mesmerized by the glamour and mythology of adoption ignoring the reality.

First off, let us ask why is it that someone like Pastor Kim Do-hyun, director of KoRoo, an organization that helps supports Korean adoptees returning to their homeland, says:

"...overseas adoption is a kind of child abuse by the state. ....Overseas adoption is the forced expulsion of children from the society where they are supposed to live. In this sense, overseas adoption is a social violence against children. As humans, we exist as part of a gigantic ecosystem. The existence of the biological parents of adoptees can never be annihilated nor denied.

"Overseas adoption is a forced separation of children from their natural ecosystems, as well as a way of forcing them into compulsory unity with settings different from and unnatural to their genetic and original social systems. Through this forced separation and compulsory unity, not only the adoptees, but also their biological parents, adoptive parents and their family members suffer trauma."

Has his thinking been swayed too heavily by bitter, unhappy discontent adoptees when in fact what he says applies to ALL adoptions, including domestic which annihilate, delete, erases, redacts, eliminates, hides, and keeps secret, natural family connections?

There are those like Elizabeth Bartholet who bemoan decreasing numbers of International Adoptions (IA)and adoption agencies closing feigning concern for the children left unserved. Truth is that she represents attorneys and other partitioners who make their living redistributing children into and out of the US!

- FACT: 90% of children in orphanages worldwide are not orphans but have at least one living parent and/or extended family planning to reunite their family as was the case with the two children Madonna adopted. All over the world orphanages are used to provide temporary care and provide food, medical care and education parents cannot afford. Many such people have no concept of permanent adoption of their children.

- FACT: Many people all over the world are exploited for their ignorance, asked to sign papers they cannot read; told their children are going to the US Europe of an education.

- FACT: Children are kidnapped, stolen and trafficked all over the world - South & Central America, eastern Europe, Asia, Africa - to meet a demand for younger children while older and physically challenged children are ignored in orphanages as are the 120,000 US children in foster care who COULD be adopted!

- FACT: Many caring people wanting to adopt for purely altruistic reasons chose reputable agencies, and have inadvertently adopted children who were stolen or kidnapped. Child traffickers label kidnapped children abandoned and it is virtually impossible to verify otherwise.

- FACT: In nations that have ceased IA because of corruption, the number of allegedly “abandoned” babies dropped to almost zero. When adoptions were resumed, the number of said “abandoned” babies rose back up again to meet the demand!

- FACT: The tens of thousands of dollars paid by westerners to adopt would be far better spent building schools, digging wells or buying medical supplies. Such high fees instead support traffickers and prevent local residents from adopting within many nations because they cannot compete financially with fees set based on demand.

When listening to the pros and cons of adoption arguments look at the SOURCES and follow the money!

Listen to what non-profits who work on the ground with children and family in need have to say:

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .”The Special Rapporteur, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.

READ:

Who are the 143 Million Orphans?

Orphaned or Stolen

Duped by Indian adoption agency, US family cautions couples.

Read the blog of Julia Rollins who unwittingly adopted stolen children

The Lie We Love by E.J.Graff

The works of David Smolin on child trafficking
Lies, damned lies, statistics…and baby selling?

Regarding adoption from China, specifically read:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8939661/Chinese-police-rescue-178-children-after-mass-child-trafficking-ring-bust.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adoption-stories/200909/la-times-chinese-babies-stolen-foreign-adoption

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/5824/

http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/juliafuller/was-baby-you-adopted-china-stolen-or-purchased

Regarding Ethiopia: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/05/must-see-video-news-report-about-child.html

http://www.ethicanet.org/ethiopia-to-cut-foreign-adoptions-by-up-to-90-percent

Human trafficking for adoption: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rani-hong/human-trafficking-prevention-month_b_1199395.html

Same Sex Adoption

2011-12-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

For some time the headlines have screamed of discrimination against same sex couples adopting. Catholic agencies have closed their doors rather than go against their beliefs and allow gay couples to adopt children. Gays are up in arms and many claim that such policies only hurt the children who could benefit from loving homes regardless of the sexual orientation of those who care for them.

When I went to press with THE STORK MARKET in 2007, the topic was just becoming an issue and my thoughts were not yet fully formed. I am an extremely liberal progressive and fully and totally support marriage equality. But adoption as a gay rights issue was another question altogether that required more time to formulate my conflicted feelings and form an opinion. I thus, then - and since - have avoided the subject not wanting to become embroiled in adding to the furor of adoption becoming another platform for gay rights for two reasons:

1. Adoption is not a "right"
2. Adoption should always put the needs of children above those of any of the adults

No one has a "right" to adopt. Furthermore, although they get lumped together in the media and the minds of the public, all adoptions are not equal. State adoptions of children in foster care are mandated by state law while private adoptions - domestic and international - are held to very different standards and looser regulations, based primarily on who can afford to pay the tens of thousands of dollars they cost. Religious institutions and private adoption facilitators are not bound by the same anti-discrimination laws that state agencies are.

As far as discrimination, we need to step back and recognize that the entire concept of adoption is based on subjective prejudices that age, marital status and finances determine who is more "fit" to parent. We live in a society that makes these judgments all the time. We judge some people as too young or too old to be good parents before they ever even try. This has always been the case.

Private and religious adoption agencies always made their own selection criteria. In the 1940's - 1970's, for instance, prospective adopters had to be a married man and woman of the a particular religion and had to prove infertility - as if that made one a better parent! Jewish agencies looked for Jewish parents for children and Catholic agencies selected catholic families. Why is that wrong if it is the wishes of the mother? They also tried to match prospective parents eye and hair color to the child so they could more easily pass the child off as their own. Age was always a factor for adopters as were requirements such as having sufficient room in the home for each child. Today the weight of those applying to adopt has become, at times, an issue as obesity is a health issue.

Today mothers considering adoption are more involved and make their own selections from a pool. Surely they are allowed the right to their own person preference, even if that includes ruling out single applicants or same sex couples if it is not what they want for their child. Bottom line is that there is no right to adopt. Adoption is a privilege, not a right and selections are made, some based on wisdom and some simply on personal preference. And, it is always based on the MYTH that adoption provides a "better" life when in fact it only guarantees a different life. It's all a crap shoot! Background checks are sorely lacking any teeth and in private independent adoptions the adopters pay for their own home studies which are drive-by rubber stamps.

While governmental agencies are bound by anti-discrimination laws, we should be screaming far louder for the rights of children to be protected than worrying about some people being excluded by SOME agencies! Adoption needs to be a last resort after all efforts at Family Preservation have been tried and failed. It then needs to be child-centered and decisions need to be made as to what is best for each child, not those desiring to obtain a child.

In most cases -- most especially with children coming out of state care -- permanent legal guardianship with visitation is what is best and the parents who are able to accept that are the ones best suited. Many children placed from foster care have developed relationships - good or bad - with their parents, siblings or other kin that needs to be respected and continued. Criteria should thus put a high value on applicants who fully understand and accept that they will be caring for a child who comes with a pre-existing family and history and are ready to honor, protect and maintain that. They also need to be people who understand that adopted children - of any age - come with emotional baggage including feelings of loss, grief, rejection and abandonment. They need to be prepared to meet these needs realistically, be able to deal with acting-out and learning difficulties, and not be seeking a child to love them.

These are the criteria all adoption agencies should be screening for, not external factors.

Adoption Blindness, Entitlement, Denial and Justification.

2011-12-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

Some theorists posit that beliefs are formed first, then we find facts to fit our beliefs. Other researchers claim the brain processes facts and beliefs in exactly the same way.

Joe Keohane, writing for the Boston Globe on "How Facts Backfire" notes: "[I]t’s never been easier for people to be wrong, and at the same time feel more certain that they’re right."

That adoption is a good thing is ingrained into the minds and hearts of the average person - and even deeper ingrained in most who have adopted and some adoption "professionals." It sits on a pedestal on high along with sunshine and rainbows. Many see it as a noble calling, a rescue mission, altruism at its finest and a win-win for children, families and society in general. These rose-colored views of adoption see all adoptions as equal in their savior quality and abilities, making no distinctions between the adoption of a true orphan from foster care, or a child coerced from young lovers forbidden to marry, or obtained under questionable means under a totally corrupt governmental regime.

Any and all factual evidence to the contrary - cases and facts that clash with this view of adoption - are met with scorn, disbelief. They lie together in a massive garbage heap, shoved under a bulging rug labeled "anomaly." Messengers of "ugly" adoption facts and truths are treated like the whistle-blowers. They are - dismissed as disgruntled, angry and bitter for some personal reason, if not out right liars or craziods. They are defective people who only see the darkness, even in something flawlessly beautiful, as adoption.

Intentionally Deaf and Blind Adoption Professionals

I am on an email list for adoption professionals with a stated purpose of giving "professionals in the field an opportunity to network with one another in a cooperative spirit about how adoption practice can be improved."

I was recently told by the group owner to cease and deceit my "negative" postings of tragic adoption stories. Some group members thanked the group owner for sanctioning me stating: "It's hard enough to deal with the true loss issues of adoption without viewing all adoption stories through the lens of horror and sensationalism." I wondered, even if a story might have been sensationalized by the press, did that negate any and all true, factual basis of the atrocity? This argument sounded to me like a politician caught in a sex scandal crying about it being brought to light by his political enemies strictly for political gain. While that is likely very true, turning the issue around and blaming the accusers does not mitigate the act or accusation that caused the revelation in the first place.

The list owner told me she preferred to see "discussions" of how to deal with various corrupt aspects of adoption than posting theses cases.

I asked the owner, privately: "What is there to discuss or change or improve if not the ugliness? How can you ever hope to work for change with blinders on, not facing these hideous truths???" I was not allotted the respect of a reply.

I also pointed out to her, via private communication, that in all the time I had been on the list (a year or two?) the only in-depth "discussion" involving several posters that took place was generated by an article I posted about the Barretos who had adopted seven children from Guatemala who were subsequently removed because of severe abuse. There was great in-depth discussion about how this could have occurred.

Meanwhile, on the group list one adoption professional replied saying she was opposed to the censorship because: "Sadly, every time this sort of story hits the news, I have clients (usually birth moms) discuss it. I would rather have the information, before I am surprised. If the story is 'too ugly,' I can skip it."Another wrote:

"I don't think that the issue is negative issues vs. positive ones. As professionals in adoption we need to ever aware of the corruption, trafficking and vast array of unethical practices that have surrounded adoption. Too often we like to put on our rose-colored glasses and look away from those unethical practices. I would however like to here more professional reports of these unethical practices. Often many of these stories have a tabloid feel and that sensationalism tends to dilute the real wrongdoings. I would like to see more professional input, factual reports and research based practice ideas. All of the unethical practices have been going on for years and years. We talk about how awful it is and then move on. The practices then rear their ugly heads again with new names, different states, different countries. We owe it to all of our clients to be aware and to educate them and empower them for change no matter where
they sit in the constellation."

The group owner then stated that she alone makes the rules! And apparently her rue is that when rose-colored glasses no longer block out enough of the negativity, replace with blinders and cendorship.

Intentional Blindness of Those Who Adopt

Jennifer Hemsley, 2008 recipient of the Family Preservation Hero of the Year Award was recently interviewed by Erin Siegal, author of Finding Fernanada. In the radio podcast Hemsley tells why she put a halt on a Guatemalan adoption that was relying on questionable paperwork.

Jessica O'Dwyer was faced with an almost identical set of circumstances and chose to proceed with her adoption. O'Dwyer an author who applauds herself in the very popular (in AP circles) book "Mamalita" -- along with the mother in the documentary "Wo Ai Ni (I Love Your) Mommy" seen counting our her bribery money and noting that some might think it wrong but it's simply "how things are done here here" -- share the title of the quintessential spokespersons for shameless, bold entitlement and justification of adoption despite red flashing lights. (Runner up is the author of "Brotherhood of Joseph").

O'Dwyer, who writes in her book of having her husband bring her UNMARKED BILLS, recently felt the need to comment regarding Hemsley's podcast stating: "for me, false paperwork is a far cry from kidnapping or coercion, although they are often all lumped together as 'corrupt adoption.'

I replied to Ms. O'Dwyer at AdoptionTalk:

cor·rup·tion
noun
1. the act of corrupting or state of being corrupt.
2. moral perversion; depravity.
3. perversion of integrity.
4. corrupt or dishonest proceedings.
5. bribery.

That's the dictionary definition.

Transparency International(TI) defines corruption as "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. This definition encompasses corrupt practices in both the public and private sectors." TI uses perceptions as a measure of corruption because "corruption – whether frequency or amount – is to a great extent a hidden activity that is difficult to measure." http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/in_detail

Note that here too the definition is not dependent on legality or criminality.

Adoption corruption takes many forms and exists in domestic as well as IA. Any and all deceit for the intent of earning a fee for their adoption, such as labeling children with parents "orphans" for instance, is corrupt.

I thus respectfully disagree with your opinion.

O'Dwyer responded: "I appreciate the dictionary definition of corruption and respect your interpretation of it. For me, the issue is not black-and-white, but a spectrum of gray. My opinion only, Jessica O'Dwyer"

I find it interesting that an author, a person to whom words should be important, simply dismisses the definition of the words she uses so glibly, when to do so is convenient for her.

Malinda, an attorney, law professor and the adoptive mother on whose blog this discussion was playing out said: "I do see corruption as the word with the broadest definition. I see corruption as encompassing both criminal and non-criminal conduct. Corruption would include trafficking, in my view, though is not limited to trafficking." Malinda goes on to point examples of adoptions that could be illegal and not corrupt, "For example, if there's a state requirement that an adoption decree be registered, and the decree is not registered as required, the adoption would be illegal, but it wouldn't necessarily be corrupt" as well as the reverse. "Say, for example, state law gives a birth mother 10 days to revoke consent, and the birth mother informs the adoptive parents that she is considering revoking her consent on day 8. Even if she does not formally revoke before the end of day 10, I would consider it unethical to proceed with the adoption."


I replied to Jessica O'Dwyer:
: Well, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I just hope and pray that those who make laws to protect children, protect ALL children from all forms of corruption, exploitation and commodification. I hope that anything done that does not put the best interests of children first is eradicated as evil. I see no gray areas when it comes to lifelong pain, loss and harm caused to children and their families. None whatsoever. Gray areas -- yeah, it's called GRAY MARKET ADOPTION wherein lurks the murky world of coercion and fraud that has found convenient legal loopholes or simply lack of laws and regs to prevent the harm they commit, the ruined lives. Accepting gray areas is accepting all of the corruption that lies there in the grayness because it hasn't quite crossed some imaginary line or non-existent laws and regulations. It's a slippery and very dangerous slope. We must instead be super diligent IMHO because EVERY child is precious, not just SOME. Do we likewise turn out back and accept SLIGHT acts of child abuse - those that don't leave physical scars or broken bones? The gray shadows hide the hidden dangers and allow adoption to be "marketed" as a good, a "win-win". We need to shed light in all the dark areas and gray corners and bring ALL corruption into the spotlight not continue to allow it to lurk and continue operating legally in shadowy gray corners. As a mother - any harm done to YOUR child is a crime! Not just some that cross over some imaginary line. And moral, ethical societies uphold such standards and do not allow evil to survive in the black or in the gray.

Malinda summed it up saying: "Yes, kidnapping a child for the purposes of adoption is really, really, really, really bad, arguably worse than many other corrupt practices in adoption -- but problems of corruption can't really be defended by saying, 'At least she wasn't kidnapped!'"

Indeed. Bribery - such as that seen and brushed off in "Wo Ai Ni" and the use of unmarked bills is what fuels corruption. No Johns, no prostitution. Only those who have benefited from the corruption financially or otherwise attempt to redefine it as our government does when calling war missiles peace makers. Sugar coating acts of destruction with doublespeak make them no less destructive.

Jennifer Hemsley and Malinda help remind me not to paint all adoptive parents with the brush of intentional adoption blindness, entitlement, denial and justification. O'Dwyer reminds me that the problem still exists.

As for adoption professionals who prefer to wear their blinders I can only say SHAME ON YOU! You have clearly defined which side of the fence you are on and it is not the side of right and best interest of children. It is the side of greed, profiteering from misery and loss. "Professionals" who are unwilling to stand up and speak out against adoption atrocities, legal and ethical, are more concerned about filling a demand and their bottom line.

Each of us has a choice to make to be part of the problem or part of the solution. And the public has a responsibility to stop applauding actions such as these! We need to stop excusing bribery as "how it's done."

News flash to Jessica O'Deyer: Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison for CORRUPTION because of BRIBERY. Baby buying by any other name is still baby buying and it STINKS!

More here: PoundPuppy: Exposing Corruption in IA

I AM NOT AN ORPHAN! Korean Mothers Campaign

2011-12-01T18:00:00.000-08:00

PLEASE SHARE THIS MESSAGE AT THIN LINK: http://www.kumsn.org/main/16265#1

Dec. 1, 2011

CONTACT INFORMATION: Hee Jung Kwon: kumsn@kumsn.org

Tell: 82-2-734-5007

Fax: 82-2-720-5007

Cell: 82-10-5210-8637

KUMSN starts post card campaign, I am not an Orphan, to promote the rights of unwed pregnancy and unwed mothers from Dec. 1, 2011.

According to the Report on Children in Protection by the Ministry of Health and Ministry (2011), the total number of 8,590 children were being protected by the various social welfare programs due to family poverty, parents’ jobless, or child abuse and so on in 2010. Among them, 2,804 children, about 33%, were under protection due to the reason of being born to unwed mothers.

As has been quoted widely, about 90% of children who were sent for adoption are from unwed mothers in Korea (KWDI 2009). In other words, most children who were sent for adoption already have mothers who gave birth to them. These are mothers who say that if there had been no stigma on child birth out of wedlock and more support policies, they would chose raising their babies. Sadly 70% of them are giving up their babies for adoption as these basic conditions are missing. (Korean Women’s Social Welfare Association 2010)

Regardless of these facts, the phrases like “Baby Angels without Parent” or “Orphans abandoned” are frequently used in the phrases used in adoption promotion campaigns. It is not true and keeps hiding the existence of unwed mothers who have equal rights to enjoy their motherhood like any other mothers. These babies are forced to be given up due to the stigma on their mothers and no support for raising them. This is very cruel to erase alive mothers and call their children orphans. In this regards, KUMSN promotes the right of mothers who gave birth out of wedlock, hoping for the end of stigma and for more support for unwed pregnancy and unwed mothers and their children.

Please contact KUMSN if you join the campaign and send the postcard

by CLICKING THIS LINK.

Adopt a Family For the Holidays

2011-11-27T08:48:00.000-08:00

By supporting Families in need you can help prevent unnecessary family loss and separation. Poverty is the number cause of adoptions today worldwide. It outweighs all other cuases - i.e. abuse, neglect - combined.

A sampling of programs:

St. Vincent de Paul Cincinnati Council has one of the most established networks. Each sponsor is provided with a Christmas wish list for a family. Lists frequently include toys that children have asked Santa for and basic household items and toiletries. The list also is likely to contain clothing sizes for the children and adults in the household because the families are in need of the most basic items, such as shoes and sweaters. The agency asks that a new outfit be provided to each family member.

The agency provides sponsors a guide on how much to spend, ranking from $150-$200 for a family of two to $350-$450 for a family with five or more members.

Some potential sponsors are unable to shop, but they can still help. St. Vincent de Paul recommends that a gift card can be purchased to a big-box retailer and then donated to the agency. Its staff will make sure the card gets into the hands of the head-of-household.

If sponsors do shop, they have the option of dropping off items at the St. Vincent de Paul headquarters, 1125 Bank St., West End, and volunteers will take the clothing and toys to the family. In recent years, sponsors have wanted to deliver to gifts themselves to their adoptive family, an option the agency makes available.

To adopt a family, contact LaMonica Sherman at St. Vincent de Paul, 513-562-8841, ext. 237, or at lsherman@SVDPcincinnati.org. Please include your name, company or school name (if an organizational donation), phone and fax numbers, address and email address. The agency will respond with a letter, list and complete instructions.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul Northern Kentucky will accept financial donations, which it will pool and purchase gifts for needy families. The agency also has a direct holiday adoption program that gives sponsors much the same options as its Ohio counterpart: direct delivery to the adoptive family or anonymous delivery that is handled by agency volunteers.

Cash donations can be send to: SVDP - NKY, Attn: Executive Director, 2655 Crescent Springs Road, Covington, Ky., 41017. Secure donations may be made Online at SVDPnky.org.

To adopt a family, contact Joyce Hudson at 859-341-3212, ext. 2, or email at joyce.hudson@SVDPnky.org.

Lighthouse Youth Services' Happy Holidays program provides gifts to 2,000 of the communities' most vulnerable and forgotten youths - homeless teens or the 550 teenagers in foster care, group homes or older youth living independently. The list also includes 18 year olds just dropped from foster care at age 18.

The agency offers four ways to participate: People or groups can sponsor a struggling family unable to provide gifts for their children, donors can set up a "Giving Tree" in their office or club with need ornaments provided by the agency, they can make a cash, check or credit card donation, or they can buy items from the Top-10 Wish List to meet the needs of the 200 new clients who come to Lighthouse each December, they can Contact Andrea Granieri at 513-475-5674 or agranieri@lys.org to participate.

For 20 years, the organization For AIDS Children Everywhere (FACE) has brought light into one of the darkest corners of the community - to children and parents affected or infected by HIV or AIDS. Beyond its summer trips and food and toy pantry in its Holmes Hospital office space, FACE reaches children through its annual holiday adoption program.

Sponsors will be matched with children who either have AIDS or are HIV-positive or have a parent in that condition. Donors will be asked to buy a new outfit of clothing and two new gifts for each child in the family. FACE will provide that ages and sizes and interests of the children. Organizers ask that donated gifts and clothing be brought unwrapped but marked with the provided child identification number to the FACE office before Dec. 10.

For adoption forms, call 513-584-3571 or go to facecincinnati.org.

Brighton Center provided gifts and food to 834 needy Northern Kentucky families with 2,192 members in 2010 and is again looking for community support to meet an even greater demand. All families are connected to the Newport-based center through one or more of its 38 programs that strive to help families reach self-sufficiency.

Interested sponsors and donors are asked to contact M. Beth Hodge, Brighton Center's donation and volunteer manager, before Dec. 2 so they can be matched with an appropriate family. She can be reached at 859-491-8303, ext. 2331 or at bhodge@brightoncenter.com.

In addition to its holiday food giveaways and other anti-hunger programs connected to the holidays, the Freestore Foodbank is offering donors and sponsors an "Adopt-a-Family" program this year. Donors will be given the names, clothing and shoe sizes and children's wish lists. Contact Lisa Snorton at 513-357-4815 or lsnorton@freestorefoodbank.org.

The local Salvation Army has a list of 500 families and senior citizens in Hamilton County that are available for holiday adoption. The agency receives referrals from its own social workers at its community centers as well as from partner agencies.

People who adopt a family or senior are provided with information about the family or individual and asked to purchase gifts, wrap them and bring them to a distribution center, where families pick them up. Seniors' gifts are delivered.

For information, go to http://tinyurl.com/7krsedj, or call Deanna Powell at 513-762-5600 or deanna.powell@use.salvationarmy.org.

The US Federal Adoption Tax Credit: Dollars for Deception

2011-11-23T08:50:00.000-08:00

GAO Study on the Adoption Tax Credit

Posted on November 22, 2011 by SuzanneCWLA

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just released a study on the federal adoption tax credit. From analysis of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data and documents, observations of IRS examiners, and interviews of IRS officials and other stakeholders, the GAO explored IRS’ communications, processing, and auditing strategy regarding the credit. CWLA and member agencies on our adoption advisory committee were among the stakeholders consulted for this report.

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and Representatives Charles Boustany (R-LA) and John Lewis (D-GA) requested the study citing the recent expansion of the credit and to identify possible improvements in advance of the 2012 tax year. The adoption tax credit was first established in 1996. The Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148) increased its maximum value from $10,000 to $13,170 and made it refundable for 2010 and 2011. The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-312) made changes to the law by extending the credit through 2012, but as non-refundable and with a reduced maximum to $10,000. In 2013 and following, it will be limited to special needs adoptions and only available for qualified expenses up to a $6,000 value. Since 1996, $4.28 billion in adoption tax credits have been claimed, with $1.2 billion claimed in 2010.

The GAO determined that in 2011 there was diverse communications approaches to tax preparers and adoption advocates, but identified room for improvement in explaining certification requirements. In addition, they found that over two-thirds of almost 100,000 taxpayers claiming the credit were audited by mail, and that four-fifths of those audited had filed the credit accurately and none were fraudulent. These audits caused the IRS to expend unnecessary resources and delayed refunds for families. The study concludes with an outline of approaches to avoid both confusion and ineffective process that led to unnecessary expenditures in low yield tax oversight in 2011.

The Purpose

The federal adoption tax credit legislation was first enacted in 1996 “to encourage further the adoption of special needs children.” Special needs adoptions are recognized as adoption of children from foster care who are older, have disabilities, or require placement with siblings.

In 2004, however, less than a quarter of  taxpayers claiming the credit adopted children from the U.S. foster care system (Joe Kroll, Executive Director, North American Council on Adoptable Children, "The Adoption Tax Credit: An Ethical Dilemma",  from Fall 2007 Adoptalk).

Those who favor of this ever-increasing tax credit for all adoptions, point out that most internationally adopted children have special needs. If not physical they have emotional problems and learning difficulties in terms of language acquisition. The adoption tax credit, however, is not a subsidy for ongoing costs of care for special needs children which adopters are entitled to in addition if their child’s needs qualify. Approximately 15 states also have their own adoption tax credits, in addition to the federal credit and many employers and airlines offer benefits to those who adopt.

The federal adoption tax credit is not a subsidy for ongoing care, but is intended specifically to help defray the fees involved in the initial adoption placement fees, recognizing that such expenses are not covered by medial insurance, as are maternity expenses.

However, as the tax credits increase each year, adoption practitioners raise their fees accordingly assuring clients that they can receive this reimbursement. So, in effect, it can be argued that the tax breaks are really supporting private for- and non-profit adoption agency businesses, which exist to meet a demand for children other than those in foster care. The renowned Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute asks: “Is it ethical that intermediaries and those least in need benefit the most from these tax credits?" (Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. 1999. Money, Power and Accountability: The “Business” of Adoption. Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute Conference Summary. Anaheim, November 1999).

Those who favor tax support of all adoptions claim that all children deserve good homes. However, it is only adoption from foster care that serves the intended purpose of adoption: finding homes for orphans and children whose parents have been adjudged unable to care safely for them.

All other types of adoption exist to fill the desires of adults wanting a child and often involve exploitation and deceit to meet the market demand. Domestic infant adoption agencies spend millions marketing expectant mothers, often disregarding the rights of fathers, or promising open adoption in states in which they are not enforceable.

Globally, 90% of children in orphanages are not orphans nor have they been victims of abuse or neglect. Many families worldwide use orphanages to provide their children with food, medical care, or education they cannot otherwise afford. They visit their children and have no intention of relinquishing them to unrelated strangers. Child trafficking for adoption has been reported in Central and South America, Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. To meet the demand, children are kidnapped or stolen from loving parents in China, Guatemala, Armenia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. They are sold to foreign orphanages, with people posing as their parents and papers forged, and then placed, often unknowingly, by trusted adoption agencies here in the US. When nations close their international adoptions, as many have because of corruption, the number of allegedly “abandoned” babies drops drastically and picks back up again when the adoption programs are resumed.

The tens of thousands that Americans and other Westerners are willing to pay per child is very corrupting in poor nations. It pays bribes and supports a criminal underground. In addition, it is far more difficult for people within these nations who might adopt, to compete with fees of tens of thousands of dollar per child.

Not Meeting It’s Intended Goal and Stated Purpose

The Tragic Life of Gabriel Hall

2011-11-19T15:07:00.000-08:00

Eighteen year old Gabriel Hall admitted choosing a couple for the convenience of being able to watch their home. When he decided the time was right, he broke in an killed Edwin Shaar, 68, who used walker by stabbing and then shooting him. He slit the throat of Shaar's wheelchair bound wife, Linda, 69. She survived the vicious attack. Gabriel went home and changed his clothes and went to school the following day.

He said he wants to know why he did it, but believes he simply had "killer instinct."

Gabriel's life began in the Philippines. At 11 years of age he was adopted along with at least three blood-related siblings by attorney and justice of the peace, Wes Hall and Karen Kruse Hall, president of Central Texas Orphan Mission, an organization that "supports orphans across the globe" -- joining their brood of 12 adopted children, and seven biological or stepchildren.

Karen Hall was working setting up orphanages in El Salvador and working to provide medical care for needy orphans throughout the world. Dr. Joe Kraft and his family were involved with Haiti orphan ministry and adoption. CTOMA [Central Texas Orphan Mission Alliance] was formed to provide a non-profit entity to allow others to make tax deductible donations to these ministries and also to provide strict accountability of funding and spending. There are no paid employees and therefore all donations go directly to orphan ministries.

"We are making an appeal for your financial support for these precious children who would not receive help if not for your generosity. Our traveling doctors and nurses go to remote locations, donate their time and services, and pay their own travel expenses. The mission cannot be accomplished without our host families and volunteers. We express our heartfelt gratitude to all who participate. Thank you."-- Karen Kruse Hall, President

The Halls were not present at his sentencing and have refused to pay for an attorney. But that is not all too surprising when you learn - as I have through a confidential and reliable source - they have "kicked out" at least three of the children they adopted, aside from Gabriel, including his biological siblings who they adopted. Talk about living in fear of total rejection and abandonment! These people are evil; the children they have tossed aside live in fear of them and their retribution if they speak out.

Gabriel is likely suffering a classic case of Adopted Child Syndrome:

David Kirschner, Adoption Forensics: The Connection Between Adoption and Murder | Crime Magazine, who coined the term, says that most adoptees are not disturbed and that the syndrome only applies to "a small clinical subgroup". It is described in Directions in Child and Adolescent Therapy 2, no. 6 (1995) and in Dr. Kirschner's book, Adoption: Uncharted Waters.

Researchers Brodizinsky, Schechter, and Henig find that in a review of the literature, generally children adopted before the age of six-months fare no differently than children raised with their biological parents. Later problems that develop among children adopted from the child welfare system at an older age are usually associated with the effects of chronic early maltreatment in the caregiving relationship; abuse and neglect.

Psychologist Betty Jean Lifton, herself an adopted person, has written extensively on psychopathology in adopted people, primarily in Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience, and Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness and briefly discusses Adopted child syndrome.

Judith and Martin Land, Adoption Detective: Memoir of an Adopted Child, (2011), identify genealogical bewilderment, oppositional defiant disorder, selective mutism, anti-social behavior, The Primal Wound, and other related terms to describe potential effects of adoption on children who are orphaned, fostered, or adopted.

The term is argued by the adoption industry - those whose livelihoods depend on adoption proliferating and fear facts about adoptee rage, such as the disproportionate number of serial killers who are adopted, might scare off prospective adopters.

NOTE: A recent study finds "that the early stress of separation from a biological parent impacts long-term programming of genome function; this might explain why adopted children may be particularly vulnerable to harsh parenting in terms of their physical and mental health," said Grigorenko. "Parenting adopted children might require much more nurturing care to reverse these changes in genome regulation."

This is very applicable in Gabriel's case!

Now, let us shift the focus back to the Gabriel's adoptive mother.

Karen Kruse Hall ...
from her profile for a benefit to raise money for Coalition for Life::

Current Occupation: President, Central Texas Orphan Mission Alliance, CTOMA

Church: Central Baptist

Education: BS, Texas A&M University, 1973, Baylor School of Medical Technology, 1973, Real Estate Brokerage 1982, and graduate studies at University of Texas, Dallas 1976.

Focus: International and local missions for children, including medical, humanitarian, disaster assistance, and community service in the Brazos Valley.

How did you become a volunteer/why are you involved? I am involved because of my faith in Jesus Christ. I responded to the call for sidewalk counselors after seeing the huge need while I participated in Stand and Pray in front of the abortion clinic. I volunteered to counsel and spent 15 hours a week for two years during 2002 to 2004. At that time I prayed that if God ever asked me to help in any other way, all He had to do was show me. He did exactly that. [But, apparently God has not sought fit to seek her help now for Gabriel.] I purchased the property next door to the abortion facility last year, and decided to use it entirely for charity work. We are currently in construction but will be finishing soon! I have been involved in adoption and charity for children for 16 years, and my husband, Wes, and I have parented 20 children in our home. We have 12 adopted children, one in the adoption process and 7 birth/step children. We have had more than 15 international students and medical mission children that we have cared for. I believe that all children should be loved [until they get in trouble?], and that all children in the womb are to be protected [not necessarily those in jail, however]CTOMA charity where we can show our love for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and our fellow man.

Why you are pro life (is there a story here?): I am prolife because I feel that we should speak out for the helpless [!]. The most helpless are the babies who are orphaned in that their mothers do not want them [not those whose mothers are UNABLE to care for them, many simply because of poverty, age or marital status. Pretty judgmental, aren't we, or is that just to make yourself feel better?] I have always been pro life, but I was not always outspoken on the issue. I now believe that we must speak up for the helpless, and that we must come to their aid.

What a saint!

UPDATES: Missing from Karen's glowing professional autobiography is that she is on her third marriage and has disowned SIX children she adopted!

Gabriel's life has been filled with tragedies. He is now on trial for his LIFE in Texas - a state known for its executions! He needs our support. I will be following his trial and hope that the adoption community will come to his support as his adopted home state and town of College Park are already gettin' ready for a hangin'!!

National Adoption Awareness Month 2011

2011-11-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Celebrate National Adoption Month?

Where do I start? Do I celebrate that Jerry Sandusky's reign of terror on boys rendered vulnerable via foster care including those he adopted has finally been stopped and his Angels in Adoption Award has been rescinded? Or do I continue to worry for all the children like Masha Allen suffering similar fates, having been too easily adopted by pedophiles and all those in homes approved by slip-shod home studies, their adopters praised and hailed as heroes?

Do I celebrate the more than 226 children who have been killed by those entrusted with their care through adoption? Or the thousands more who survived unthinkable abuses like the recently exposed abuses of seven children adopted from Guatemala by the Barretos who killed one and tortured them by tying their hands and feet to the cribs, dunking them in barrels of water until they lost consciousness, and put hot peppers into the kids' mouths to make them stop crying.

Do I celebrate the Monahans being ordered to return Aneyli Liseth Hernandez Rodrigues, the child kidnapped from her mother, Loyda, in Guatemala, even though they continue to defy that order and the US gvt stands idly by? Or do I cry for Loyda and all the other Guatemalan and Vietnamese and Chinese mothers who have not even gotten that far in their eternal search for their children kidnapped for adoption?

Photo: Loyda Rordiguez holding photo of her missing daughter during a hunger strike in Guatemala to bring attention to her case and others like her.

Do I celebrate the fathers who fight for the right to be fathers of children that were whisked away and allowed to be adopted without their consent, particularly in Utah?

Or, perhaps I should celebrate the apology issued in Australia for their forced adoptions during the 50's, 60's and into the 1970s while my nation continues to allow such abuses to go on and on with little regulation? Celebrate that mores have changed and single parenthood is less of a stigma and less US mothers are yielding to the pressures to let go of their children with promises of openness...promises that are unenforceable and far too often broken leaving mothers I despair and betrayal.

Do I cheer with joy that People magazine is featuring a story of Black Market adoptions on Thanksgiving day... about Seymour Fenchel adoptees and their quest to find their parents.

Do I celebrate another "victory" as another state "allows" their adult adoptees a right that never should be denied any adopted person anywhere while in the majority of states they are still discriminated against and every day children's birth certificates are being wiped clean, erased, hidden from them and new falsified birth certificates are issued in their stead?

Am I filled with joy that the story of more than 300,000 babies stolen in Spain's has been uncovered or sickened that it happened? Glad that people like E.J. Graff, and Erin Siegel, two objective, credible, respected "outsiders" have picked up the mantel and are joining us in exposing the ugly truths of adoption?

Perhaps I can celebrate at the grave of my daughter or her empty chair at our family Thanksgiving.

The US "celebrates" adoption. Business as usual. Keep the babies flowing. Hooray! Our gvt. encourages and promotes it with tax benefits that are supposed to help the kids in foster care who could be adopted, but most of goes to continue the scourge of international trafficking in children, exploitation, coercion and commodification of children.

Angry and Bitter?

My right to be an angry truth-teller began long before my daughter's untimely death. It came from having been brainwashed into believing that my daughter, my previous baby, my flesh and blood would be "better off" if I signed her life away to total strangers who were somehow more "deserving" than I when I had done no harm to my child - just given her life. How bizarre a concept is that? And I was further made to believe that I would be the selfish one for trying to keep my own child, not those who sought her.

Those who took my baby from me took so much more. They took my soul and they took future. For despite going on to marry (despite being told that if I ever told anyone, even the man I planned to marry, I’d be scorned and he wouldn’t want to marry me), having 3 more kids, becoming PTA VP and scout leader and everything else one is "supposed to” do...I never forgot. Not for one second. It gnawed at me and replaced any self-confidence I might have had with shame and guilt. I lived hearing that "any dog can be a mother." And when I was blessed to find I was not the only woman in the world to have done such a horrid thing as give away my own child, I found more horror than I thought imaginable and feared for my daughter's well-being. I quickly learned that there is no guarantee of a "better life" - mothers I knew found that their children had died and they were never told; others found their kids were abandoned by their adopters - some were able to adopt their own children! I learned of adopted children being beaten, starved, caged, sexually abused....My insides scream every day for the horrors of the unregulated crap shoot that is adoption!

And now, in the end, I live eternally wondering if my own precious daughter would be alive today had I not yielded to the pressure to sign her life away. And I will never know...........Bitter? Angry? I think I've earned the right. Happy, happy happy adoption month? NOT! Adoption is not sum zero win-win. It is very much a win-loose. It takes from the poor and gives to the rich. It exploits poverty and powerlessness.

It's all smoke and mirrors and it is upside down and... backwards. They convince you that black is white, that evil is good and good is evil. They play on our weaknesses – the mothers who take and the mothers who loose - the middlemen of flesh peddlers. And, like all good sociopaths they come to believe their own lies feeling smug about doing something "righteous." Like politicians who label bombs "peace keepers" they sugar coat their destruction with words of "rescue" and label children with families "orphans" to justify the madness that feeds them and fattens their wallets.

We must do more than eloquently express our righteous indignation. We must go beyond sharing and commiserating with one another. Australia apologized and changed its ways! The Grandmothers in the Plaza are being heard at LONG last! And countries are closing down IA. We must keep up the pressure and never stop until we weed out all the baby brokers and put some regulations in place....and for God sake, allow adoptees their birthright and stop falsifying birth certificates! Get the lies and secrets out of adoption!

How can any adoption be called "ethical" when it starts with a falsified birth certificate? We must hold EBDAI and others who claim to want adoption made ethical to that moral standard and accept no less. Taking away a person's identity and heritage is what was done to Africans brought here on slave ships, who like adoptees were held up and priced by their health and strength; their age and gender. How can we call ourselves a nation who has evolved if we are still today doing the same thing to human beings and calling it "rescuing" them and admiring those who benefit from it?

I do not celebrate adoption day or month. I do no celebrate adoption. I do not celebrate adoption I deplore the destruction of families to meet a demand. The eradication of reality. I MOURN and I commiserate with all for whom it is a sad reminder of all they've lost because of adoption and the pain and grief we suffer. I can no more celebrate adoption than I would celebrate any war, genocide or natural disaster that took lives and left untold numbers wounded and bleeding...bereft of family.

We as a society do not celebrate or encourage divorce without just cause, even though many divorces lead to reformed marriages and families. And when a marriage fails, it is mandated by law that the custody of the children be shared. Unless a parent is declared unfit their right to visitation is protected and inference with it is a felony - recognizing the sanctity of motherhood and fatherhood and right of a child to his heritage and origins. Not so in adoption whihc destroys all reality, wipes the slate clean, leaving a void.

My prayers to every new family unnecessarily torn apart because of social mores, poverty, and worst of all - to meet a demand! May every person who has in any way contributed to destroying lives via adoption meet their justice in hell!

Fund Raising For Adoption

2011-11-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

The latest couple to get a big write-up in their local paper for their noble fund raising for adoption are Mike and Stephanie Giorgianni of Danville, VA.

"Adopting a child can cost a lot of money. So the Giorgiannis have organized several fundraising events to help bring them a child they always wanted."

"Always" that is, after eight years of trying to have one of their own! Ad, they decided to go internationally because they believe they will get a "better cared for" child! You know, like a car that's been garaged. You can read it all here.

So they selling adoption tee shirts and holding a yard sale to raise $50,000 to get the designer baby of their preference. But being the do-gooders they are, their goal is also to increase awareness of all the children that need adopting, including the ones they refuse to adopt here at home! Perhaps they can sell shirts that say "Do as we say, not as we do" ...or, simply "Baby Buyers!"

My reply to them, to those who might fall for this money-raising scheme and support this baby buying, and any others who might join the fray of those who fund-raise for adoption:

This couple is misinformed and disseminating miss-information. Adoption does not have to be costly at all. There are approx 120,000 children in US foster care that can be adopted for fees so minimal anyone could easily afford them. Yes, they are generally older and some have disabilities, but so too do chidlren coming from overseas. Remember the boy sent back to Russia because his mother couldn't handle him? That's not uncommon. Children coming out of orphanages are "damaged", many have fetal alcohol syndrome, difficulty bonding, or other health issues and you take them as they come. Foster care children you can meet and take them as a foster child and see how they fit in your family. Also, many foster adoptions come with subsidies to cover their health or learning disabilities while International adoptions do not.

Additionally, the myth that you are "rescuing" 'unwanted" children "languishing" in orphanages is just that: a myth. An intentional distrotion of statistics. 90% of children in orphanages worldwide have at least one parent and are not eligible for adoption because people in other parts of the world use these places for temporary care, for medical treatment or education they cannot otherwise afford but have no intention of letting their children be adopted as was the case with the wto children Madonna adopted. There, as here, the only children languishing in orphanages are older or disabled children. You can read it clearly in the book The Brotherhood Of Joseph, how they turned their back on an orphanges full of "older' toddlers and children to get one fresh form the oven.

The tens of thousands of dollars Americans and Western Europeans spend to adopt actually feeds the corrupt world of child traffickers who steal, coerce, dupe or kidnap children from living, caring mothers to sell to orphanages with forged papers, claiming the child was abandoned. This corruption has been found and has stopped adoptions from China, Vietnam, Guatemala, Ethiopia and many other parts of the world. Such fees also keep nationals from adopting their own as they cannot compete. Taking children one at a time does nothing to ameliorate the poverty of their family, village or nation. It is far more humanitarian to spend that kind of money to dig a well, build a school or buy medicine than take a child from his culture and heritage, his family and kin and risk taking a child that might have been kidnapped as happened to the Monahans who have been ordered to return their adopted daughter to Guatemala (google it).

Fund raisers should be held to help the poor, in every part of the world, including the US. They should be held to help a mother to keep her child not used to help TAKE a child, exploiting the mother's crisis and commodifying her child. Poverty is the number one reasons for ALL adoptions worldwide, outweighing all other causes (such as abuse or neglect) combined. Taking from the poor and benefitting form their misery is not altruistic, it's man and women's inhumanity to mothers and children.

----------------

Is infertility sad? Yes. But so is blindness or being an amuptee but we don't go out and raise funds to buy limbs or eyes from the poor!

Am I without compassion for couples like this yearing to be parents? No, I am not. But they can foster or foster-adopt. They can be big bothers and big sisters. The can support children in need through programs like UNICEF, SOS for Children, Save the Children - charities that ork on rhe ground with these impoverished families and knw that the real way to help is not to buy a child and support corrupt child traffickers but to help so many more.

Remember, no matter how ethical and reputable the agency you are delaing with int he US, they may not know the real origins of the child they are helping to procure from overseas. papers get forged. Any child can ve stolen and claimed to have been abandoned. In countries that have ceased international adoptions, the number of alleged "abandoned" chidlren dropped to almost zero and when adoptions resumed so too did the claims of abandoment!

Many people have adopted through so-called repuatbel agencies and discovered to their horror that the child they adopted had been stolen.
READ:
Orphaned or Stolen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/schuster-institute-for-investigative-journalism/orphaned-or-stolen-the-us_b_825451.html

Duped by Indian adoption agency, US family cautions couples. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Duped-by-Indian-adoption-agency-US-family-cautions-couples/articleshow/5964751.cms

Read Julia Rollings story at: http://bittersweet-story.blogspot.com/

Read also: The Lie We Love by E.J.Graff http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2008/12/11/the-lie-we-love

The works of David Smolin on child trafficking: works.bepress.com/david_smolin/1/

Re China, read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/adoption-stories/200909/la-times-chinese-babies-stolen-foreign-adoption

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/5824/

http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/juliafuller/was-baby-you-adopted-china-stolen-or-purchased

Re Ethiopia: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/05/must-see-video-news-report-about-child.html

http://www.ethicanet.org/ethiopia-to-cut-foreign-adoptions-by-up-to-90-percent

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .” The Special Rapporteur, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.

"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery." UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.

Sandusky Angel in Adoption Award Rescinded

2011-11-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

A Washington non-profit group has rescinded a 2002 "Angels in Adoption" award presented to former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse of young boys.

"As an organization that fights to stop child abuse, our thoughts and prayers are with the children harmed and the families affected by his alleged actions," the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute said in a statement released Thursday. "This tragedy underscores how important it is to have a foster care system that ensures our most vulnerable children have a safe and stable environment in which to grow."

The group said it was acting to "preserve the inegrity" of the Angels in Adoption Award, which has been presented since 1998 to 1,800 people and organizations who have done exemplary work to help children in need of loving homes.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a current candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, sponsored the Sanduskys for the award. Santorum has said he is sickened by the allegations and the scandal at his alma matter.

Sandusky was widely admired in the state and nationally for his post-football charitable work, a reminder that alleged child predators can lurk anywhere.

Adoption and Child Abuse

2011-11-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

Lisa Belkin addresses the connection between adoption and child abuse in a recent Huffington Post column and relates it to attachment disorder.

The sad reality is that more than 226 children MURDERED by adoptive or foster parent abuse are identified here by Pound Puppy Legacy.

The public often calls these atrocities, anomalies. Yet, the 226 plus listed on the Pound Puppy post these are just those who actually died as a result of being beaten, caged, starved, tortured, beaten...Many more have survived such torment including sexual abuse.

In my 1988 book "shedding light on the Dark Side of Adoption" I first called attention to this phenomenon and called for research into the question posed about abuse rates in adoptive families. After all, it is a known fact that sexual and other abuses are far more common in foster families than the general populace. Belkin identified one of the pieces of the puzzle of why people who go out of their way to be parents, pay huge fees to adopt in some cases, and are alleged to be motivated...why they would harm children trusted to them. The other part of the puzzle is the reason identified for abuse in foster homes: absence of kinship.

Children born into their families often act out. However, there is the ability to see some of oneself or another relative in their independence, defiance or rebelliousness and even admire that spark. In unrelated children there is a fear of what it might lead to. Did the child inherit "bad blood"? What is he capable of? There is fear of the unknown possibilities with a child who is, after all, not your flesh and blood.

Surely absence of kinship increases the risk of sexual abuse and there are no taboos against sex with an unrelated person in your home, despite taboos and laws against pedophilia. Just ask Woody Allen. Adopted children are at risk for sexual abuse from parents as well as siblings. Yet no one is admitting these risk factors or researching their prevalence.

Penn State's Jerry Sandusky who adopted six children and took in untold numbers of foster children is the latest adoptive father charged with sexual misconduct with children. The latest, but not the first and unfotunately, not the last. In 2008 Stephen Frank Karban, of Arizona, adoptive father to nine children, was charged with 14 counts of criminal sexual conduct.

There are two reasons we turn a blind eye to these abuses that are glaring in our face once again with the headlines about Sandowsky.

The first reason is one that a publisher told me when rejecting The Dark Side. He said that adoption is society's fall back position and we do not want to see any flaws in it.

The other reason is that it is a mega billion dollar industry and like all such money-makers has lobbyists who convince lawmakers to keep passing legislationn to make it easier to adopt and provide incentives and benefits such as huge tax credits, most of which goes to international adoption despite being presented as a way to help the foster child population be adopted.

We must stop looking away and ignoring....we must stop continuing to encourage adoption and market it as a win-win.

NOTE to those who want to comment: There is no need to tell me that you are happily adopted. The fact that there are happily married people does not negate the enormous number of failed marriages and the pain divorce causes families and children. We do NOT encourage divorce for this reason.

If you are happily adopted, count your blessings. Adoption is nothing more than a crap shoot. You could just as easily have been another casualty.

Sandusky update: Sandusky Scandal Could be Linked Back to Possible Abuse of Adopted Son in 1995: Report

10/14 UPDATE: Sandusky's Angel in Adoption Award Rescinded

2011-11-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH, 2011

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As a Nation, one of our highest responsibilities is to ensure the health and well-being of our children.

Really? Then why not help mothers in crisis instead of legalizing and encouraging abandonment through "Safe Havens" and allowing untrained adoption practitioners working in unregulated adoption agencies to find legal loopholes to exploit and coerce mothers in crisis who are not provided free legal counsel as are those charged with criminal offenses.

While Australia apologizes for past forced adoptions and has stopped those practices, it is business as usual here in the states, Mr.President, with mothers being offered "open adoptions" without being informed that the contact agreements are unenforceable.

With generous hearts and open minds, we strive to make sure all children grow up knowing they have a family that shares with them the warmth, security, and unconditional love that will help them succeed. And yet, more than 100,000 children in America await this most basic support, and still more children abroad live without families. During National Adoption Month, we celebrate the acts of compassion and love that unite children with adoptive families, and we rededicate ourselves to the essential task of providing all children with the comfort and safety of a permanent home.

Why, Mr. President, are we as a antion not making more attempts to locate extended family for these children and supporting them to love and care for their own kin? Stranger foster parents and some adopters receive fnaicla aid not available to grandparents or other natural family who might likewise be able to provide the love and care with that help.

The decision to adopt a child has brought profound joy and meaning into the lives of Americans across our country.

Yes it does! But it does so only as a result of the loss, spearation and lifelong pain of the families who are torn apart as a aresult of not receivng the asistsance they needed to remain intact. Every adoptionbegins with a traegdy and creates lifelong irreversiblee grief and feelings of rejection and abandonment. It is second best for all parties and sgould be a last resort, not something encouraged with tax dollars.

Parents are moved to adopt for reasons as unique and varied as the children they embrace, but they are unified by the remarkable grace of their acts. Adoptive families come in all forms. With so many children waiting for loving homes, it is important to ensure that all qualified caregivers are given the opportunity to serve as adoptive parents, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or marital status.

What about more opportunities for naturual familes? What about stopping the attack on father's rights, particualrly in the state of Utah? Why not care enough about the process of adoption to set up federal regulation of thenearly 5 billion dollar loosly regulated adoption indusrty that handles interstate and international import and expost of children?

My Administration remains steadfast in our support of adoptive families and children in need of homes.

But does little to nothign to assista and protect natrual families.

Earlier this year, I signed the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act, which reauthorizes child welfare programs and makes new provisions to help reduce the amount of time young children are without permanent families. I also signed the Healthy, Hunger¬-Free Kids Act to provide balanced, nutritious meals to all children in the foster care system. Last year, during National Adoption Month, I signed the International Adoption Simplification Act, which removed unnecessary regulations and barriers to international adoption.

Yeah, that's the ticket - remove "barriers." Keep the pipline flowing eventhoughthe adoption of chidlren form outside the US is totally contrary to help[ing the childrne in foster care find "permanent fmailies" as you claim is you claim is your goal and primary concern.

These efforts come in addition to the Adoption Tax Credit, which was extended and expanded as part of the Affordable Care Act to make adoption more accessible to American families. Through these key pieces of legislation, my Administration is moving forward with our commitment to stand with youth in foster care and find new ways to encourage adoption.

Oh yes, $13000+, plus, plus, plus for adopters!

Adoption has become a part of many Americans' lives and has contributed to the character of our Nation.

A nation continueing to do what Australia has apologized for doing, instead of prioritizing Family Preservation.

As parents and as family members, it is our task to do all we can to give our children the very best.

Why not give adopted citizens access to thir own originalirth certificate then? How is it "best" to deny all American adopted coitzens the same rights all other non-adopted citizens have?

In caring for our youth and putting them before ourselves, we make a lasting investment not only in their future, but also in the prosperity and strength of our Nation in the years to come. This month and throughout the year, let us recommit to ensuring every child is given the sustaining love of family, the assurance of a permanent home, and the supportive upbringing they deserve.

Sustaining love? Sustaining, really? By encouraging them to be taken from their first families and given to new ones? By encouraging states with financial incentives to move them as quickly as possible through the system so their natural families cannot disprove false allegations?

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim November 2011 as National Adoption Month. I encourage all Americans to observe this month by answering the call to find homes for every child in America in need of a permanent and caring family, and to support the families who care for them.

Support ALL families, Mr. President, especially those struggling. The number one reasons for adoption placements if poverty!! Additionally, I urge you to read the report, "Shattered Families: The perilous intersection of immigration enforcement and the child welfare system" by the Applied Research Center. There are at least 5,100 children currently living in foster care who are prevented from uniting with their detained or deported parents and if nothing changes, 15,000 more children may face a similar fate in the next 5 years.

Families are more likely to be separated where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement.
Immigrant victims of domestic violence are at particular risk of losing their children
ICE detention obstructs participation in Child Protective Services' plans for family unity.*

Stop giving tax incentives for infant and international adoptions!

Recognize the rights of adopted persons as equal to non-adopted!

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

* More about immigration and child welfare here.

Nature versus Nurture

2011-10-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

The eternal struggle between nature and nurture has at long last been resolved, folks!

Here is how it goes:

Good traits, such as Steve Jobs becoming a "genius" and billionaire and successful innovative businessman are attributed to adoption saving his life from an abortion his loving parents never considered.

But Joshua Komisarjevsky, the adoptee turned mastermind monster house intruder, rapist, murderer, arsonist? What about people like Joshua who, despite being "saved" by adoption don't turn out too well?

Well, folks...here is the answer to this dilemma. It's really quite simple!

It's only "nature" or "in the blood" when it's bad.

When it's a good, well then it's obviously "nurture".

Thats how DNA works, don't ya' know?

See. the environment in which Komisarjevsky was raised - an environment that allowed him to be raped by a foster sibling - known to is adopters and ignored, who then likewise chose to ignore that by 9, he was peeking into girls' dressing rooms, peeping into the windows of people's homes and stealing panties off clotheslines. Finally, the did nothing when he molested of his sister...the environment that sought no psychological counseling for any of those events or his decent into burglary, preceding his monumental headline garnering act of monstrosity...ignored it all and PRAYED....none of that is responsible for his actions.

David Kirschner who reviewed the forensic psyche evalualtion for Joshua's trial said that there was "not a word about adoption, no analysis of [adoptive] family dynamics (and pathology), not a clue, re; motivation for the killings, etc., etc.

"This case is all about adoption pathology, and a bizarre [adoptive] family. I'd bet the ranch that his [adoptive parents] raised him to be born again (tabula rasa, re: any birth parents) into their born again delusional system."

But, on the other hand.... Steve Jobs - and the world - should to be thankful he wasn't aborted by parents who cared so much about his well-being they put caveats on his adoption regarding a college education for their son - an act they were forced into by being disallowed to marry.

Abulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble Simpson

Jobs' father, Jandali, was born in Syria to a wealthy landowner. At 18, he left Syria to Beirut to continue his studies at the American University of Beirut. He later immigrated to America and attended school in Wisconsin where he met and dated Jobs' mother, a German-Swiss woman, Joanne Carol Schieble. Her her conservative father refused to allow her to marry Jandali. They married a few months after Jobs' adoption and a year later had his sister, Mona. After a trip back to Syria to find a job, Jandali returned to the US where he was employed as an assistant professor at Michigan University and later Nevada University. He later owned and operated a restaurant and was the Vice Chairman of the Boomtown Casino and Hotel in Reno, Nevada, displaying both book knowledge and a sense of business.

His adoptive father, a mechanic. His blood sister, Mona Simspron, a nocelist.

And let's just ignore the fact that:

The results of this study indicate that genes significantly influence white matter density of the superior occipitofrontal fascicle, corpus callosum, optic radiation, and corticospinal tract, as well as gray matter density of the medial frontal, superior frontal, superior temporal, occipital, postcentral, posterior cingulate, and parahippocampal cortices. Moreover, the results show that intelligence shares a common genetic origin with superior occipitofrontal, callosal, and left optical radiation white matter and frontal, occipital, and parahippocampal gray matter (phenotypic correlations up to 0.35).
These findings point to a neural network that shares a common genetic origin with human intelligence. Thus, it seems that the individual variation in morphology of areas involved in attention, language, visual, and emotional processing, as well as in sensorimotor processing are strongly genetically influenced.

As per Time Magazine, March 11, 1940: A few years ago a psychologist named Harold Manville Skeels, a professor at University of Iowa, was assigned by the State to advise the State orphanage. He found that the orphanage was sending babies (mostly bastards) born of feeble-minded parents to highly intelligent families for adoption. Horrified, Dr. Skeels hurried forth to see how much damage had been done. He gave the adopted children intelligence tests. To his surprise, their average I.Q. was 115, well above normal (100). Not one was dull.

Adoption is built on lies and fantasies and has nothing but more lies an fantasies to support its continuation! Yet the public buys it as a "win-win" and refuses to peak behind the smoke screen curtain or admit that the emperor of adoption is naked as a jay bird...and selling lies along with babies!

I just have one question for all the die-hard kool aid drinking "believers" of these fantasies: If adoption is so wonderful, why doesn't everyone give their children away to be raised by others???

I mean especially the poor...why not take every child from a welfare family and give it to a working family?

Then take all the children of the working class and give them to the upper middle class?

Any child riding to school in a mini-van deserves a chauffeur driven limo! Children deprived of music and dance lessons - well, that's simply unacceptable and selfish of their parents when adoption could offer them"better lives"! And chores? they should be done by the "staff" not chidlren.

It's "win-win" -- especially for those whose livelihood depends on the redistribution of children!

So let's just keep white-washing the pain, and grief, and loss....the feelings of abandonment...the rejection...the identity crisis...and all the other harm of adoption....ignore the vital medical histories that are lost....turn a blind eye to the children who are stolen or kidnapped, or their mothers coerced or duped, lied to, told their kids are going to America for an education...just ignore all the negatives and focus instead on pretend "advantages."

Yeah, that's the ticket. And remember, if you adopt and your kid turns out to be a killer, it's not your fault. It's "bad blood." But if he's a genius or a really good, noble altruistic person, then all praise to you! For you who adopt - it truly is a "win-win." You can't loose. You get praise and if it fails, you get sympathy. After all, everyone would know you did your best with what you had to work with.

For those who are adopted and loose their heritage and have their losses buried and never recognized - just be GRATEFUL - you weren't aborted!

Parents who lose their kids to adoption also need to be thankful that someone else took their "problem" off their hands! They need to remain silent and stop any complaining because after all, their kids are being given a "better life" with far better material advantages than they could have given them.

Hallelujah! All priase adoption!

Charges in the Kidnap and Adoption of Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez

2011-10-25T01:04:00.000-07:00

As you may recall, Timothy and Jennifer Monahan, of Kansas, have been ordered by the Guatemalan government to return the child they adopted. They have been stalling, and the US has failed to force the issue.

Anyelí Liseth Hernández Rodríguez, reported kidnapped in Guatemala in 2006,

was tracked to an orphanage, then to the US where she had been adopted.

After months of hiding from the press, the couple, have come forward on the CBS Early Show.

They are making claims of physical abuse, implying that her mother, Lyoda Rodriguez, is unfit to have her kidnapped child returned. An absurd claim since the child was in the hands of kidnappers for more than a year and likely was hurt by them.

The reason for this desperate act now? The arrest of those involved in the kidnapping the Monahan's call "alleged":

(AP) GUATEMALA CITY — A Guatemalan court sentenced two women to 16 and 21 years in prison on Monday for trafficking a stolen baby who was given for adoption to a U.S. family.

Special prosecutor Lorena Maldonado said the sentences handed down to a lawyer and the legal representative of an adoption agency will reinforce the birth mother's bid to get her daughter returned from the United States.

"Even though the criminal proceedings are separate from the adoption process, these sentences help, and confirm the argument of the mother, Loyda Rodriguez, that this girl is her daughter and was stolen from in front of her house, and that there is a criminal structure in Guatemala that steals children," said Maldonado.

The Eighth Penal Tribunal sentenced lawyer Beatriz Valle Flores to 21 years in prison for human trafficking, criminal association and using false documents. She signed papers in the adoption.

A 16-year sentence went to the legal representative of the adoption agency, Enriqueta Noriega Cano, where the girl spent a year before being adopted. The girl left the country on Dec. 9, 2008.

Both women were also ordered to pay 100,000 quetzales ($25,600) apiece to the mother for damages.

Rodriguez, the mother, obtained a Guatemalan court order in July for the return of the seven-year-old, but it is unclear if it can be enforced.

The girl, Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez was born Oct. 1, 2004, the second child of Rodriguez, a housewife, and her bricklayer husband, Dayner Orlando Hernandez. The girl disappeared Nov. 3, 2006, as Rodriguez was distracted while opening the door to their house in a working class suburb, San Miguel Petapa. She turned to see a woman whisk the girl, then two, away in a taxi.

If U.S. authorities intervene to return the child as the Guatemalan court has asked, it would be a first for any international adoption case, experts say.

In August, a construction-paper sign taped to the door of the girl's U.S. address, a two-story suburban Kansas City home, read: "Please respect our families (sic) privacy during this difficult and confusing time. We ask that you not trespass on our property for the sake of our children. Thank you."

Guatemala's quick adoptions once made this Central American nation of 13 million people a top source of children for the U.S., leading or ranking second only to China with about 4,000 adoptions a year. But the Guatemalan government suspended adoptions in late 2007 after widespread cases of fraud, including falsified paperwork, fake birth certificates and charges of baby theft — though they still allowed many already in process.

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, a U.N.-created agency prosecuting organized crime cases in Guatemala, has reviewed more than 3,000 adoptions completed or in process and found nearly 100 grave irregularities.

The U.S. still does not allow adoptions from Guatemala, though the State Department is currently assisting with 397 children whose adoptions were in process at the time of the ban.

Update on Steve Jobs

2011-10-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I wrote about Steve Jobs and how he's been shamelessly used as a poster child for anti-abortionists, without anyone knowing if he was pro-choice or pro-life (though being part hippie-free-thinker-rebel, my guess is the former).

Tonight, 60-Minutes, CBS, aired a segment featuring the author of Jobs' biography, Walter Isaacson, with excerpts of tapped interviews in Jobs own voice.

He spoke of the the first time he told someone he was adopted.

JOBS: I was, I remember right here on my lawn, telling Lisa McMoylar from across the street that I was adopted. And she said, "So does that mean your real parents didn't want you?" Ooooh, lightning bolts went off in my head. I remember running into the house, I think I was like crying, asking my parents. And they sat me down and they said, "No, you don't understand. We specifically picked you out."

ISAACSON: He said, "From then on, I realized that I was not — just abandoned. I was chosen. I was special." And I think that's the key to understanding Steve Jobs.
Isaacson relates much of Jobs personality and behavior to his feeling abandoned on one hand, and special and chosen on the other: a rebel who took LSD and went to work barefoot and traveled to India to find spirituality.... he was also abrasive and lacking compassion. He denied his firstborn, born out of wedlock, for many years.

60 Minutes' STEVE KROFT: Explain to me how somebody who was a hippie, a college dropout, somebody who drops LSD and marijuana goes off to India and comes back deciding he wants to be a businessman?

ISAACSON: Jobs has within him sort of this conflict, but he doesn’t quite see it as a conflict between being hippie-ish and anti-materialistic but wanting to sell things like Wozniak’s board. Wanting to create a business. And I think that’s exactly what Silicon Valley was all about in those days … And Steve Jobs wasn’t all that eager to be an employee at Hewlett-Packard.

He is also described as the quintessential "Reality Distortion Fielder." Could that not be because he lived a life of distorted reality as an adoptee??

I found out tonight that it was Jobs who initiated the search for his parents in 1980. He met his mother who introduced him to his full sister and they hit it off. He learned about his father and discovered he had actually met the restaurant owner, but decided he "didn't like what he found about him" and thus chose to never meet him.

Advice for an Expectant Mom Considering Adoption

2011-10-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

I volunteer for an online advise service called Elder Wisdom Circle. Elder, 60 and over, reply to questions submitted from advise-seekers of all ages. Many are broken hearts, some are teen troubles, many are marriages on the rocks, parenting issues and issues with parents, school, or even how-to advise. Some are seriously hurting, in abusive relationships or families, even suicidal. Some are very much down on their luck financially as a result of job layoffs and the economy.

Yesterday, I replied to a 22-year-old woman who is pregnant. The father of her baby was a long-time friend who was regrettably using drugs. albeit promising to stop. Her family and his were supportive of her keeping the baby, and yet she was considering placing I for adoption.

I wrote the lengthiest reply I had ever written in the year or so I've been doing this. I took a risk in telling her all the reasons she might adoption because all of our letters are reviewed by a quality control team before being sent and I feared they night see it as "slanted" against adoption; lacking "balance."

I referred "Sara" to Origins-USA, Inc. and in particular their list of resources for expectant moms. Here's what I wrote:

You have explained the situation very well and I understand. I understand very well.

You need to separate issues. The three do not have to be connected.

1. You are a mom-to be. You are expecting a baby.

2. The father of the baby is an addict who may or may not get clean.

3. You and your best friend may have outgrown one another.

The baby is the most important part of this equation, so I will deal with that first. Your baby is the only one here who is totally innocent and who needs you! You have family support; you can do this!

The very first thing you need to do is get healthy prenatal care. Take care of yourself and that baby growing inside you. You do not need to make any decisions about adoption until you meet your baby and hold him in your arms. Right now, it is not a reality, and you cannot and should not make any decisions that will impact both of your lives for ever.

You are considering adoption and many people may tell you that it is the most unselfish thing you can do. They will tell you how many loving couples would love to have your baby. That is true, but not your problem. People may tell you that it is selfish of you to keep your baby; that he or she deserves a mother and father who can provide more than you can.

The first thing you need to know is that adoption is a multibillion dollar industry. Your baby is a much sought-after "commodity"! As a result you will be getting a lot of pressure from many sides.

It is not selfish to want your own baby. It is natural. Further, adoption does not guarantee a "better" family for your child. Adoptive parents die and divorce and can leave your child with a single parent, while you may be married and stable. The fact is that there are no guarantees in adoption.

Most domestic adoptions in the US today are "open adoptions." I think that is also true in most of the UK as well. There are degrees of openness, however, so there are many questions you need to clarify. Getting to pick adoptive parents from photos and bios is pretty much standard today. But choosing them and even getting to meet the adoptive parents prior to the birth and adoption is merely an "identified" adoption. Be aware too, that it can complicate your ability to make an informed objective decision by getting too enmeshed with prospective adopters. Many mothers report that they went through with adoptions they didn't want to to because they felt "obligated" and "indebted."

Beyond identified adoption there is semi-open adoption which involves contact via letters and photos from the adoptive parents on various schedules such as yearly. Fully open adoption consists of actual visits with you and your child with his new family, again on preset schedule that the adoptive parents decide upon.

Adoption experts all agree that openness and honesty is healthier for all the parties in adoption, as opposed to closed, secretive adoption - which is still a choice. But these arrangements are not without problems that you need to consider.

First, open adoption contact agreements are unenforceable in most US states. Please be sure to check the laws in your locale. Even when agreements are legally drawn up and notarized, they are merely promises. Open adoption is not joint custody as takes place in divorce. In divorce both parents maintain parental rights and interfering with visitation is a criminal offense. Every adoption - even open adoptions - begins with you signing a relinquishment of parental rights. You give up ALL of your rights as a parent and the adoptive parents have all the rights. Thus, if they decide not to continue allowing visitation, they can stop them. They are the parents and you are not.

Also, often times mothers who relinquish their babies in open adoption, find that they cannot continue with visitation. They find it too painful to watch their baby calling someone else Mommy and running to another when they're crying. Others have to stop because of the distance and cost of traveling to visit, or it simply interferes with their schooling or career.

Much has been written about the feelings of rejection and abandonment adoptees suffer in traditional closed adoptions, in addition to difficult identity crisis. It adds an extra burden to the teen years and beyond. Little has been studied about children growing up in open adoptions. In the days of closed, secret adoptions adoptees were told that their mothers were generally too young to keep them. As they grew they learned to understand that back in the previous generation single parenthood was not accepted. It was shameful and society demanded "unwed others" be sent away and place their children.

But today things are different and children - your child - will have to deal with understanding why a capable 22 year-old with family support CHOSE not to keep them. What will you tell him or her when he or she asks that? If you are fortunate enough to have any subsequent children later on, what will you tell them?

What will you do if you are promised an open adoption, and then as often happens, it fails to remain open? Many mothers to whom this has happened feel devastated and deceived. Or, how would you feel if you find it too painful to see your child with another mother?

These are the serious issues you need to think about. Remember that there are many sharks out there seeking babies for adoption. The average fees paid to adopt today are approximately $40,000. Adoption agencies advertise online pretending to want to help you. They will offer to pay all of your medical expenses and more. Be cautious!

To speak with mothers who have been through this and can offer you insight without any agenda, contact: http://originsusa.memberlodge.org/. They have a direct link to support services for mothers-to-be and single moms that will help you without trying to persuade you in any direction: http://originsusa.memberlodge.org

/Resources_to_Help_You_Keep_Your_Baby. You can also find support at: Family Preservation.blogspot.com and for assistance in Canada, contact http://www.originscanada.org/. In New South Wales: http://www.originsnsw.com/

As for Z, it is his baby too. Hopefully, he will get clean and stay clean, but maybe he won't or won't for many years. You need to do what is best and your baby and make that plan not expecting much from Z. His addiction is his and you cannot help him. It is too easy for you to fall back into his charms and wind up enabling him. If he stays in your life in any capacity, I strongly urge you to attend some Al-Anon 12-steps meetings and find out about enabling behaviors to avoid. Find a local meeting in the US at: www.al-anon.alateen.org/. In the UK: www.al-anonuk.org.uk/

But, regardless of whether he cleans up or not, and regardless if you stay with him or not, it is his child, too, and any decision about adoption concerns him. He must also consent. It is also your parents grandchild.

As for you friend, R, it sounds to me like you have outgrown her. It happens. You see her reliance on you now. Hopefully, you and she will be able to reshape your friendship in a different way.

I hope I have given you some food for thought and offered you some resources for support. There is a lot of support for you and your baby! I wish you both the best! Please feel free to write again.

Best Regards,

I pressed send and crossed my fingers that it would not get bounced, or I'd not get asked to tone it down...

And then I got this reply from "Sara":

Thank you so much for your advice. I've read it several times and I am continuing to absorb it. I will think very hard about the things you have mentioned. This website is wonderful and the advice is very helpful. Surely I will email again! I'm happy these sorts of places exist because there are truly so many people who just need an outside source to give them some form of input.

Thanks again!!!!

One such save makes my day, month, year! If you are over 60, competent with the computer and want to help others, consider volunteering at Elder Wisdom Circle. I find it very rewarding!

P.S. I hope "Sara" - and others in her situation - find this site, this post and me. It was very helpful having so many resources all in one place, at Origins-USA, to give mothers in need of this information.

I hope you will bookmark this page and the resource list.

Greed and Grandchildren: The Madoff Legacy

2011-10-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Bernie Madoff has been called on the world's most hated people for the $64 billion he stole in his major ponzie schemes. But that just money. I've felt minimal sympathy for his victims who were looking for a get rich quick scheme.

The real crime and suffering he caused was to his own family, and the ripples have left his two grandchildren fatherless and without contact with their paternal grandfather or grandmother. All for greed.

Stephanie Madoff Mack, 37, was married to Bernie's son Mark. Widowed with two children, she is releasing a book in which she describes the pain Bernie's crimes - or more accurately his scandalous admission and imprisonment for 150 years - caused his son. Mark was so devastated he killed himself leaving a note making it clear that it was a direct result of his father's actions.

"I hate Bernie Madoff," said the Madoff Mack widowed daughter-in-law. "If I saw Bernie Madoff right now, I would tell him that I hold him fully responsible for killing my husband, and I'd spit in his face."

hanged himself in December 2010 inside their SoHo apartment while their 2-year-old son, Nicholas, slept nearby. Mark Madoff, 46, had committed suicide while Mack and their daughter Audrey were away at Disney World.

Mack wrote that her husband struggled to keep it together emotionally -- although he had previously tried to kill himself in 2009 by trying to overdose on Ambien sleeping pills after the Ponzi scheme had been uncovered in December 2008.

She also said she has cut all contact with the children's grandmother, honoring her late husband's wishes.

How sad that these innocent children who already lost a parent are also being kept from their grandmother. How sad the toll being paid by Ruth Madoff, Bernie's wife of 52 years who divorced Bernie in August. She had not visited him since Mark took his life.

I would hope that with all the pain this family has suffered that grandmother and grandchildren could be reconciled. Ruth, who has already lost her son, does not deserve the punishment she is being dealt to be denied access to her grandchildren, nor do those children need to loose her.

Stephanie is understandably angry. Suicide leaves a legacy of anger and blame. In this case the blame is clear and justified as is the intensity of her anger. But why extend it to Ruth when the two women could instead help one another cope with the loss of the man they both loved, Mark and enjoy his children.

More importantly, why make the children suffer additional lost?

Book Give-Away!

2011-10-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

Well, practically being given away....

Get in on this incredible deal of overstocked copies of this groundbreaking expose!

Copies of THE STORK MARKET: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry are being made available at LESS THAN HALF PRICE through Amazon.com at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1427608954.

Click "Used" and then look for Direct-2-You and find BRAND NEW copies for just $7.50!!

Just in time for National Adoption Month you can obtain copies to send to lawmakers or donate to libraries.

Accompany your order with a reply here, and get your copy personalized AUTOGRAPHED.

For:

Anyone personally touched by adoption, or who knows someone who is

Anyone planning or considering adoption in their lives, or the lives of a love done

Social workers, attorneys, adoption facilitators and anyone working in the field of adoption

Teachers, psychologists, therapists, counselors who come in contact with adoptees, adoptive mothers and mothers who have relinquished for adoption

The general public, tax payers

Anyone interested in child protection and family preservation

The Stork Market is an in-depth examination of the corruption in the adoption industry: the fine line between black and gray market adoption; scams, coercion and exploitation in a market based on supply and demand with prices based on quality (i.e. age, skin color) of the merchandise and set as high as ‘desperate’ consumers are willing to pay.

The Stork Market exposes international trafficking where children are a commodity bought and sold to the highest bidders, including pedophiles. It challenges convention wisdom and myths that abound in regard adoption.

The Stork Market is extensively researched, documented and including interviews with the top adoption experts. The Stork Market asks if adoption can be fixed - the money aspect removed and government controls and regulations put in place - or abolished in favor of permanent guardianship, or informal adoption that does not involve the issuance of a falsified birth certificate present in current adoption to fortify myths of replicating creation.

The Stork Market foreword is by Evelyn Robinson, social worker, author from Australia, who brings with her an International perspective.

The Stork Market goes further and is more current than Riben’s groundbreaking, award-winning expose of the adoption industry, “shedding light on…The Dark Side of Adoption” (1988) which was excerpted in Social Issues Review Series, Utne Reader and Microcosm USA. The Stork Market reveals, for the first time in print, Riben’s role in the notorious Joel Steinberg murder case.

Read synopsis, contents and reviews at:
http://www.advocatepublications.com/index.php/the-stork-market/

Please feel free to share this notice with all adoption lists, etc.

Adoption Loss and PTSD

2011-10-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

Many mothers who have lot children to adoption - especially in the past when there was so much shame attached to an unintended pregnancy - suffer PTSD.

First was the fear of being pregnant and then the shock and disbelief of finding out their worst fear was true! Then came having to tell their parents, knowing thy had committed what was considered THE WORST thing any "good girl" could have done, even if they were raped. We were subjected to tirades of anger, shock, tears, disappointment and told that we were shaming the entire family!

May were denied marriage, some even denied to see their boyfriends again. others were deserted by boyfriends who denied the child was theirs or turned their backs on young women who loved them and believed their promises of forever love and marriage.

Some of these mothers were locked in their rooms for months. Others were shunned and sent away. many were imprisoned in unwed mothers' homes and forced to use an alias, never revealing their real name to the other "inmates." Some were sent to work houses or treated as maids in exchange for housing during their "term."

When they went into labor, mothers report being tied down. Many were insulted by cold, cruel nuns who told them this is what they deserve for not keeping their legs closed!

At the time of the birth some of these mothers had drapes up so they could not see their own child or even know its gender! Others had them torn from their arms.

They were told they were undeserving to be mothers and that their child deserved better. And, they were told by clergy of all denominations and social workers to never tell anyone lest they be rejected.

They then spent untold decades wondering if the child they bore was dead or alive, well card for or not...Looking at children who were the same age their child would then be...Annual anniversary depression....fears around having other children....tenseness every time asked the simple every day questions asked every woman: Do you have children? How many?

Many took very seriously the warning to keep their secret and never even told husbands, certainly not subsequent children, if they were able to have any.

Now, a study based on a survey of 566 patients concludes that survivors who had been diagnosed with cancer "can leave lasting psychological scars akin to those inflicted by war" or, in other words they suffer PTSD with symptoms from feeling jumpy to emotional numbness. One in 10 patients also said they avoided thinking about their cancer and one in 20 said they steered clear of situations or activities that reminded them of the disease.

Researchers estimated that 12 of the 566 patients had "full blown PTSD" involving a trio of symptoms, including avoidance, arousal and flashbacks and many more had one or more symptoms. Overall, half the patients had PTSD symptoms 13 years after diagnosis and symptoms worsened in 37 percent.

The study echoed the work of Condon who found that for some mothers their anger increased with time.

“A most striking finding in the present study is that the majority of these women reported no diminution of their sadness, anger and guilt over the considerable number of years which had elapsed since their relinquishment. A significant number actually re-ported an intensification of these feelings, especially anger.”

J. T. Condon, Psychological Disability in Birth Mothers.

“As I grew older, I gradually gained a cruelly clear perspective on what I had done. As I matured enough to think of myself as a possible parent, the ramifications of my youthful act – giving away my child – took on tragic proportions.”

Margaret Moorman, Waiting to Forget, p. 128

For the cancer patients many likewise seemed to have worsening PTSD with time.

It's just very stressful for people to be told that they have cancer," said Bonnie L. Green, a trauma expert who pioneered the study of PTSD in breast cancer survivors at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., told Reuters Health.

Sophia Smith from the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina said she had added concern for those with less support resources.

Which do you think is worse - being told you have cancer or discovering you are pregnant in a time when it was totally unaccepted and being told you you cannot keep your child and must give it away and never know anything about your child ever again, and you are expected to simply forget it ever happened and never speak of it again.... Which seem to inflict more powerful devastation to one's psyche?

The patients studied were cancer SURVIVORS. That means their cancer is now in remission or their tumors no longer can be seen on scans. For mothers who loose children to adoption, it never goes away. Our loss is akin to a mother whose child has been kidnapped, albeit, with the kidnapper's assurance that he or she will be well taken care of but with no way to know that it's true. Would anyone expect that kidnap victims have not suffered a trauma and one that would leave lasting effects.

And yes, for mothers ho lose children to adoption there is more loss than just her child. There is the eternal guilt of knowing, in the majority of cases, that she actually signed the papers. And it the loss of her self-esteem and self confidence having been told she shamed her family, needs to keep part of life a secret, and is not fit to parent her own child - without ever being given a chance to in most cases.

The birthmother's primary source of pain has been in the area of loss. She has not only suffered the loss of her child/ren, but the loss of her sense of wholeness, her sense of control over her life, and loss of self-esteem. In some cases she has lost a home or has lost or suffered damaged relationships with members of her family. Often she has lost identification with her mother as a role model. She has suffered loss of being accepted by society and loss of her adolescence, as well as loss of her sense of trust and self-worth.
This magnitude of loss is, to say the least, difficult for her to overcome. Sometimes the best a birthmother can do is to remain in denial and numbness for the rest of her adult life, unconsciously encumbered by her silent sorrow.

Davidson, Michelene K. Healing the Birthmother's Silent Sorrow. Progress: Family Systems Research and Therapy, 1994, Volume 3, (pp. 69-89). Encino, CA: Phillips Graduate Institute.

For more on the Lifelong, Unresolvable Grief of Loosing a Child to Adoption see: http://works.bepress.com/mirah_riben/23/

Help Stop Child Trafficking for Adoption

2011-10-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

Reprinted from Ethicanet.org

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be marking up the Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011, a lifesaving measure that establishes human trafficking as a crime in the

U.S. Ethica supports this measure, but we also think it could be strengthened with a tiny, one-line amendment that includes trafficking for the purposes of adoption in its language.
It seems crazy, but trafficking for the purposes of adoption – procuring a child through force, fraud, or coercion, and then finding her a new home overseas – is not seen as trafficking in the eyes of U.S. law.
Although the tactics traffickers use are identical whether the child is destined for the sex trade or a new home overseas, current law sees them as very different. Under current U.S. law, the ends justify the means.

Under current U.S. law, child traffickers like Lauryn Galindo, who brought almost 800 children into the U.S. from Cambodia on falsified paperwork, using such tactics as paying for the children with a bag of rice and telling their biological and adoptive parents lies about the children’s futures and histories, only go to jail for 18 months on charges of money laundering and visa fraud. Money laundering and visa fraud were certainly committed, but children lost their entire identities, too.

This type of horrific malfeasance has no place in the U.S. It is not an ethical adoption if the child was not intended to be adopted; it is not ethical adoption if the child or his or her parents were the victims of force, fraud, or coercion. This type of fraud is the type of fraud that shuts down entire country programs, as it has in Guatemala, Nepal, Vietnam, and Cambodia. This type of fraud must end.

Ethica believes this amendment can only strengthen intercountry adoption by giving federal authorities actual tools to prosecute offenders. Please join Ethica today in calling on Senate offices to include this small but urgent amendment in the language of the TVPRA of 2011. It is a tiny amendment meant to adjust the definition of trafficking, and it costs taxpayers no additional money. The language we are proposing is also very limited in scope; it would be very difficult for the language to be interpreted to mean anything other than outright criminal trafficking activity related to adoptions. Although we would be the first to say that this amendment is not a panacea for all that plagues intercountry adoption, it is a solid first step in the process to reforming the international adoption process.

Thank you for your continued commitment to ethical, transparent adoptions.

With gratitude,
Ethica Board of Directors

PLEASE CALL TODAY! THANK YOU!

Senator Klobuchar’s office
302 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3244
Fax: (202) 228-2186

Senator Leahy’s office
Washington D.C. Office
437 Russell Senate Bldg
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4242
Fax: (202) 224-3479

Senator Grassley’s office
135 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-3744
Fax: (202) 224-6020

Senate Judiciary Committee
Majority side: (202) 224-7703
Minority side: (202) 224-5225

TALKING POINTS

For Klobuchar:
1) Thanking her office for their commitment to children’s issues and adoption in general. Emphasize that she is committed to adoption and we appreciate that.

For Leahy:
1b) Thanking his office for their commitment to anti-trafficking efforts and the safety of women and children around the world.

For all:
2) Emphasize that this is a tiny, tiny, three-sentence amendment that is really important, but very very tiny.
3) Emphasize that you know it is very last-minute, but this is a critical amendment and we would really appreciate the time they take to consider offering it.
4) Emphasize that you support Ethica’s amendment to the TVPRA to include trafficking for adoption in the definition of human trafficking. Here are some reasons why:
a) There is no law against trafficking for adoption currently, so perpetrators cannot be prosecuted for these crimes. Instead, they are prosecuted for things like money laundering, which diminishes the gravity of what they’ve done.
b) Trafficking for adoption is virtually indistinguishable from human trafficking as TVPA currently conceives it WHEN IT HAPPENS. In both instances, children are abducted, or their parents are told that they will be getting an education and returning, offered money, assaulted if they try to object to the child’s removal from the home, or forced to sign a piece of paper that they can’t read. In both instances, power is wielded over someone who is less powerful to attain a valuable commodity: a child.
c) This is not an adoption issue, it is a trafficking one. It is not a legitimate adoption if the child was not meant to be adopted.
d) (If applicable) – As a parent, can you imagine turning around and seeing your child whisked away into a car, never to be seen again? What if you found out that there was no law in place to punish someone who did this? Forcibly removing a child from her home, whether first or adopted, is a trauma.
e) This type of adoption fraud shuts down country after country: in recent years, it has shut down Vietnam, Guatemala, Cambodia, and Nepal. It is threatening to close Ethiopia. This type of fraud MUST STOP.
f) This amendment will be a first step in securing the integrity of adoptions.
g) This amendment will be the first step to ensuring that adoptions will remain an option for the children who truly need it.

An Excruciatingly Beautiful Poem

2011-10-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

I am honored to have known Carole Anderson, a mother who lost one of her children to adoption, a past president of Concerned United Birthparents, and a visionary who called for adoption to be replaced with guardianship back in the 1990s.

She was a social worker and an attorney and a powerful spokesperson and writer, and one of my personal heroines and role models. I don't know if any other of her poems were published, but this one was in my first book, shedding light on...The Dark Side of Adoption (p 91).

PREREUNION PAIN

I am filled with hate:
a black, hot cancer of hate
I hide with a hearty grimace
I call a smile
while it consumes me.
I hate the evil agencies that say nature is nothing and mothers even less,

that claim to create while they maim and destroy.
I hate those men of God
who use youthful faith as a sword
to sever hearts and souls,
who promise forgiveness
at the price of martyred lives.
I hate the grasping couples who pray to God to bless them by damning families He made, who self-righteously build greedy joy on the bodies of bleeding mothers.
I hate the foolish girl I was, who so despised
herself
she believed she was unworthy, whose choiceless trust in others' wisdom made her child a sold commodity. I am filled with hate for the agonies of adoption: its endless, aching injustice,
its everlasting spiritual torment,
and the festering of eternal emptiness.

—C.J. Anderson

Originally published as "Adoption Agony," Origins, March/April, 1983.

Let Steve Jobs Rest in Peace!

2011-10-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

As the world mourns the too soon death of Apple founder Steve Jobs at just 56 years of age, leaving behind a wife and four children, some are shamelessly exploiting this tragedy for their political agenda.

In the midst of his family's mourning and the world's loss, the pro-life community is disgustingly USING this tragedy for their own personal agenda! The man is barely in the ground and they are politicizing the fact that he was adopted to spread vicious and specious lies connecting adoption and abortion.

Clara Matthews of LifeNews.com writes in "Steve Jobs’ Adoption Defied Planned Parenthood’s Abortion Agenda":

"if Planned Parenthood had any say over his destiny, chances are he would have never been given the chance to live such an extraordinary life and lead the next generation of technological advancements.....Clara and Paul Jobs [his adoptive parents] valued the life of a child Planned Parenthood labels a “crisis,” and Steve Jobs did not become just another “problem” Planned Parenthood attempted solve."

A Bakersfield, CA Opinion Letter by Audrey Cochran echoes this belief that Planned Parenthood has the power to make decisions for mothers:

Steve Jobs and abortion
During an excerpt of one of Steve Jobs' news conferences that was rebroadcast the other day, he mentioned he was born to an unwed mother who gave him up for adoption.
This makes me wonder how many babies who would have turned out to be equally innovative and brilliant have been aborted, and how much better our world would be had they been allowed to live.
I believe Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions in many U.S. cities, is a liability, not an asset, and eliminating the millions of dollars we taxpayers give them each year would help balance the budget.

The title of that piece says it all. There is NO connection whatsoever between Steve Jobs and adoption anymore than there is a connection between any living human being and abortion unless they've had one personally (which I doubt in Jobs' case) or performed or recommended one!

Erick Whittington ponders, again in LifeNews.com, "Are Abortions Claiming the Lives of People Like Steve Jobs?"

What if Steve Jobs was conceived today? Since his parents weren’t married and both attending college there is a much higher chance he would have been aborted. Could his mother have withstood the pressure from her friends, her classmates and her family members to abort? Would she of withstood the pressure of a Planned Parenthood abortion salesperson telling her pregnancy is just a blob of tissue & abortion is harmless?

Hmmmm. what if....what if Steve Jobs had been born female instead of male? Would she have had the same opportunities to achieve what he did in the business world and particularly the It sector? I don't many female IT execs. What if Steve Jobs had been gay? Why doesn't the gay rights movement get on the bandwagon as long as we are dealing with "what if' scenarios.

Donald R. McClarey of The American Catholic goes further and blames politics. In a piece entitled "Steve Jobs, Adoption and Abortion" McClarey:

I assume that he was a Democrat due to his large political contributions to that party, which is somewhat ironic considering one event at the very beginning of his life.

He concludes:

Abortion has robbed us of many geniuses such as Steve Jobs, some villians [sic] no doubt also, and a great many plain ordinary folks who never got their chance to show what love and work they could bring into our world. We are immeasurably poorer for their loss.

Steve Job's adoption is a perfect case in point, as a matter of fact, of the fallacy of assumptions about attempts to connect two very different situations: adoption and abortion.

Job's mother and father were in love. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian, and Joanne Carole Schieble (later Simpson), an American of Swiss and German descent wanted to marry. They were forbidden to marry by their parents because of ethnic differences. They loved the child their love had created so much that when forced to relinquish him for adoption, they stipulated very firmly that the adoptive parents must be college educated and must promise to provide a college education for their son. These are all acts of pure love and concern, not the acts of anyone who had even for a second considered ending their son's life!!

Adoption and abortion have as much to do with one another as do marriage and joining a monastery or the circus. They are choices available to all, but one who chooses one, has by no means ever considered the other.

Abortion is a reproductive right. It is a pregnancy outcome choice.

Adoption is NOT a reproductive right! Not for the expectant mother, nor for those who adopt because adoption does not involve anything whatsoever to do with the PREGNANCY. Adoption is the transfer of custody of living, breathing, human being. Abortion, on the other hand, does not involve a viable, independent, sustainable human life that could be cared for by alternate care-givers. Aborted fetal matter could not be kept alive by any means.

Adoption involves two families and a child they ultimately share. Abortion involves a mother, her conscience, possibly her religious beliefs and her physician. No other living human being is involved in that decision before or after.

It is common PR practice to piggy back on news events. But this campaign to use the death of an adopted person is offensive to all adopted persons and their original parents, and is especially libelous to John Jandali, and Joanne Carole Schieble Simmons. How DARE anyone make publicly defaming assumptions about these specific people.

There is no more validity to claims of what John and Joanne may or may not have contemplated that to put into a print a claim that The Pope considered having sex before entering the priesthood!

Making any claims that any adoptee is lucky not to have aborted is discriminatory as adopted persons would be at no greater risk than any person! How many of us were the result of unplanned pregnancies? And how many married couples with or without children - of every faith including those who call themselves "good' Catholics" have considered, and had, abortions! Why single out adoptees as having been at a risk any human being in the world is at equal for.

The conjuncture of the pro-lifers is as absurd as to speculate that the world would have been a different place if Gandhi's mother had miscarried while pregnant with him, or if The Dalai Lama's parents had not had coitus on the night he was created. "IF."

But the pro-life campaign linking adoption and abortion relies heavily on lies. The Catholic Conference and other pro life groups lobby state by state to deny adult adopted persons equality in regard to access to their own original birth certificates, keeping them second class, discriminated against citizens.

They do this under the bizarre pretext that allowing such access would cause mothers to abort rather than place a child for adoption and fear being "found out" defying the following facts:

The days of mother relinquishing out of shame of being pregnant "out of wedlock" are long gone with typewriters and phones with cords attached to the wall.

Abortion is a very time limited choice that can only be made during the first trimester. Adoption, cannot be chosen until after the child is born!

The majority of mothers who relinquish children to adoption, are more like Jobs' parents than women who are debating killing the child they are carrying. They are loving, caring people caught in situations with few really good options, lacking sufficient resources to remain an intact family.

The vast majority of mothers who lose their children to adoption or are pressured to or chose it as the best option available to them at the time, long to know their child is alive and well, as did Steve Job's parents and sister.

Finally, the argument that access for adopted adults would create more abortions has been proven to be totally absurd and unsubstantiated. In states which have reversed the Draconian laws that forbid access and maintain secrecy in adoption, disallowing people access to information that could be a matter of life and death, there has been no increase in abortions or decrease in adoptions. this has been documented repeatedly and the pro-life contingent knows it full well yet continues to spew their lies and acts to harm the living in an effort to save a few "unborn" fetuses to increase the profits of those who earn their livelihood redistributing children through adoption.

Let Steve Jobs rest in peace. Stop using him as a poster boy for the pro-life agenda, especially when we have no idea if he was pro-choice or pro-life. And stop insulting his parents and all mothers who made a loving choice, or were pressured, or given no alternatives but to let their child be adopted...a choice they are told is a LOVING choice.

If anything is going to increase abortion rates it is rhetoric that constantly makes the claim that mothers who make a loving sacrifice to carry a child for nine months will be forever labeled as someone who might have considered abortion!

The other thing that has a chance of increasing abortion is the secrecy of closed adoptions. More mothers today choose open adoption and report they would not have relinquished unless they were assured the adoption would be open.

STOP the insanity! Stop comparing apples and oranges. And for goodness sake stop WHAT IT scenarios about people's lives! What if Jesus was never born? What if Henny Penny is right and thee sky is falling or the hat if the hokey pokey really is all it's all about? Makes as much sense as ridiculous speculations tying and innocent man's death and his loving, caring parents to a pro-life anti-abortion agenda.

Pro-lifers would decrease far more abortions if they stopped making mothers in crisis pregnancies choose between the devil and deep blue sea and were more supportive of helping them find the resources they need to nurture their children safely. THAT choice saves the unborn just as much as adoption!!!

Lorraine at FMF blogged about another interesting aspect of Steve Jobs life; his denial of paternity of one of his children. See it here.

UPDATE: Steve and his father actually met without knowing it! Steve frequently went to a reastaunat owned by his Dad, according to his forthcomin biography an excerpt reported on Huffington Post.

Glee Raises Adoption Issues: Are they valuable or misconceptions?

2011-10-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

Adoptive mom Amber Austin is so upset by the adoption story line on the TV show, Glee, that she's too patient and see it to its conclusion - which I predict will certainly maintain the "integrity" of adoption. Instead, she is protecting with a petition here that has in turn garnered news coverage.

The essence of Austin's concerns are:

In the current story line, Quinn, a teen mother who placed her daughter for adoption, is actively (and with malice) trying to "get my daughter back." And, Rachel, an adopted child, deals with the sudden reappearance of her birth mother. In real, legitimate adoptions, a birth mother cannot simply take a child away from their family or pop back into a child's life, however this is one of most pervasive and harmful myths about adoption.

Really? I believe the most harmful myths are the win-win myths and the myth of tens of thousands orphans waiting to be rescued.... or, how about the myth that adoption provides a child a "better" life, or that adoptive parents are somehow all wonderful people because they are motivated enough to adopt instead of just humans who are as flawed as any other and even abuse their adopted children on occasion....

For adopted children, the show raises the fear that they may be taken away from their adopted families.

REALLY?!! How many adopted kids does Austin know who harbor such a fear? The ones I know all report fantasizing about being found. Additionally, any adoptees who know they are adopted mature, they come to know that they were born into one family and taken or given away. Any fear of being taken or abandoned or rejected already exists deep inside every adoptee. They don't need a stupid TV show to instill that in them.

And for adoptive parents and birth mothers, the show creates confusion about the nature of adoption - confusion that may prevent adoptions from happening at all...

Doubt that would ever happen. People continue to adopt every day despite news reports of scams that rip them off for their money; despite failed adoptions - which Amber told me via private communication she experienced herself... Anyone fearful of a mother returning to snatch away an adopted child would be well assured by the adoption providers that it is rare to impossible and relieved, they'd go ahead.

Fact is, if a handful of people are discouraged from adopting because of a youth-oriented musical TV fictionalized show, OH WELL! They obviously were not really sure to begin with, AND... there would still be close to a hundred people and couples vying for each healthy, white child while ignoring the approximately 120.000 children in foster care who could be adopted. So, no real concern is needed.

As for mothers in crisis being dissuaded or confused by the show - equally unlikely. Adoption themes loaded with misconceptions about adoption abound in movies such as Juno and TV shows from Parenthood (on which one of the characters wants to BUY to an acquaintances baby) 16 and Pregnant to Brothers and Sisters to House...Dr. Phil...Rules of Engagement explores surrogacy and Happy Endings is exploring the aftermath of egg "donation."

It's FICTION. It's entertainment and the networks love controversy; the producers love shock content - it adds to their ratings!

The fact is that adoption has been a theme of entertainment since the days of early English literature: The Tempest; Canterbury Tales; Beowulf; Paradise Lost. It makes for interesting stories because of the mystery of it all. It's been depicted in horror films. most recently The Orphan and untold number of soap opera plots. It has been and will continue to be...and is often the punchline of bad jokes and skits on SNL.

Those who want to get all upset about fiction can have a full time job doing so.

Adoption, like life and all interpersonal relationships, is messy. It is filled with lots of ambivalence on the part of both the relinquishing mother before and after he loss, as well as on the part of those who resort to adoption as a last resort after years of frustrating and expensive attempts by most to conceive and carry a child of their own. Even once deciding to adopt, there are many choices and options that are explored: domestic, international, open, closed... Nothing is black and white and clear cut about adoption. it is messy!

The character Quinn is a confused, hurting teen who was abandoned by her family when she became pregnant. She is not a crazed stalker as portrayed by Austin and her petition. I have not watched every episode, so please correct me if I have this wrong, but Quinn's placement of her child, while not an open adoption was an identified adoption. She chose this mother and knew who and where she is, since the adoptive mother is ironically, the original mother of Rachel, the star character of the show who, as a result of her adoption has two fathers.

The adoptive/original mother was not receptive at all to having a relationship with her beautiful daughter Rachel, despite their shared dark haired beauty, vocal talent and stage presence. Interesting that this rejection did not concern Austin enough to start a petition.

Mothers who relinquish children to adoption struggle with enormous ambivalence both before and after placement. Likewise those who adopt also struggle with their decision, most often made only after trying everything possible they can afford to have a child of their own. Once they finally resolve to their last resort - adoption - there are still many ebbs, flows and choices: domestic, international, open, closed, infant or older child, etc.

Nothing about adoption is black and white. It's messy.

Adoption is also laden with fear and it is fear-mongering that comes across most clearly in Austin's petition.

What comes across most clearly in the petition is the fear - common among those who adopt - that their child's mother will come back into their lives, interfere in some way, or heaven forbid stake a claim on their child and seek to overturn the adoption.

Precious, precious few adoptions are overturned. You can let yourself be crippled by fear or embrace the truth.

Truth...something missing in current adoption practice.

The fact is that such fears are the fears of adoptive parents who see adoption as their entitlement, their child as a possession, and do not see their children as separate human beings with fears, concerns, wishes, hopes, lives and rights of their own. In my 30+ years experience with those touched by adoption,

One of the best gifts any adoptive parent can give their child - short of opening a closed adoption - is to open the dialog aloud that their kids are thinking and wondering about. I think Glee and other dumb show that mentions adoption - even incorrectly - can be a wonderful jumping off vehicle for such conversations.

Austin wants PBS announcements to encourage adoption loss and separation. Here are the ones I'd like to see:

Public Service Announcements and education starting in HS about the preventable causes of infertility in order to reduce the demand for adoptable babies and children which supports global child traffickers who kidnap and steal children as well as the domestic agencies that pressure women and often deceive them.

PBS announcements to educate young women starting in Jr. HS about access to birth control. And I see a need for PBS announcements that offer help to mothers in crisis to parent safely.

PBS announcements to tell prospective adopters that taking children one at a time, at a price rag of tens of thousands of dollars per child, does nothing to ameliorate the poverty of that child's family, community or nation. That the real humanitarian thing to do is to spend those tens of thousands of dollars not to fill one wish to be a parent but to dig a well, build a school, or buy medical supplies.

And I see a need for PBS announcements that encourage prospective adopters to adopt from foster care or simply to foster, rather than add to the demand that creates coercion and exploitation.

But the one thing I do NOT see a need for is anything that encourages or promotes the destruction of blood kin families to meet a demand for children.

You can:

comment here
discuss this issue on Adoption News and Events on Facebook
comment at the LA Times article
send a message to Amber Austin

Adopted and Abused: How Many More?

2011-10-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

Teen kept in Florida bathroom, beaten by adoptive mother, Tai-Ling Gigliotti and boyfriend

2009. For three years, neighbors in a quaint, middle-class community scarcely saw the lanky 16-year-old boy who lived with his adoptive mother and her boyfriend.

Now, they know why: According to authorities, the teen was brutally abused and held captive in his own home. Most recently, he'd been confined to a bathroom, locked from the outside and sealed with a piece of plywood over the window.

By the time he escaped last week, the Florida boy had a broken forearm and scars, scabs and oozing wounds that investigators say mark years of abuse.

Retired hero cop William Fox busted in Pennsylvania on sex-abuse charges

A former hero NYPD cop who became a father to a troubled teen he coaxed out of jumping from a downtown flophouse 30 years ago was arrested in Pennsylvania on charges of molesting three boys.

William Fox, 65, was collared Monday at his Liberty Township home and accused of sexually abusing the juveniles between 1996 and 2009, the Sun Gazette newspaper reported Thursday.

Fox later adopted the boy and wrote a book about his experience. He also received the National Father of the Year Award. William Fox adopted 10 boys in total, three of whom filed complaints about sexual abuse.

Florida woman charged with murder of adopted daughter

The adoptive mother of a Florida girl found dead in a plastic bag in her husband's truck has been charged with first-degree murder, police said Saturday.
Carmen Barahona also faces seven counts of aggravated child abuse and seven counts of child neglect, the Miami-Dade Police Department said in a press release.
Authorities have said Jorge Barahona -- the 10-year-old girl's adoptive father and Carmen's husband -- parked his pest control truck alongside I-95 on February 14. A roadside ranger said he found Barahona beside the truck and his adopted son ill inside the vehicle, which was filled with toxic chemicals. The boy was taken to a hospital to be treated for severe burns.

The body of his adopted daughter, Nubia -- who is the boy's twin sister -- was later discovered in the back of the truck in a plastic bag.

Four days later, Jorge Barahona pleaded not guilty on charges of attempted first-degree murder with a weapon and aggravated child abuse with a weapon in the case.

At least two people tried to warn authorities about alleged abuse of the twins.

Teen kept in Florida bathroom, beaten by adoptive mother, Tai-Ling Gigliotti and boyfriend

2009. SPRING HILL, Fla. - For three years, neighbors in a quaint, middle-class community scarcely saw the lanky 16-year-old boy who lived with his adoptive mother and her boyfriend.

Now, they know why: According to authorities, the teen was brutally abused and held captive in his own home. Most recently, he'd been confined to a bathroom, locked from the outside and sealed with a piece of plywood over the window.

By the time he escaped last week, the Florida boy had a broken forearm and scars, scabs and oozing wounds that investigators say mark years of abuse.

-----------------------------------------

~~Father~~ Predatory monster who was allowed to adopt sentenced to 119 years for 'horrific' beatings of adopted son

An El Paso County man was sentenced Monday to 119½ years to possibly life in prison for what a prosecutor called “horrific” beatings of his adopted son that spanned two years.

Jeremiah Lovato, 41, showed little emotion as 4th Judicial District Judge Robert L. Lowrey rattled off the maximum penalty for many of the 18 counts of which Lovato was convicted in February.
Under Colorado law, one of the felonies, sexual assault, carries an indeterminate sentence of six years to life, based on the judgment of the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Before delivering the sentence, Lowrey described the abuse as “extraordinary” and mentioned the graphic photographs that depicted the boy’s infected wounds from being beaten with a stick.
Prosecutors said Lovato also hit him in the head with a meat tenderizer, punched and strangled him, and stomped on his testicles when the boy attempted to roll over or otherwise deflect the blows.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, Mr. Lovato,” Lowrey said.

The victim – now 16 – is living with a foster family. Lovato’s parental rights were terminated before his trial in February, authorities said.

The Gazette generally withholds the names of juvenile victims, particularly in cases involving sexual assault.

The abuse came to light in January 2010, when the boy jumped a fence and ran for help rather than submit to another beating by Lovato. Prosecutors alleged the abuse began shortly after the boy went to live with Lovato in Craig in 2008 and escalated after they moved to a subdivision east of Colorado Springs.

Addressing the court in a black striped shirt and dark tie, the teenager pushed for a stiff sentence against the man prosecutors described as his captor.

“I’d like to see Jeremiah Lovato locked away for a long time because of all the things he ended up doing to me,” he said.

Others were more strident in characterizing the abuse.

“Mr. Lovato earned every year that he received,” said Diana May, the chief deputy district attorney who led the prosecution. “The abuse he inflicted, both mentally and physically, is the worst I’ve seen in my 17 years as a prosecutor.”

Janae Houser, a mother of three who sat on the jury that convicted Lovato on 18 of 21 counts in February, said she wept throughout the trial as prosecutors described the cruelties inflicted on the boy.

“You just wanted to hug him when he was giving his testimony – to let him know that there are people out there who are ready to love him,” she said.

Of Lovato’s stiff sentence, she said, “Justice was served.”

Lovato’s attorney, Shimon Kohn, said he was disappointed by the severity of the sentence. He had argued that imposing the maximum on each of the counts, would push his client’s sentence beyond what some have received for cases involving a death.

He asked that a public defender be appointed to lead Lovato’s appeal because the former Colorado Department of Transportation worker is now “indigent.”

Black Market Adoptions in Texarkana

2011-09-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

Texarkana Gazette
April 12, 1998

Did local health care provider once sell babies on the side?
Living legacies seek answers

Author: JANE BECKERDITE

Ruby Hightower owned and operated Hightower Health Home in Texarkana, Texas, more than 50 years ago. There she helped care for the ailing. And some, like Chetene Gooch, say she also sold babies. Gooch says she was sold by Hightower when she was only a few days old to a Linden, Texas, couple for $500. She and others believe many other people still are living who were separated from their birth parents in a baby-selling operation in Texarkana.

"My father told me that my mother wanted a baby really, really bad. A friend told her about Ms. Hightower in Texarkana. Daddy came home from work one day and Mother asked Daddy how much money he had on him. They then drove to Texarkana and went in Hightower Home. Daddy gave Ms. Hightower $500 and she gave him a baby - me," Gooch said.

Many people maintained then - and still do today - that before her death in 1969, Hightower - a high profile business owner with well-placed political friends - sold newborns to leading families in Texarkana and
other parts of the country.

Another woman from Foreman, Ark., who asked not to be identified, said she gave birth to a baby girl in May 16, 1954, but was told her baby died. Years later, the woman's dying aunt revealed that the baby was very much alive.

"It really threw me. So I went to St. Michael to look for my records," the woman said. "I had registered there under a different name then because I was a teen-ager, unmarried and poor. Later I found a live birth certificate with my name on it and it showed that I was married. Both my mother and grandmother worked for Ruby Hightower during the time I gave birth," the woman said, adding that she believed Hightower sold her daughter.

Some other women believe the babies they had at Meagher Hospital were adopted through some kind of alliance with Hightower, after they were told the babies died.

Don Beeler, administrator of St. Michael Health Care Center, which began as Michael Meagher Hospital, was not around when the alleged black-market baby operation flourished in the '40s and '50s. But the St. Michael CEO denies such a thing ever took place. Beeler chalks up the questions about black market babies as nothing more than an unfounded conspiracy theory.

"I'm not aware of any relationship between St. Michael and Ruby Hightower," he said. "It would be somewhat incredulous to believe that this could happen. You'd have to have a huge conspiracy to do that. There would have to be so many people involved."

But that's what Clorene Griser, 78, says happened - that many people were involved with the loss of her baby.

"Patricia was alive and crying when she was born," Griser recalls of her firstborn daughter. "She had thick, black hair and long fingernails. I delivered her at 2:30 in the morning on Oct. 2, 1946, at Michael Meagher. After delivery, they put my daughter in a glass incubator beside my bed. I laid there and watched her."That was the last time

Griser saw her baby.

Because Griser was unable to deliver the placenta, she says her doctor "put her to sleep" to perform minor surgery."When I woke up from the surgery, I asked to see her. They told me my baby was born dead. I never saw her again," she said.

A year after she delivered Patricia, Griser bore another daughter, Sheila. Sheila Bryan, who lives in Houston, has made it her mission to track down the whereabouts of her sister because she said she firmly believes the infant was not born dead.

And always trustful that her daughter was alive, Griser said she tried for years to get a birth, death or stillborn certificate on her child. Forty-five years of writing to the hospital and to the vital records
department of the Arkansas Department of Health produced nothing, she said.

Though her mother was unsuccessful in obtaining information about the baby, Bryan took a more firm approach. "After receiving a power of attorney over my mother's affairs, I began a letter-writing campaign of my own," Bryan said. "The hospital replied, denying that my mother was ever a patient there and that she never had a child there. After a dozen of the calls and letters, I drove to the hospital and told them I would sleep in the hallway until they found my mother's records. I told them we had a grave and they had better come up with something."
St. Michael was able to verify that Griser had indeed been a patient at Michael Meagher. And later, Beeler produced a stillborn certificate, Bryan said.

Still, Bryan said she thinks her mother's baby was somehow filtered to Hightower and the baby was consequently sold. Some have alleged that Hightower only sold babies who came from poor or unwed mothers, a category Griser would have fit into 51 years ago.

"My mother was married when she had the baby, but she was poor," Bryan said. What most convinced Bryan the baby did not die at birth stems from what happened in 1994, she said. Drawing from her family's recollections, Bryan related the day Patricia was buried and how even back then things didn't add up.

"The baby was to be buried in Canton, Texas. So my father and my aunt went to the funeral home to pick up the casket. It was already shut. They told my father it was shut because the baby was too bruised to see," Bryan said.

Bryan was finally able to convince a judge to order Patricia's grave exhumed four years ago. No one was surprised at what they uncovered.Nothing. "The grave was empty except for nails, rusty hinges and rotten wood. We videotaped the exhumation. There was no trace of a child," Bryan said.

Griser wasn't shocked to learn the casket was empty."I don't know if she's alive now but I know she was alive that night I delivered her. I always had the feeling there was some kind of game going on there. This has caused me such heartache over the years. She was a beautiful baby and I'd just like to know if she's doing all right."I wouldn't want to disturb her life. I just want her to know I didn't abandon her," Griser said.

Though no one knows for certain whether Hightower had a hand in Griser's case, Hightower's last known living relative, Bettye Brown, said she believes her grandmother may have been involved in baby-selling in
Texarkana. Brown said she grew up believing her grandmother was an influential woman who cared for the sick. The Hightower Health Home was a place where people could recuperate from a variety of ailments and avail themselves of restorative cures such as therapeutic baths. But now Brown said she also believes Hightower had a life she knew nothing about.

"My memories of my grandmother were normal, everyday memories. I never had any idea of this other at all," Brown said.Asked about her grandmother's alleged involvement with selling babies of poor and unmarried women, Brown sighed, began to speak, then paused. "I'm sure that happened. I think it's terrible if somebody went to have a baby and they were told the baby had died. It sounds like a third person had to have been involved with it. I certainly believe that babies were sold back then. And apparently there was enough proof that this actually took place."

Brown quickly pointed out that she did not believe her grandmother was a malicious person. "I don't think she was vindictive about it. I think (she thought) it was to serve a purpose," Brown said.At the time, having babies out-of-wedlock was scandalous.

After Hightower died, Brown said she never gave much consideration to a trunk her grandmother bequeathed her. The trunk was filled with medical papers and other documents - items that meant little to Brown at the time."I had no reason to go through (those papers). What was I looking for? This was just stuff from her nursing home that she kept," she said. But after Brown received repeated telephone calls from strangers wanting old medical records and other information about Hightower, Brown said she and a friend took a serious glance inside the trunk and found plenty of information regarding her grandmother's business affairs.

"It was eye-opening. It's hard to describe because I knew my grandmother as the doer of good deeds. And this was like turning this over and seeing a whole new perspective of this person. This was a person I didn't know. I never saw that side," Brown said.

One of those eye-openers for Brown were several yellowed newspaper clippings. A 1950 article in the Texarkana Gazette showed Hightower had been charged with two counts of kidnapping. Two unmarried teenage mothers charged Hightower refused to disclose the whereabouts of their newborns. The two teens had recuperated at her home health establishment after giving birth. Hightower was never indicted.

Also discovered in her grandmother's truck was a 1954 Look Magazine article written by Ernest Mitler. Mitler, a former assistant district attorney in New York working undercover to expose illegal adoptions ,
tried to buy a newborn baby from Hightower. Brown called the article a "revelation" for her. In the article, Mitler wrote that Hightower admitted to operating a black market baby business in Texarkana and offered to sell Mitler a baby. Hightower later argued the nature of their discussion was taken out of context.

Even though it's been 44 years since Mitler wrote the article, he recalls his conversation with Hightower with remarkable clarity. After investigating thousands of similar cases around the world, Mitler said it was common practice back then for adoption dealers to tell mothers their babies had died.

"I taped everything Mrs. Hightower told me. I came in and said I wanted a baby. As I remember, she practically - right away - said -'yes.' She was a very blunt person. She was not a sophisticated, international wit. She was a straightforward woman. I do believe she did exploitation of the people in her home and I think it was well-known i n the community," Mitler said during a telephone interview from his New York apartment.

Mitler also said he believes Hightower was not in the black-market baby business for money alone. She liked the attention, he said."To be benevolent about it, I don't think it was wild greed. I think she liked having a certain amount of power. I think Mrs. Hightower back then was pleased to have people come there. There's a lot of attention you get from making arrangements for people who are craving a child. I think she had a good feeling about being liked and well-connected."

Hightower maintained her innocence against this and other allegations in what Brown and her friend believe to be Hightower's private journal. In it, she defended herself by taking somewhat of an altruistic stance.

"Since the early 1930s, I have been accused of being an abortionist, a bootlegger dope seller. I am not guilty of any sort of abortions. I am, not guilty of any sort of misuse of any sort of medicines. I am not guilty
of any sort of liquor dealing, nor am I guilty of any sort of black market. "I have protected the good name of many girls and women by giving them food and shelter, a doctor's care and his prescribed medicine, and put
them on the road to right living," Hightower wrote.

"I am aware that there has been an undercurrent of gossip these 20 years regarding those ugly stories and I am sorry. But (there's) nothing I could do to stop gossipers. I knew if any of it had been true I would have been in the penitentiary. I felt sure my public felt the same.'The journal entries reflect Hightower's wishes that "the people who value the reputation of Texarkana" would stand up for her and help her attorneys
in her libel lawsuits.

Shortly after the Look Magazine article was published, the Texarkana Gazette ran portions of the article in its daily publication. Hightower consequently attempted to sue both Look and the Gazette but eventually
dropped the suits.It has been more than four decades since Hightower's allegedly legal activities took place. But to her accusers-who wonder where their children are or wonder if their mothers were told they were dead - time has not lessened the severity of what is alleged to have occurred. These women insist they will forever suffer the aftermath of what happened to them in Texarkana. And they wonder if they are not alone.

"There are a lot of these cases, more than you realize," the Foreman, Ark., woman said. "It's really sad. It wasn't right. I'm learning to forgive those who did this but I'm never going to give up my search."

OFF TOPIC: Why Does Liberalism Need Apology or Justification?

2011-09-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Do not... regard the critics as questionable patriots. What were Washington and Jefferson and Adams but profound critics of the colonial status quo? ~Adlai Stevenson

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

~Albert Einstein, The World As I See It, 1934

Tony Bennett, 85, known more for his velvety voice and gentlemanly demeanor has been called an American icon.

Recently the crooner spoke about his military duty and how being on the front lines seeing scared young boys none of whom wanted to shoot anyone or be shot - on both sides - made him a lifetime pacifists.

Quoted in some media reports as an "admitted" pacifist, as if he were admitting to having committed a crime or some vile offense...Bennett said: “I’m anti-war. It’s the lowest form of human behavior.”

Drafted by the U.S. Army in November 1944, Bennett served as an infantryman in Europe, moving across France, and later into Germany.

“The first time I saw a dead German, that’s when I became a pacifist,” he said.
He told Stern that he was left forever shaken by the sight of death.

“It was a nightmare that’s permanent,” he said. “I just said, ‘This is not life. This is not life.’”

“To start a war in Iraq was a tremendous, tremendous mistake internationally,” he said.

Howard Stern who was interviewing the crooner about his new album then asked Bennett about how America should deal with terrorists, specifically those responsible for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said.

Stern asked if he was "one of those conspiracy theorists who claim the US flew the planes." Bennett said no, and in a soft-spoken voice, said, "No. They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett responded. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”

Following seconds of silence, Stern said that his guest was “making some good points.”

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.

~Mark Twain

Benett was blasted for his comments and felt the necessity to issue a formal apology stating:

"There is simply no excuse for terrorism and the murder of the nearly 3,000 innocent victims of the 9/11 attacks on our country," Bennett said in the statement. "My life experiences -- ranging from the Battle of the Bulge to marching with Martin Luther King -- made me a lifelong humanist and pacifist, and reinforced my belief that violence begets violence and that war is the lowest form of human behavior.

"I am sorry if my statements suggested anything other than an expression of my love for my country, my hope for humanity and my desire for peace throughout the world."

WHY?

Why do progressives always have to apologize for our views. Why was he called and "admitted" pacifist? If he were a Quaker or a Christian or a Jew would he be an admitted one? Is Bill Cosby an "admiited" Black man? Is Rush Limbaugh an "admitted" conservative? Only progressives are labeled this way, and Gays, who are often identified as "openly" gay which amounts to the same thing as if all heterosexuals are closeted about ther sexuality. I mean, I don't see Charlie Sheen being called an "admitted" whore master!

Why is it that any anti-war sentiment riles up some patriots who want to accuse us of being somehow anti-American if we are opposed to the warring policies of the nation yet conservatives are not anti-American for being against welfare or other entitlement programs?

I was an outspoken opponent of the war in VietNam which we were not even supposed to call a war at the time. It had some other softer term like boms and missles and missions do. We were dirty hippies; we were anti-American...even Commies...for expressing our opinion in a land in whch wars are fought to protect our right to free speech, for God's sake!

I continue to be a pacifist and anti-war. I continue to be berated for my opinion. I am accused of not supporting our troops when I sport buttons and bumper stickers that clearly say: "Defend our troops - bring them home."

Who are the real Anti-Americans? Those who dare to speak out, or those who try to shut us up?

Calling anti-war protesters anti-American is truly the pot calling the kettle black. It brings back memories of the racist names I and others were called when we marched for civil rights.

There is nothing, in my opinion, more American than exercising our right to free speech and demonstration. I applaud the estimated 3000 sitting in right now in Zuccotti Park in Wall Street, New York for 12 days and counting! BRAVO to them! THIS is patriotism in action! If I were younger, I'd be right there with them!

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. .... You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

~ George Bernard Shaw

He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.

~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

~James Bryce

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us..... The old "manifest destiny" idea ought to be modified so that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can - and that without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to learn to the uttermost from other nations.

~Francis John McConnell

Patriotism, the virtue of the vicious.

~Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. ~Guy de Maupassant

Lies are the Real Debt

2011-09-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

The film The Debt, starring Helen Mirren is billed as a "gritty spy thriller." It is a somewhat dark a-typical Hollywood film about three Mossad secret agents whose job it is to track down a very notorious Nazi butcher and bring him to trial.

The film is half the events surrounding the what happened in East Berlin in 1966 when the two men and one woman were in their twenties, and their lives now.

The Debt may well take its name from the debt to society they seek paid by the Nazi. But there was for me a far stronge runderlying themeatic current about the debt to oneself lies play in our lives.

Without being a total spolirer, the three agree to lie about how things played out and that lie effects every aspect of the lives of each of them. One basis his life on justifyying his actions and has some government job, another becomes somewhat of a hero and the third is most tortured in his way.

This one lie, once having been told, has to be kept through repitition and takes a toll not only on careers and marraiges but also on the lives of offspring for generations to come.

Those of us touched by adoption know this all too well. Many lives lives based on lies. Lies about what "family" means...mother...father....son and daughter.........names...bonds. We know the effect on every aspect of our lives and all around us.

The lies we tell when asked how many kids we have. Sometimes it is hard for us to know which number is the true number.

Childless mothers who have but one or two children they never raised, or may not have even gotten to see, but who live on in their hearts and memories forever.

The knot we get in our stomach when asked these simple, every day questions. The shame we feeel deep within our bones. The debt we pay.

If you get a chance I hope you will see this film and let me know if you feel the same way I did about it. Or just share about how lies of adoption have effected you....

Come, Let us Puke Together!

2011-08-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Let us bow our heads and puke together.

In an interview with Jennifer Grant author of Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter, entitled "Adoption is Not a 'Ministry'' Jennifer challenges interracial adoption, and why it’s more than a “missionary” project....yet she speaks of being "called by God."

The publisher describes the book thusly:

Following the invisible thread of connection between people who are seemingly intended to become family, journalist Jennifer Grant shares the deeply personal, often humorous story of adopting a fifteen-month-old girl from Guatemala when she was already the mother of three very young children.

Her family's journey is captured in stories that will encourage not only adoptive families but those who are curious about adoption or whose lives have been indirectly touched by it. Love You More explores universal themes such as parenthood, marriage, miscarriage, infertility, connection, destiny, true self, failure and stumbling, and redemption.

Note that she believes this child was 'intended' for her! I find that the most arrogant thought anyone could possibly have. You mean to tell me that God intended for a child to be born to parents unable to raise him or her, becoming an orphan, and "languish" in an orphanage fifteen months, just to be there for YOU! Her original parents died or suffer a major loss for YOU!? Are you kidding me?

"Adoption is wonderful for growing a family" she says. And indeed reviewers have said of her book: "Love You More is a wonderful book describing the journey of a family being completed by the adoption of their little girl from Guatemala." But she believes it is not the best way to address global issues of poverty. Yet she did it and now preaches this. HUH?

And, not only did she adopt, because she was 'called by God' to do so, but how odd that God - in His infinite wisdom - would have called this American woman and her husband to ignore the 120, 000+/- children in US foster care who can never be reunited with their original families and who could be adopted, and instead to adopt from Guatemala, a nation plagues with crime and impunity, kidnappings and child trafficking! Odd, eh? Do you think "God" just didn't know, like the agencies that handled these adoptions?

Love you More, the title of her book nauseated me from the moment I heard it. I found it offensive, albeit unintended. Is love or adoption a competition? Does she love her child more than she loves her husband, or are they not just different kinds of love?

As a mother of three, how do her other children feel about that title, I wonder? Did it hit them in the gut as it did me and make me squirm with discomfort? Do they wonder exactly what that title implies and what the whole book says about them and their relationship with their mother? Why is this one child singled out for an entire book?

Is she implying she loves her daughter more than her daughter loves her or that she loves her adopted daughter more than her daughter's other mother does or could have? I don't get measuring love in terms of more or less.

If anyone has read the book and cares to share, please do so. (Though I will NOT allow this blog to become an advertisement for the book, so please save your praise for anywhere other than here.)

Meanwhile, excuse me while I will reach for a barf bucket to rid myself of the bile created by this woman's eagerness to exploit her daughter's image and life in order to pat her self on the back for saying that patting oneself of the back for adopting should NOT be the motivation for adopting.

"Forever Family" Spanks Adopted Daughter to Death

2011-08-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

In Feb, 2010, following the fundamentalist book "To Train up a Child," Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz believed God to spare the rod, you spoil the child. The killed seven-year-old Lydia and caused seriously harmed 11-year-old Zaraiah. The eight surviving children have been removed.

The book teaches you can train your child just as you train a horse. And punishment must cause pain!

Lydia was beaten to death with a plumbing supply line, which is recommended by Michael and Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy Ministries, the author of the above-named book.

Lydia was beaten for seven consecutive hours on the day she died. She died of rhabdomyolsis, a condition related to kidney and heart failure from toxins released when muscle tissue breaks down. Lydia’s muscles broke down as a result of repeated beatings over time, though her death was proceeded by an especially long “discipline” session. Lydia had mispronounced a word.

Zaraiah asked the Schatz's in court why they adopted, if it was just to murder them?

Lydia is remembered as a vivacious little girl, adopted from Liberia. People who knew her say she had the most heart-warming smile. She was one of three children the Schatz's adopted from Liberia.

“Select your instrument according to the child’s size,” writes Tennessee pastor Michael Pearl in his Christian parenting book called “To Train Up a Child“, a book available for sale on amazon.com.

“For the under one year old, a little, ten to twelve-inch long, willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sought. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a sufficient alternative.”

I cannot find any current status on the Schatz's court case.

SUGGESTION: Go to Amazon and write a review of the book hey followed that advocates these horrendous beatings: To Train up a Child.

You can also ask Michael Pearl a question here. I asked what his educational background is either as a biblical scholar or a child rearing professional since I tried to find that information unsuccessfully online.

Guatemala news reporting Aneyeli to be Returned

2011-08-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

She Anyeli Lissette Rodriguez Hernandez, age 6, will be repatriated to Guatemala in the next two months, then found to have been given up for adoption illegally.

This, after learning of the resolution in favor of the motion filed by Loyda Rodriguez, mother of the child, in seeking the annulment of the adoption process of Abigail Karen Monahan, a false name with which the child was brought to the United States for delivery to an American family.

Anyeli was kidnapped when he was two years, November 5, 2006 when he played in the courtyard of his house in Colonia Villa Hermosa, San Miguel Petapa and an unknown entered and took her, said Claudia Cruz, deputy director of the Survivor Foundation.

I will believe it when it happens and do not trust ANY newspaper to get it right and accurately. If this were true US papers would report it as well....

Update on Aleyni: Kidnapped and Adopted

2011-08-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Monahans of Missouri who maintain custody of Aleyni who was kidnapped from her Guatemalan mother, have hired a slick, high profile Public Relations firm, Peter Mirijanian Public Affairs, in addition to their attorney.

Their PR spokesperson issued this very polished statement saying the Monahans "will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child. They remain committed to protecting their daughter from additional trauma as they pursue the truth of her past through appropriate legal channels."

Another family who adopted from Guatemala around the same time and knows the Monhans said that he child's birth mother are in a "devastating" situation.

"On the one hand you feel for the mother in Guatemala. She should have her child. And on the other hand, I can't imagine if I were in that situation. It would be like a death," Harmoning said. "I would pay my life away to move the birth mother up here before I would let my child go. She's my baby."

That sounds so sweet until you realize that the mother of this child has other children. Do you bring them all here? Why not go there?

And note how she frame her argument by denigrating Aneyli's mother to "birth mother." No one would ever dream of calling Jaycee Duggard's mother her birth mother! Manipulative language that shows her underlying distaste and feeling of superiority over the poor REAL, natural mother.

Meanwhile....

Interpol said in an email this week it could not comment on whether the agency had been contacted about the case.

The U.S. State Department referred questions about the court ruling and its repercussions to the Justice Department, which also declined comment.

Boo Hiss.

And...

Guatemala police briefly detained a judge on charges he fraudulently assisted the adoption of another girl. But he was released for lack of evidence.

Human rights activist Norma Cruz and a U.N.-created agency that investigates adoptions both said the judge, Mario Peralta Castaneda, helped process the Monahan adoption, among others.

We can hope:

Heidi Cox, a lawyer in Fort Worth, Texas, who handles international adoptions, said there may be little the Monahans can do.

All other kidnapped children are returned. Such as the case of CARLINA WHITE snatched from a hospital at 9 days old in 1987. She was abducted by a nurse who raised her as her child.

This is the longest stranger abduction reunion case. Read it here.

Children adopted by a non-custodial parent are also always ordered returned! The only difference in this case is that there was an allegedly legal adoption subsequent to the kidnapping. The crime was laundered through an adoption agency and the end custodians were unaware initially. SO WHAT??

If you buy a stolen car and don't know its stolen you don't get to keep it! This is a human being. She is someone else's child!! She has a family who loves her!

The behavior of the Monhans to have ignored this as long as the could and now lawyer up and hire a PR firm is classic behavior as descried in this article. They will do absolutely nothing but hide unless forced to. As long as Interpol and the State Dept do nothing, they are safe!

The only fly in the ointment is the press that the case has already engendered. "Karen Abagail" as they call Aneyli, will KNOW the truth! She likely will have some mixed emotions, to say the least, about their role in keeping her from a family who wanted her. But I guess they're counting on BUYING her affection and loyalty....and, sadly, it just might work!

The stolen children the Smolins adopted from India allegedly "chose" to stay in the US and reap the rewards of the "better life" after to their credit, the Smolins pursued a search for the truth under the blanket of cover-ups and lies offered them by their "reputable" - and unidentified - adoption agency. Their mother is reportedly "allowed" to visit them here. What has not been reported is who pays for those visits.

Morals and Ethics in (Domestic) Adoption Part IV

2011-08-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

Theresa Erickson, 43, a California lawyer who specializes in reproductive law is the latest of three women to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for taking part in what federal prosecutors called a "baby-selling ring" that charged a dozen couples more than $100,000 to adopt babies born from surrogate pregnancies. Full story here.

Here's how their scheme worked:

Erickson along with a Maryland-based lawyer who also specializes in reproductive law and a Las Vegas woman, recruited women to travel to Ukraine to be implanted with embryos created from the sperm and egg of donors. The surrogates were sent to Ukraine to have the embryos implanted because no American fertility doctor would perform such a procedure without documents proving that an agreement existed between the woman and the "intended parents."

Once the gestational carrier, or surrogate, reached the second trimester of pregnancy, prosecutors claimed the defendants would "shop" the babies by falsely telling couples that a couple who had intended to adopt the baby backed out of the deal.

The new couple that agreed to adopt the unborn baby would have to pay more than $100,000 in fees. Women who agreed to carry the babies to term were paid from $38,000 to $45,000, court documents said.

The law is designed to prevent profit-making from the sale of parental rights. By falsely declaring the unborn baby was the result of a legitimate surrogacy arrangement, prosecutors said the defendants obtained pre-birth judgments that named the adoptive parents on the babies' birth certificates.

The couples who adopted the babies did not believe they were breaking the law and will not have their parental rights taken away. Think of a drug bust in which the druggies get to keep the stash!

Not only do they get to keep the babies, they get reimbursed some of the fees!!

And the children have no family history - but after all, they're just commodities.

Morals and Ethics in (International) Adoption Part III

2011-08-10T15:58:00.000-07:00

EJ Graff in The Nation, Aug 9, 2011, "That Was the Last Time We Ever Saw These Children"
writes a very fair and balanced investigative report that tells both sides of allegation that children in Sierra Leone were stolen and wound up adopted by Americans.

The people who ran the orphanage claim the families were clearly explained that their children would be adopted and now want money. The families claim they were told their children would receive food, medical care and an education. Mothers visited and breast fed their infants in care. Fathers, uncles and siblings visited and stayed all day. They claim no one mentioned adoption. As I have reported in my book and articles, the word adoption as we know it does not exist in most of Africa while temporary care is common.

Graff goes on to report:

Sometimes these welfare centers do genuinely care for children in need. But sometimes, when humanitarian aid is one of the main sources of money flowing into an economy, people have been known to open an "orphanage" not to help children but in order to attract, and skim off, this revenue stream. An institution of that sort might solicit international donations to feed children—donations that are absurdly large compared with local incomes, and easy to embezzle. In some cases, such people have realized that by offering a child for adoption, they can get not just hundreds but thousands of dollars or euros, enough to pay off bureaucrats for the necessary paperwork and still make them wealthy by local standards. Such fake orphanages have been documented in a number of African countries, as well as in Cambodia, Nepal, and Vietnam.

Some of the US agencies "naively trust that their foreign partners share their own humanitarian mission. Some, over time, begin turning a blind eye to local methods so long as adoptable babies and toddlers arrive regularly enough to pay the overhead. Even the best ones cannot monitor local actions day in and day out, especially during a civil war. And, as I have reported elsewhere, U.S. laws and regulations pertaining to this global trade are inadequate" reports Graff.

Documents have been produced because of the families insistent inquiries and demanding criminal perosecution, and they are clearly forgeries and claim living parents are dead. Again, the foreign orphan reps claim that families lied to get their chidlren in - to get them educated etc.

So it's they said / they said, right? Except....the adoptive parents report being fed lies!

Graff concludes:

Gbla and HANCI may or may not have lied about the child welfare center's purpose. The families may or may not have misunderstood whatever they were told, conceivably believing that their children would come home after being educated in America. But even if HANCI fully briefed the families on adoption, and even if everything else happened precisely as Gbla says it did, HANCI and the Ministry of Social Welfare still separated families that might otherwise have lived together again. Inviting families to send their children to the United States could violate the "best interests of the child" guideline that underlies the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, the document that codifies international agreement on minimum standards for intercountry adoption. The convention says that nations must take "appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin."
Even taking HANCI's version of events at face value, the Makeni children had homes before they were given false histories and shipped away to the United States. Their adoptive families paid thousands of dollars in placement fees, some of which was supposed to go to fund humanitarian aid, and some of which surely went to cover expenses. But even allowing for expenses, these thousands of dollars were vast sums in an extremely poor country suffering a civil war. We don't know what happened to all of the money. We do know that some people lost their children.

These incidents are not isolated or anomalies. Children are stolen to meet a demand for adoption in China, Guatemala, and elsewhere. Corruption is ROUTINE in international adoption and continues today despite the Hague.

Ethics and Morality in Adoption, Part II

2011-08-08T07:12:00.000-07:00

This is the second post on the ethics and morality of adoption s spurred by the case of Aneyli who was kidnapped from Guatemala and subsequently adopted by an American family refusing to return her, which appears here.

Ethica has issued a position on the case which while entitled "Not a time to rejoice" claims to take no position on the child's life in the balance. It concludes:

What we forget is that although this case is extraordinary in its outcome (with its ultimate end still to come), it is not extraordinary in and of itself. Unethical adoptions characterized by outright fraud and more subtle coercion happen on a daily basis around the world. Until we stand up and demand sweeping changes in adoption, this will not change.
And really, the bottom line is this: in this case, and in thousands like it, there is a child, and she is no longer living with the loving family that intended to raise her. She was adopted by people who love her and intended to raise her, too. In the balance swings the child, her entire life experience shaped not by her parents, but by those who stand to profit from the very experiences that cause her trauma. While we are so quick to judge the families in fraudulent international adoptions, it would behoove us to scrutinize the actors who have gained financially in the process of moving a child from one family to another.

I fully concur, but add one more thought (thank you Etta):

These child trafficking rings would not exist

without the Western demand for babies.

If we are to root out the immoral and unethical as well as the illegal, we need to each ask ourselves if we are part of the solution or part of the problem.

Every time someone chooses to spend tens of thousands of dollars to adopt a child instead of choosing to provide care for one of the 120,000 children in foster care, they are risking aiding and abetting child traffickers and they are impeding the chances of a family from within the child's nation of birth from adopting because such families who would adopt, cannot compete financially.

Every time someone chooses to spend tens of thousands of dollars to take one child from his or her nation, culture, language, they are leaving behind the rest of his family, siblings and often extended family (if not a parent) in the same impoverished conditions, instead of choosing to spend those same dollars to feed a village, build a school, or provide medical supplies.

Let's tell it like it is and stop rewarding such choices with tax benefits and accolades, pretending these to be acts of altruism, while telling young mothers they are selfish to cherish their own flesh and blood because other seek it!

Adoption is intended to find homes for children in need not to snatch wanted children or to coerce them from loving, caring, capable mothers for greed, profit or to fill a demand.

“Regrettably, in many cases, the emphasis has changed from the desire to provide a needy child with a home, to that of providing a needy parent with a child. As a result, a whole industry has grown, generating millions of dollars of revenues each year . . .”
The Special Rapporteur, United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 2003.
"Over the past 30 years, the number of families from wealthy countries wanting to adopt children from other countries has grown substantially. At the same time, lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes centre stage. Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents, and bribery."
UNICEF's position on Inter-country adoption.

"If ... the best interests of the child is to be the determining factor in child custody cases ... persons seeking babies to adopt might profitably frequent grocery stores and snatch babies from carts when the parent is looking the other way. Then, if custody proceedings can be delayed long enough, they can assert that they have a nicer home, a superior education, a better job or whatever, and that the best interests of the child are with the baby snatchers. Children of parents living in public housing or other conditions deemed less affluent and children of single parents might be considered particularly fair game."

Justice James Heiple, Illinois Supreme Court in the "Baby Richard" case.

Morals, Ethics and Adoption

2011-08-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

Adoption is parenting the child of another. It is seen as a noble thing to do because of the assumption that every child needs care and adoption provides that care in a loving, nurturing, family setting for a child who is orphaned or has no family willing and able to properly care for him or her. So far, so good.

But is it equally noble or altruistic to take a child as yours KNOWING full well that he or she has a parent who is capable, willing, and LONGS to maintain custody? To take that child and fight to keep him or her from his family of origins, his full siblings because you have "fallen in love" with said child?

Does anything justify such behavior - such as "We have a bigger house, can send the child to better schools" Or how about "We didn't know her mother wanted her" or "We didn't know she's been kidnapped." Do any of these make it OK?

Take this moral / ethics quiz:

1. As you are leaving the store, you count your change and realize that the cashier gives you change for a ten when you gave her a five. What is the RIGHT thing to do? What do you do?

2. You sit down on the bus and discover a briefcase on the seat next to you. You look inside and there is ten thousand dollars in cash and nothing else. Do you report it to the bus company to see if anyone reported loosing it, or keep it? What is the RIGHT thing to do? What would you want someone to do if it was your money?

3. You find a dog with no collar or tag. You take him home, fall in love with the adorable critter who jumps in your lap and laps your face. A week later, you see a LOST DOG sign on a pole. Do you would return the dog or keep it? Which is the RIGHT thing to do? Which would you want someone to do if it was your dog? What if it was a child? YOUR child?!?

4. If you legally adopt a child and then discover the child was kidnapped and her mother is frantic, what do you do? Do you ignore all attempts at mediation and hope that you government will do the same? Is it Ok if those who maintain control of the child because you did not actually steal or kidnap him or her?

5. You want a child and promise the mother you'll let her visit if you can adopt her baby. Once you have the child, you decide not to allow the visits? Is that ethical? Is it fraud?

Do we live a "finders keepers/losers weepers" world?

Or, do we believe in, and practice, the Golden Rule??

Does the end justify the means if the end is a more affluent lifestyle with swimming pools and piano lessons at the loss of all familial ties?

Surely it cannot be OK simply because the child has bonded to his her captors like any kidnap victim would - because if that were true we would not have expected - much less demanded - the return of Jaycee Lee Duggrad, Elizabeth Smart or any other kidnapped child, especially if said child has been snatched from the hospital nursery and was loved and cared for by someone who simply couldn't have a child of their own and now had become the "only parent the child ever knew".

I share with you three current cases:

Peri. Carla Moquin was defrauded into surrendering her middle daughter, Peri, into what was purported to be an extensively open adoption. Carla and the adoptive couple, Susan and Demyn, appeared on a Discovery Channel show about their open arrangement. Shortly after the adoption, Susan reduced visits from monthly to annually, with NO CONTACT in between! It turned out that Susan and Demyn never filed the contact agreement and told the agency now that they never intended to. She was willing to allow annual visits and Carla was not to introduce her other two girls to Peri as her sisters....Long story short, Carla is now working to overturn the adoption on grounds that her relinquishment was gained fraudulently with unkept promises of openness.

Is is right to expect promises to be kept? Is it OK to say anything to get a child you really want? Did Susan and Demyn have every right, once they were the legal parents to change whatever they agreed to before?

Abrazo Adoption contributed to Carla's Bring Peri Home legal fund stating: they they encourage other adoption agencies to do so because: "Broken adoption promises hurt everyone."

Full story and links to donate to help bring this child home to her mother and siblings is here. I have sent $100 and ask you to pay it forward and send what you would want someone to send to help YOU if it was YOUR child!

Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez was kidnapped right out of mother's arms in Guatemala when the child was 2. The child spent the next two years in the clutches of baby traffickers and eventually wound up - after two name changes and forged papers...she wound up adopted by a US couple, the Monahans of Missouri. Her story is here. KJ Dell Antonia, writing for Slate, believes there is a gray area. In an attempt to justify the Monahan's actions, Antonia says:

As for Anyali, the Guatemalan child now known as Karen Abigail (whose story is far from finished), her adoptive parents have been accused of knowing for years that their daughter was at least suspected of being stolen from her mother. If that's true, it sounds unforgivable. But consider that, according to journalist Erin Siegal, whose forthcoming book Finding Fernanda chronicles another case of a stolen Guatemalan child, Anyali's adoptive mother was told that if she pursued the question of why Anyali's DNA did not match that of the woman she'd been told was Anyali's birth mother, the man who had custody of Anyali might simply "dump the girl 'somewhere where nobody could find her.'" At this moment, Anyali's adoptive mother may be kidnapping her. At that moment, she might have saved her. It wouldn't excuse years of ignoring ugly evidence about Anyali's birth family, but it does suggest that things aren't black and white.

However, a comment to that story claims otherwise;

there is correspondence between the Monahans and their adoption agency in Miami (Celebrate Children International) that they knew pre-adoption that there was not a DNA match between the little girl and the woman giving her for adoption, meaning she had been kidnapped. The Monahans talked with the agency about "burying" the DNA results or having her records falsified to show her as "abandoned" which was done. See
website "findingfernanda" for details.

Tim and Jennifer Monahan are complicit in keeping a kidnapped child and should be prosecuted if they resist returning the child to her birth family.

- There is no "only family" here. Anyeli was with her mother for two years and with the Monhans for two years.

- The Monhans brought Anyeli to their home in December of 2008. They knew since at least May 2009 that her mother claimed she had been kidnapped and her DNA has been flasified. There was chatter on many Guiatemala adoption forums and email lists, websites abotu stolen chidlren that featured this child, AND they were contacted by Norma Cruz of the Suriviros foundation in Guatemala bu refused to cooperate.

- The attorney the Monahans used for the adoption, Susana Luarca, went to prison for this case about 6 months ago

- Kidnappings do not get ignored. Even parental kidnappings after divorce when a child has spent a LIFETIME with a parent who illegally snatched him or her, they are returned.

Vilma Ramirez - an immigrant from El Salvador. Vilma's friend, Blanca Mirarchi was watching Vilma's fourth child and suggested Vilma consider adoption, a decision she now regrets. Mirachi found Kelley Grant and her husband who promised Vilma an open adoption. Vilma signed papers she didn't understand but thought she would maintain visitation as would her other children. The adoption process was ~~to be finalized with~~ within a 45 day period in which Vilma had an opportunity to change her mind. The Grants, however, came and took Vilam's daughter from Mirachi's residence while Vilma was at work, Vilma has been threatened with being deported if she pursues her attempts at overturning the adoption or even seeking visitation.

Where is the morality?

How do you keep a child from a family who wants him or her and is able and willing to provide for them? How do you justify lies in order to steal a child via adoption?

See Part II here.

Bring Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez Home!

2011-08-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

Guatemala mother searched 5 years for adopted girl

GUATEMALA CITY – Loyda Rodriguez Morales felt someone tug at her daughter as she tried to enter her simple home with three young children in tow. She turned to see a woman whisk the 2-year-old away in a waiting taxi.

After nearly five years of searching, posting fliers, being turned away at orphanages and even staging a hunger strike,

Rodriguez now holds what's believed to be an unprecedented Guatemalan court order declaring the child stolen and ordering the U.S. couple who eventually adopted her to give her back.

If U.S. authorities intervene to return the child, now 6, as the Guatemalan court has asked, it would be a first for any international adoption case, experts say.

A construction-paper sign taped Friday to the door of the girl's U.S. address, a two-story suburban Kansas City home, read: "Please respect our families (sic) privacy during this difficult and confusing time. We ask that you not trespass on our property for the sake of our children. Thank you."

The U.S. State Department referred all questions about the court ruling to the Justice Department, which would not comment on the case.

Rodriguez, 26, cried when she saw the July 29 court order made public this past week. She's already planning how to fix up her daughter's bedroom.

"I want it with a lot of decorations. I'm going to buy dolls and clothes so she's not lacking anything," she told The Associated Press. "If she wants to sleep alone, she'll have her room. If not, she can be with her brothers."

U.S. officials might simply try to ignore the order, said David Smolin, a law professor at the Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, Alabama, and an expert in international adoption.

Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the Virginia-based National Council For Adoption, said he has never heard of the U.S. carrying out a foreign court order to return adopted children to their home country.

But the leading advocate in the Guatemala case said the U.S. government is obligated under international treaties to return victims of human trafficking or irregular adoptions that have occurred within five years.

The girl left the country on Dec. 9, 2008, according to court records.

"We're within the margin of time," said Norma Cruz, director of the Survivors Foundation, a human rights group that filed the court case for Rodriguez. "We don't have to contact the (adoption) family. The judge's order says authorities have to find the child, wherever she is."

The foundation doesn't allege the U.S. couple knew the girl they adopted had been kidnapped, only that the girl was snatched by a child trafficking ring and put up for adoption with a new name. The couple was identified in the court ruling as Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan of Liberty, Missouri.

Guatemala's quick adoptions once made this Central American nation of 13 million people a top source of children for the U.S., leading or ranking second only to China with about 4,000 adoptions a year. But the Guatemalan government suspended adoptions in late 2007 after widespread cases of fraud, including falsified paperwork, fake birth certificates and charges of baby theft — though they still allowed many already in process.

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, a U.N.-created agency prosecuting organized crime cases in Guatemala, has reviewed more than 3,000 adoptions completed or in process and found nearly 100 grave irregularities.

The U.S. still does not allow adoptions from Guatemala, though the State Department is currently assisting with 397 children whose adoptions were in process at the time of the ban.

The court ruling signed by Judge Angelica Noemi Tellez Hernandez canceled the girl's passport and ordered her returned in two months, asking the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala for help in locating the child. The court says it will file an order with the international police agency, Interpol, if she is not returned.

Smolin said this is the first case he knows of a foreign judge ordering an American family to return an adopted child to her native country. He adopted two children from India who he later discovered were stolen, a situation he resolved by allowing the birth parents regular visits.

"This is the scenario that has made everybody afraid for years, the knock on the door from the reporter or whoever," Smolin said.

Anyeli Liseth Hernandez Rodriguez was born Oct. 1, 2004, the second child of Rodriguez, a housewife, and her bricklayer husband, Dayner Orlando Hernandez, who came as teenagers to Guatemala City looking for work. The girl disappeared Nov. 3, 2006, as Rodriguez was distracted while opening the door to their house in a working class suburb, San Miguel Petapa.

They reported their daughter missing to various local and federal law enforcement, including authorities in charge of human rights violations and missing children, according to documents of the U.N.-backed corruption commission.

Rodriguez said she searched for more than a year on her own and was repeatedly refused court permission to search foster homes where kids awaited adoption.

She found Cruz and the Survivors Foundation through a court employee in January 2008, and the two women staged a short hunger strike when they were still denied access of government adoption records, Rodriguez said. Once they were given access, it still took nearly a year to find a photo that resembled her daughter at the National Adoptions Council, where Rodriguez sifted through records with her brother for four straight days in March 2009.

"I felt like my heart was going to leap out. I knew it was her," she said.

Rodriguez submitted to a DNA test that established her as the mother, the corruption commission says.
But the girl was already in the United States, according to court records.

Anyeli's identity had been changed in early 2007 by Felicita Antonia Lopez Garcia, a woman claiming to be her mother, who changed the child's name to Karen Abigail and offered her for adoption, according to the court order.

Lopez left the girl with an adoption agency, the Spring Association, several months later after she failed a DNA test, according to the corruption commission. The adoption agency had the girl declared abandoned and put her up for adoption in 2008.

In December of that year, the girl left the country with the Monahans, named in her Guatemalan passport as Karen Abigail Monahan Vanhorn and listed as being born Jan. 14, 2005.

Prosecutors for the corruption commission used Rodriguez's case to bring charges against lawyers and brokers with the Spring Association for alleged human trafficking for illegal adoptions and for using false documents. They include the lawyer who notarized the Monahans' adoption, according to the court order.

Cruz said she has two other cases involving illegal international adoptions in the works.

The home at the address given for the Monahans in the court order is a spacious house on a large, wooded lot with a carriage driveway and an orange soccer ball on the porch.

Earlier in the week, a woman came to the door and told an AP reporter she couldn't talk because she was on the phone. No one answered repeated calls for comment until the sign appeared Friday.
Rodriguez said she just wants her daughter back.

"They made a mistake taking my baby," Rodriguez said. "Perhaps they didn't know she was stolen."

“Swing: The Search for my Father, Louis Prima” by Alan Gerstel

2011-08-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

Just a Gigilo / I Ain’t Got Nobody

Review of “Swing: The Search for my Father, Louis Prima” by Alan Gerstel

Just a Gigolo, Everywhere I Go and I Aint Got Nobody are perhaps two of Louis Prima’s best known songs. They also would have made an excellent title for the memoir of his illegitimate adopted out son as the former describes his five-time married father, Louis Prima, who was known to have his way with the women and the later, sadly, describes his wanna-be mother who gave up everything to chase a dream to be a singer. The former is idolized by Alan, who he credits him with his musical talent and stage-presence. The later not.

Swing, is a long and engagingly well-written book that will be of interest to Prima fans and adoptees who have searched or are in the process. The 313 pages read quickly, and despite a bit of redundancy and some details that could have been edited out, and the absence of a Table of Contents, is for the most part interesting, entertaining and appealing, and is interspersed with a tale of his mother’s life pieced together by informants with “gaps filled in.”

Born in 1943, Alan’s complicated search took place pre-Internet. But the final break through in tracking his mother from maiden to married name came by simply tracing her phone listing and seeing the same number issues to someone with the same first and middle name at the same address. A clever tactic that took close to a decade, bribes and a couple of PIs to think of it!

What struck me the most, however, were the great lengths Alan went to to protect his adoptive mother from being hurt by his interest in his origins. He idolized her despite describing her as having “smothered” him with love, and despite his adoptive parents having bought him in what he calls a “gray market” adoption, while casting his natural mother as the villain for being the recipient.

His disdain for the woman who bore began, however, long before he learned of the financial transactions that transpired. Having been told he was adopted when he was five along with how much they loved him and chose him “from all the babies” at the hospital, it was never spoken of again.

As a teen, Alan dreamt repeatedly of knocking on the door of “an attractive but matronly woman” and announcing: “I’m your son. I want you to see what you threw away. I want you to eat your heart out because I am successful, and popular, and happy. And you…you gave me away when you should have kept me and loved me.” He always woke from the dream, he says, “feeling furious, frustrated, and filled with self-loathing.”

It is not surprising having had these strong feelings that upon learning of her death before he ever had a chance to meet her, he needed to utilize his “method acting” skills to “look stunned, saddened, and nearly in tears.” When he learned she had committed suicide he said: “I felt also that suicide didn’t seem out of character for someone who would get pregnant and skipped out…” Perhaps not just out of character but appropriate.

He saw his mother as an opportunist after learning that two couples had approached her three weeks before she gave birth with offers to pay her expenses and something for the time she was unable to work. The adoring parents who raised him had bought him, ran off with him looking over their shoulder in fear she'd try to change her mind, but were seen as doing no evil.

He describes his natural mother, however, as having seen them as “pigeons” even though they approached her. Three weeks before she delivered, she had made not one attempt at seeking anyone to adopt, or give her any money for, her baby. She likely would have simply left him with the nuns at the hospital.

His father: just a gigolo with a string of what would be today be called “groupies”. His mother, aint got nobody, even to attend her funeral, buried in potters field. Could it be anymore ironic?

In addition to her taking money, the other thing that stuck in his crow was being told that when she turned and left him and someone drew attention to the tear in her eye, she toughened up and said he wasn’t crying for “the kid” but rather for the time the whole pregnancy things had set her back in her career. Maybe it was truly how she felt or maybe it was a 21-year-old raised by a street thug alcoholic father trying to be tough and not show any weakness. Maybe it was her trying so hard to be strong that led to her following in the footsteps of her father’s drinking, and eventually her death. In any event he did shed a tear at her graveside before continuing on to his real goal: his Father!

Besides the fame, it may have been easier for Alan to focus on his male adulterous progenitor with less hostility and blame as Prima had not actually handed him over or accepted any payment. Or, was it because his adoptive mom doted on him – the only child – while his adoptive father made him feel like a piece of merchandise he had bought, spent little time with him, and once in anger said he regretted they hadn’t adopted a girl, expressed disappointment with him, and calling him names eluding to his lower-class roots: “Bum… Beatnick… Truck Driver!”

I was struck by two things. One was Alan's inability to feel any compassion or even pity for his natural mother and the extent to which he felt compelled to protect his adoptive mother from any hurt she might feel knowing of his natural, normal quest for his genealogical roots. Not a thought that this young woman dealing all alone with a crisis, drank and took her life because she missed him, and regretted loosing him (which I, as a mother who lost a child to adoption, felt for her)...that she drank herself to death to keep the secret she took with her to her death. Alan, however, preferred to fulfill his youthful dream that she suffered what was due and just dessert for having dumped him...while at the same time professing to be glad she did.

Throughout his minutely detailed search - during which I was one of the many people contacted for help - he maintained secrecy from his adoptive mother, even after learning that his extended family were critically important to unraveling the complexities of his convoluted beginnings, having known his original mother, at least during the summer of her pregnancy.

I scored it up to classic "male adoptee" whore/madonna mentality and I began to wonder just how common it is for adoptees to feel paralyzed by this fear of hurting their adoptive mother by searching. I knew it was not uncommon, but how common? How many adoptees search in secret or wit till their adoptive parents pass away to begin. Do they regret waiting so long, often missing any possibility of meeting their original parents? Or do most not really care (or not let themselves care) – like Alan, seeking knowledge and facts more than relationship?

So, I conducted some totally unscientific research on Facebook, asking adoptees if they searched in secret? Were afraid to hurt their adoptive parents? Regretting waiting till they died to search?

At first it seemed to fit neatly into BJ Lifton’s classic description of the “good adoptee” who, like Alan, waited in fear….and the “bad adoptee” who threw all caution to the wind or even flaunted a search and reunion.

Betty Sue said she searched without her adoptive parents’ knowledge. “My amom would be VERY upset. She is 88 and is just not worth it to go there. I have HUGE regrets about not searching earlier. I was afraid to upset that apple cart.” At the opposite end of the spectrum is Heidi who: “searched very 'in your face' to my adopters from the get-go. Told them everything I was doing but *shared* nothing. Our relationship was toxic and volatile... I did it that way precisely to hurt their feelings. …. I told them I found her and then withheld all details (which their insecurity drove them to seek over and over) and then, the day before I was flying to meet her in person, I told them I was going. Again, when I got home, didn't share any details... just the fact that it was perfect, she was perfect, and for the first time in my ENTIRE life, I felt right, real, beautiful and worthy... all the things they had worked so hard to prevent me feeling for my whole lifetime.”

But then came Michael, whose answer reveals why so many adoptees keep their searches private. Michael “didn't keep it a secret that I was searching but didn't advertise it either.” Michael, 37, “started asking questions” when he as 18.

“My adoptive mother seemed perturbed, so I put it on the back burner to be taken up at a later date. When I was in college away from home, I took up a full fledged search and hired an investigator. After I found my bio mother, my adoptive mother was leery about me pursuing it further and let me know. I have introduced my found bio sister to my adoptive mother but that is the extent of what I share with her. It's not a popular topic between us and I don't talk about my bio relatives with her.… When I rediscovered them again after a long absence under the radar, I virtually kept it a secret from my adoptive mother until my bio mother suddenly died. When I expressed anguish over the death and recounted the time I had spent with her, my adoptive mother cut me off in midsentence. As of the present, the whole issue is one of the past. I still speak to my bio sister but don't talk about it.”

Alexa who “left home as soon as possible” because her adoptive parents were so abusive and her adoptive mother she described as “always so angry and probably crazy. I wanted to find my [original mother] so badly. I didn't really know how to search so I did not find her until I was 30. Since I was not in touch with my A-parents and had not been in years and never planned on being in touch with them again, it had no effect.”

So sad that adoption is so filled with fear, secrets, hiding, lying, insecurities, fear of rejection (something Alan mentions more than once) and anger. Sad that too few adoptive parents have been able to let go of their insecurities enough to allow their adopted offspring to integrate who they began as into who they have become. Hopefully, this is slowly changing, but then so too are more adoptions spanning continents making reconnecting more difficult, often by specific intent.

In the end, Alan meets and is embraced by half siblings on his father's side and has one conversation with a scary ex-con uncle on his mother's side. He never again mentions his adoptive parents who one can only assume died long before he finally had the courage to write and publish the details of his nefarious search and the relatives who conspired to help him.

He pulled it all off and was recognized and welcomed as Louis Prima's son, was embraced by siblings, no longer an only child.

Alan Gerstel's deep psychological honesty adds to adoption literature yet another view inside the life of a man who claims to have been glad he was not raised by the mother who bore him, felt exceedingly loved by the mother who raised him, had a loving wife, and yet never knew happiness till he found kin who looked like him.

I think Alan might agree or understand well the final words sent to me by Michael, the adoptee quoted above, when he says from the time he was old enough to understand that he was born to another: "Being adopted was forefront in my mind as the basis for my identity or lack thereof until the found stage of my search and reunion. Before that, I was a blank slate every time I looked in the mirror."

Yet the public chooses to disallow the depth of the losses adoption separation leaves deeply engrained into the psyche, the lives, and the souls of those it "rescues" and claims instead that it is a win-win when it is clearly a win-loose.

An Exciting Decision: Guatemalan Court Orders Return of Child Adopted to US

2011-08-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Wonderful news!!!

Guatemalan Court Revokes Passport for Child Adopted to US Under Name “Karen Abigail”

She was one of the children featured on ThreeDaysforThreeDaughters which I have blogged about. Now she needs to be brought back home to Guatemala and her family!!

Now, Guatemalan Judge Angelica Noemi Tellez Hernandez ordered a U.S. couple to return their adopted daughter to her birth mother, siding with a human rights group that says the girl was stolen by a child trafficking ring and put up for adoption. The girl was kidnapped in 2006 and taken out of the country under a new name two years later and was last known to be living in Missouri.

Tellez’s ruling also says Guatemala’s government must cancel the passport used to take the girl out of the country. It further orders that if the girl is not returned within two months, Guatemalan authorities should solicit help locating the girl from Interpol, the international police organization.

Nine Guatemalans, including a judge, have been charged in the case. The Survivor's Foundation doesn’t allege the U.S. couple knew the girl had been kidnapped. The court identified the couple as Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Vanhorn Monahan of Liberty, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City.

The ruling says the U.S. parents can appeal the ruling in Guatemalan courts and asks the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala to help locate the girl.

Norma Cruz, of the Survivors’ Foundation, said she believes this is the first time a Guatemalan court has ordered a child to be returned on the grounds that an adoption was fraudulent.

I am pleased to see the Guatemalan gvt following up on these cases, albeit far too slowly. This is the second PROVEN case, the first was caught just prior to her leaving Guatemala for the US to be adopted: the child of Ana Escobar, taken at gunpoint! I wrote about these cases here, here, and here.

Ana Escobar and her daughter Esther taken on my visit to Guatemala, 2009 when I visited the Survivor's Foundation.

What is needed now for this child and and several others is for the US gvt to DNA all children suspected of having been kidnapped to conform or deny allegations of such international felony crimes. It is sinful that people could just go on with their lives with a possible kidnap victim in their home and ignore it...and not think it will kick them in the back someday when that child finds out, as they WILL, since there names have been all over Internet all of their lives!

How can people be THAT desperate for a child that they would turn their back on such an egregious avenue to obtain one? How do they sleep at night?

Do they think the "end" - more material possessions - justifies the means?

This is a huge victory that has been years in the making. It is just a first step not just for this one child, but for at least two other children likewise identified as possible victims, living in the US.

Sympathy for the adoptive parents would have been in order in 2006 when they were first told that the acquisition of the child they adopted was questionable...but not now, after they delayed requests to have her DNA tested to confirm or deny that the child had been a victim of a felony. They delayed and delayed, making the child a stranger in her own native land, he native language and her family.

Initially, they were victims themselves. They did not intend to kidnap nor to adopt a kidnapped child. But their reluctance to make it right as soon as their was suspicion, makes them complicit - accessories after the fact.

What they did is every bit as wrong as the Brazilian family who kept Sean from his father David Goldman. They also did not kidnap the child but they kept him from his father and his native land. It is wrong. it is wrong when it is done TO Americans and it is equally wrong when it is done BY Americans!

I pray the other children likewise kidnapped and living with American families are all returned to their rightful, loving families.

"If ... the best interests of the child is to be the determining factor in child custody cases ... persons seeking babies to adopt might profitably frequent grocery stores and snatch babies from carts when the parent is looking the other way. Then, if custody proceedings can be delayed long enough, they can assert that they have a nicer home, a superior education, a better job or whatever, and that the best interests of the child are with the baby snatchers. Children of parents living in public housing or other conditions deemed less affluent and children of single parents might be considered particularly fair game." -- Justice James Heiple, Illinois Supreme Court in the "Baby Richard" case.

Vile, Blatant Baby Selling By So-called "Christians!"

2011-07-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

African American baby gender unknown, due in TN in mid-June, 17K plus 4.5K legal

Caucasian baby gender unknown, due late-July in UT, 30.5K plus 5-7K medical

Caucasian baby gender unknown, due mid-August in UT, 30.5K plus 8-10K medical (minor drug/alcohol use)

African American/Caucasian baby girl, due late August in UT, 25K plus $5-17K medical

African American/Caucasian baby boy, due late July/early August, 23K plus 11-14K in legal/living

African American/Caucasian baby gender unknown, due mid-August, 23K plus 11-14K legal/living

African American baby boy BORN in VA on Feb 2011, 11.5K plus 10.5K (agency travel, living, legal) 1.5K for ICPC if you're out of state

African American/Caucasian baby due in Florida in October, 23K plus 14K legal/living, 1.5K for ICPC if you're out of state

Caucasian baby gender unknown, due October in AZ, 23K plus 14K legal/living, 1.5K for ICPC if you're out of state

African American baby gender unknown, due in August, 23K plus 14.5K legal/living

These are REAL LISTINGS posted on this blog by Karalee who identifies herself as:

"a mother of two beautiful children through the miracle of adoption, I am thrilled to be working as an adoption consultant for Christian Adoption Consultants. It is such an honor to help families on their adoption journeys find the baby meant for them!"

How is this legal, let alone moral???

Note that in addition to the vileness of pricing based on race... that no mention of openness is mentioned. Are these expected mothers being kept in baby farms? Are they receiving any impartial counseling as to their rights? Any support for an option to parent?

What happens if they accept these pre-birth offers to BUY their baby and then change their mind as 50% of expectant mothers who consider adoption do?

Karalee reminds viewers of her blog listing that:

"only a few of the agencies we work with publish situations online, so this is a sampling of the situations our clients can be shown to. If you have questions about any of these situations or about the services Christian Adoption Consultants offers, email me at karalee@christianadoptionconsultants.com
Have a great day!"

Yes, that is her email adress. Comments are not accepted on the blog, but feel free to write to Karalee!

REPEAL the SEAL!

2011-07-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

As printed in the AAC Decree, Summer, 2011 Vol 28/No. 2 Pp 8-10.

“REPEAL the SEAL!” Should this be our new battle cry, mantra and legislative action plan?

Wouldn’t it be great to stop focusing our legislative energies on trying to “fix” or reform what is wrong with adoption, but on totally getting rid of the archaic draconian laws passed in the 1940s – for the most part, in all but two states – that created a second class of citizenry for those who are adopted? To stop being on defensive and go on the offensive!

For the past 60 years, since the records became sealed, grassroots activists worked to seek to restore rights unjustly taken from us. We have succeeded in gaining unconditional, unrestricted access in just six states in those 6 decades.

We were unarmed pioneers fighting sophisticated machines. Part our battle was overcoming the silence and shame surrounding these issues, including our own. We needed to make ourselves whole first and then conquer the mystique and glamorization of adoption; the misconceptions and long-held beliefs that adoptees should be grateful and birth mothers ashamed and seeking to hide on anonymity.

While we educated the public, we grew more empowered and became self-taught activists and lobbyists! Now we are ready, as a movement, I believe, to move to the next step and go at this thing, not apologetically and politely, but with guns blasting full steam ahead.

In 1989, I first coined the phrase “equal access.” While I was on a book tour after the publication of shedding light on…The Dark Side of Adoption, at the AAC Region 3 conference that October, I presented a talk entitled “Inequality Must End” in which I put forth the argument that seeking open ”records” was too vague and open ended. Records? What records? It opened us up for Pandora Box criticism, and in general it sounded as if adoptees were asking for special treatment instead of what we were really seeking - equality. I pointed out that equality is a very American ideal and would gain us far us more support. It was that year, for that presentation, that I printed up bright pink “Ask what equal means” button that are still for sale on my website and I hand out wherever I go.

I returned to activism after a respite following the death of my daughter to the realization that change occurs very slowly. Most groups and organizations are using the phrase “equal access” but many still maintain “open records” in the name of their groups or in their mission states. Even Bastard Nation, the most “militant” among us has a mission statement, which, after starting out “advocating for the civil and human rights of adult citizens who were adopted as children” follows by speaking of a prohibition of “assessing [sic] personal records”…and records “held by their governments in secret” without ever mentioning original birth certificates (OBCs).

In 2006 I wrote “Dear Bastards: Demand Equality!” which appeared in the Bastard Quarterly, Bastard Nation, Vol. 8, No 1, Spring/Summer. In 2009 I presented "Reexamining Goals: Open Records versus Equal Access," at the AAC 30th Annual National Conference, Transforming Families, Connecting Lives, April 25 http://www.slideshare.net/AdoptAuthor/equal.

Mike Dougney recently observed that “the vague promise that adoptees might know the facts of their origins, and the outright confusion of birth certificates with seldom-specified ‘medical records’ that complicate, if not sabotage, the relatively simple matter of restoring a basic civil right and equal protection under the law to adoptees .” Dougney was aiming his guns at EBD and Adam Pertman, calling such language “an ongoing threat to human rights” yet failed to include BN, whose mission statement remains today as above, and many others amongst us who unintentionally likewise diffuse the clarity of our struggle as a human and civil rights issue with ambiguous terminology.

New Tools: Time for a New Approach

Evan B. Donadlson has produced three clear, cogent, and highly recommended handouts that are powerful new tools for activism and legislative work:
•    Setting the Record Straight: Why is OBC Access Important?
•    Setting the Record Straight: What were Birthmothers promised?
•    Setting the Record Straight: What are the negative consequences?
http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/events/2011_03HardRock.php

When you add to this the research of E. Wayne Carp, Elizabeth Samuels, the Oregon University Adoption History Project and Barbara Raymond, on the history of sealed adoption records, a clear picture emerges. Baby brokers such as Georgia Tann pushed for secrecy in adoption in order to practice slipshod, underhanded gray market adoptions without any scrutiny transparency would provide. Meanwhile, the Child Welfare League of America opposed secrecy and sealing of records and favored openness and honesty in adoption practice then, as they do today. It was the industry versus the experts concerned about the best interests of children and their families and the industry won to the detriment of the people.

Today, as then, it remains those whose livelihood depends upon the redistribution of children – the adoption practitioners and their lobbyists – who oppose access to OBC for adoptees. They now pretend it is out of concern for mothers when that was never the reason the records were sealed to begin with. State laws reflect the reasons for sealing adoption records and OBCs was to protect adoptees from the stigma of illegitimacy and to protect the adoptive family from intrusion of the birth family. Nothing about protecting birth mothers or any alleged promises of confidentiality because none exists. It began as moneyed interest against those personally affected by adoption, and it remains so.

We must seek repeal because we need and deserve a return to pre-1940s parity with Alaska and Kansas. Even the best access legislation (that in Alabama, Maine, New Hampshire and Oregon) allows birth certificates to continue to be sealed to begin with making them not as pure as Alaska and Kansas. For example, consider the case of adoptive parents of a troubled teen who believe reconciliation with their child’s birth family might be worth trying to save him or her from self-destruction. In Alaska or Kansas they could access their child’s OBC because it was never sealed. However, in Alabama, Maine, New Hampshire or Oregon, unlike Alaska and Kansas, OBCs are still being sealed. Thus, unless the new law specified access for adult adoptees or their adoptive parents on behalf of their minor child, parents in a scenario as above would not have access without a court order. Such denial is unconscionable and unacceptable. Unless these laws have such provisions, they are less than perfect.

Additionally, only repeal allows the other parties named on the OBC – the mothers and in some cases fathers who relinquished – to likewise have access to those legal documents on which they are named. Repeal is the only way to level the playing field and allow adoptees in all states to have parity with those born in Alaska and Kansas. Additionally, repealing the laws that sealed the records – unlike any other current legislation – eliminates all sealed OBCs and falsified birth certificates going forward.

A Tougher Road?

Repeal seems a clearer more direct road to achieve our goal of ridding states of these oppressive laws because civil rights cannot be compromised. It is not equality to require some citizens jump through hoops and overcome obstacles such as vetoes and age restriction – the latest being an attempt by Rhode Island to require the adoptee reach age 40 before being allowed access – that are not required of all citizens. Repeal leaves no opening for such unequal requirements.

Will it be tougher to get a sponsor for such a bill? No doubt. It appears to be without precedent except when you utilize Alaska and Kansas. Consider running for state Assembly and introduce your own bill!

Knowledge is power. We know this history and the present opposition and we have the documentation to prove our case. These were ill-conceived laws passed against the advise of the experts to profit baby brokers. Any real concern for protecting adoptees from the stigma of illegitimacy is long past.

The opposition, on the other hand, has no proof of their claims of promises made to mothers because there is none. Nor do their claims of increased abortion or decreased adoption hold water. We must also use the fact that remaining open in Alaska and Kansas has not resulted in any consequence.

We must use this power to come from an offensive position! Many of us have used the term “restore” our access. This is accurate as the discrimination and denial of civil and human rights of adoptees is a relatively new phenomenon – in effect only since the 1940s in MOST states. Restoration must become a regular part of our vocabulary because of its “dead on” accuracy. We want to be restored to pre-1940s America in regard to adoptee equality.

I also suggest demonstrations wherein adopted persons, with Amended Birth Certificates in hand, turn themselves to their local authorities for violating state and federal laws that prohibit being in possession of falsified government documents. See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001028----000-.html. This can be combined with conferences or other events and properly announced to the media could make quite an impact on educating the public.

A wonderful opportunity for such demonstrations is approaching in July. On July 28 1868 the 14th Amendment was ratified giving the Federal Government the right to intervene when states and local governments deprive citizens of their rights. This crucial amendment has become the basis for all the Civil Rights legislation in the last 125 years and would be a great day to come out in force for the rights of adopted citizens.

Armed with the power of right on our side, we can boldly attempt to REPEAL the laws that have held us as second class citizens for six decades! We deserve no less and must demand what we deserve. Civil human rights cannot be compromised and anything other than unrestricted, unconditional access can be acceptable. It is unconscionable to promote and encourage adoption as a “loving choice” until such time as adopted citizens have no less rights than their non-adopted peers with no conditions or requirements that apply only to them.

by Mirah Riben c 2011

New Finding Confirms Higher Rates of Mental Health Problems Among Adopted Children

2011-07-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

The report is: "America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2011." A link to the report is provided here, in: The Truth About Adoption: All You Need Is Love, And A Safety Net.

The section on adoption collected data from: The American Community Survey, a large annual survey of the U.S. population, providing estimates of a variety of groups and their characteristics; the National Survey of Children’s Health survey of households with a focal child age of 0–17 about their children’s physical, emotional, and behavioral health and their experiences with the health care system; and The National Survey of Adoptive Parents.

The section begins with these words:

"Because children develop best in the context of families, adoptive families are sought for children whose birth families cannot care for them." CANNOT! That does not extend to pressuring young girls that it is best for them to seek two parents for their child who may or may not remained a two-parent family it does not say we should encourage young women to pursue further education or a career in favor of parenting their own children.

It goes on to say: "Yet cchildren who are adopted, particularly those adopted beyond the first months of life, experience disruptions in parenting that can have longstanding implications for their development and well-being. Even children adopted as infants face challenges with identity development and issues of loss and grief regarding birth parents."

As quoted here, adopted children have higher rates of mental health problems than all other children, according to a federal report on the health and well-being of U.S. children released on Thursday.

About 2.5 percent of U.S. children are adopted, but the National Institutes of Health report found the disruption that affects some children who are adopted after the first month of their lives may have long-term effects.

While it addresses learning disabilities behavioral problems it still relates these issues to fetal exposure to alcohol and other substances, or early abuse or neglect at the hands of their original parents or institutions. And it is not not confirming the kind of anecdotal data we know: that adoptees are over-represented in all mental health and youth facilities - some of which see nearly a 50% adopted clientele percentage. It does not address the increased rate in suicide we see in adoptees, although it is adoption is known to be a risk factor for suicide.

In the end, despite the headlines, it is nothing new and it totally disappointing as far as I am concerned.

Only The Good Die Young: Happy Birthday, Baby

2011-07-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALICIA
7/15/67 - 2/27/95

I DO REMEMBER YOU
by Elise Witt

In every hand that fights to right an old wrong
In every child who learns to sing a new song
In every hand that helps another to rise
In every child who reaches up to the skies
I do, I remember you
I do, I remember you

And when the mountain seems to steep
You remind me of the dream we keep
When the day becomes too long
You remind me to sing a new song
And I do, I remember you
I do, I remember you

When the job gets to gettin’ too tough
You remind me that one’s not enough
When I think I can do it alone
You remind me my heart’s not a stone
I do, I remember you
I do, I remember you

In every hand that opens toward me in love
In every child who spreads her wings like a dove
In every hand that crosses over the line
In every child who learns to speak her own mind
I do, I remember you
I do, I remember you
I do, I remember

--------------------------------------------------

[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]
By E. E. Cummings 1894–1962

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing ,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Please visit Alicia's Facebook Memorial page

Gov. Christie: Obstructionist on adoptee rights

2011-07-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

The Home News Tribune, Friday, July 8, 2011
The Asbury park Press, Friday, July8, 2011

Mirah Riben

"In our democracy, near equality is no equality...Government either treats everyone the same, or it doesn't. And right now, it doesn't. The question for every lawmaker is: Do you want to be remembered as a leader on civil rights? Or an obstructionist?"

These words were spoken by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on May 27.

New York state lawmakers chose to be remembered as helping the cause of civil rights move forward and put an end to discrimination based on sexual preference.

Gov. Chris Christie, on the other hand, chooses to obstruct equality, continuing to deny marriage rights to some based on the gender of the two consenting adults who choose to enter into matrimony. Christie cites his religious values while dismissing the message of Christ that all are created in God's image.

This obstruction of equality comes on the heels of Christie stomping on the rights of other adult citizens of the Garden State: those who were adopted as children. The governor's defeat of adoptees' human rights is perhaps even more difficult to comprehend because surely people who are adopted do not act in a way that might be construed as being against God or any religious doctrine. They have done nothing other than to be born and then adopted into another family. Yet, because of Christie, they will continue to be treated as second-class citizens, denied the same rights as others have to unconditional access to the vital record of their own birth.

Christie's conditional veto called for restrictions that would apply to adopted people and adopted people only, singling them out as once black Americans were singled out for unique and separate treatment; as once women were relegated as unable to vote or to own property.

Creating and maintaining legislation that applies to some, but not all, of us is an affront to everything this nation stands for. Just as Rhode Island and Missouri passed equal access legislation for adopted people this month, Christie turned his back on his constituents who begged for relief of antiquated laws. Christie chose instead to side with special-interest groups whose livelihoods depend upon the transfer of children via adoption.

These lobbies oppose any and all efforts to regulate or create transparency in the practice of adoption, causing it to be called the "Wild West" by Adam Pertman, executive director of the prestigious Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a think tank that calls for ethical adoption and the human and civil rights of adopted people to be restored.

How can we promote adoption as a loving option for expectant mothers in crisis when that choice leads to a lesser life for their offspring, forever denied access to their heritage, lineage and genealogy? Christie and any others who think they are following religious tenets by treating people unfairly ought to consider why the Judeo-Christian Bible begins with the Book of Genesis and details who begat whom. Hebrews recognized lineage as of such great importance because Judaism is passed by matrilineal descent since only one's mother is certain (without DNA testing).

Christie sees the right to know from whom one received the gift of life as a right that he can restrict and obstruct of some people, such as his own sister, in spite of significant and substantial evidence that the reasons he has outline are based in rumor, not in fact. In doing so, he tries to create an oxymoronic near-equality. Christie has etched his name indelibly as an obstructionist of human rights in New Jersey.

JAYCEE LEE DUGARD: Adoption as a form of Kidnapping

2011-07-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

JAYCEE LEE DUGARD. One of the worst parts of her entire 18 years of captivity and rape was that he - Phillip Garrido - took away her name. Wouldn't let her say it or write it. It was a harsh, painful punishment she was forced to endure. All carefully orchestrated to dehumanize her and make her a compliant slave.

And one of the most liberating was the day she got to say her own name - and see her mother again!

Anyone who does not see adoption as legalized kidnapping is deluding themselves. Even when absolutely necessary - as it rarely is - it is still for the adoptee a form of kidnapping - having been taken from their mother and having their name taken from them, yet knowing they exist...somewhere...

And, like a kidnap victim or any abuse victim, the adoptee lives in constant compliant fear that their life could be worse if they bite the hand that feeds them...

Like a kidnap victim, adoptees wonder: If my mother really did this because she loved me, why doesn't she come and find me?

And, yes, I said FEW adoptions are truly necessary. Few adopted children are truly orphans or were removed from truly abusive or dangerously neglectful homes because the children are removed mostly remain in foster care and worldwide 90% of the children in orphanages are not orphans; they have at least one living parent and other have extended family. many have family who visit and hope to be reunited as was the case with the two children adopted by Madonna. In many parts of the world impoverished families use orphanages for temporary care, for medical care, food or education they cannot otherwise afford but they have no concept of permanent adoption.

Poor women all over the world are lied to,tricked, told their children are going to America for an education and they believe they will be returned.

Domestically women in prior decades were lied to and told their children will be better off adopted; it was loving thing to do and they were given no alternative to do otherwise. Most could not go home unless they let their child go.

Today, mothers are told they can have their cake and eat it to! Complete school, go on with careers while their child is well cared for by loving people and they can visit and be like an aunt...one big happy family. But for far too many it's a lie, and unenforceable lie. Legal, attorney drawn, notarized documents outlining contact agreements merely serve to lull one into a false sense of security.

But, even when absolutely necessary - names are taken away. Human beings are stripped naked of their identity, the thing most precious to anyone. The thing that makes you who you are, your very essence. Stripped of your past -- and most often it the placement was necessary children are old enough to remember their mothers and often have siblings they may or may not be with.

Adoption is legalized kidnapping. Some recipient-captors are kind and caring...maybe even most. But the child is captive nonetheless, stripped bare of his name and identity, her original family that (s)he knows exists....somewhere. Small wonder many adoptee tell of rescue fantasies.

For some (many? most?) mothers it is similar too as we are left to wonder if our children are well, alive, well cared for. We are lulled into thinking the best rather than the worst case scenario...and some of us even escape into denial or total acceptance of it having been for the best, as we too were victims of brainwashing...

For the most part it's all a big game of charades - of ignoring the very obvious elephant in the room while tripping over it, or even having it thrown up in your face. But you comply and play the game of pretense to keep the peace, much as families who live with any kind of abuse or addictions. It is that way for the adoptee and for mothers and their family of origins...My parents went to their death never wanting to talk about "it."

The big difference for mothers who lost children to adoption and mothers of kidnap victims is that we get no compassion, no support. In fact we get quite the opposite: contempt! We do what we are told is best and loving and the minute we do, we become unfit, monstrous ogres! At best, we may get solicitous praise and thanks for the "gift" we "gave."

Anniversary Grief

2011-07-08T19:42:00.001-07:00

Having a hard time this year....

FAQs: Family Preservation vs. Anti-Adoption

2011-07-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

Q: What is family preservation?

A: Family Preservation is a recognized part of social service practice, and is defined here by Child Welfare Information Gateway.

My definition is similar, albeit more long term, and closer to that of the National Family Preservation Network: to keep families together and prevent unnecessary out-of-home placement of children.

There is also a Family Preservation Institute at Mexico State University...just to name a few.

The term is recognized in Australia which worked to reverse it's pro-adoption position to one of family preservation, offering support to single mothers and reducing the need for adoption loss and separation. West Australia went on to apologize for the era in which adoptions were encouraged, as they still are in the US.

In July 2011, Korea, too made shift in their policies towards family preservation as indicated by the change of the name of the standing law from “The Special Act Relating to the Promotion and Procedure of Adoption” to “The Special Act Relating to Adoption.” Bill #1812414 marked the end of an era in which adoption was equated with the best interests of a child versus empowering the child’s family of origin.

See: "What is Family Preservation" tab

Q: Is Family Preservation Pro-Life or Pro Right Wing "Family Values"

A. NO, not at all! In the adoption community, Family Preservation clearly and specifically refers to helping families in crisis remain together and avoiding unnecessary permanent solutions for temporary problems.

"Open adoption and open records are important byways. But they are not the most compelling route. Family preservation is." Dr. Randolph Severson, The Soul of Family Preservation

Q: Is Family Preservation a euphemism for anti-adoption?

A: No. In addition to the sources listed above who use the term, support of family preservation can be traced back to the negative reaction to the 'orphan train movement.' The term dates back to the 1890s, and in the 1909 White House Conference on Children it was the top ranked issue. For more, see Wikipdia. Many states offer family preservation programs that can be found by googling the term.

Q: Am I, Mirah Riben, anti-adoption?

A: It is not a term that I am comfortable with as its pejorative use and negativity does not define my positions and is often linked with anger and bitterness rather than best interests of children and families.

I am not comfortable with the term because it seems to denote an absurd extremism that one supports any and every mother keeping a child - no matter how dangerous that might be for the child....a position not held by even the most extreme anti-adoptionists. I am as uncomfortable with that label as any pro-choice person would be opposed to being labeled anti-life or pro-abortion. Things are not as black and white as labels seem to imply. For more, see: Nomenclatures, Euphemism and Anti-Adoption Accusation.

Being against adoptions that begin with the eradication of blood ties and a falsified birth certificate, does NOT equate to preferring to keep kids in harms way or in foster care.

I am opposed to all unnecessary, unwarranted, pressured, lack of independent option counseling and lack of separate legal counsel, coercive adoptions.

I am against all profiteering in adoption.

I am against all falsified, fraudulent, fake birth certificates and lack of equal access or original and true birth certificates for ALL parties named on said birth certificates.

I have seen nothing that indicates that children in need of alternative care - those who are truly orphaned or have no parents or extended family or kin to care safely for them - cannot be provided such care via a form of permanent legal guardianship that does not alter their identity or sever their family ties.

See also: Why Some Say: ADOPTION SUCKS! And Why Some Are Anti-Adoption

Q: Do I believe that every natural mother should keep her baby?

A: I do not believe that any mother should be forced or coerced to parent any more than she should coerced or subtly pressured to not parent her own child. Mothers - after giving birth and seeing and hold their babies - deserve impartial option counseling that honestly tells them all the risks to them and their child of separation and the resources to be able to make an informed CHOICE.

I believe that baring any serious mental illness or sociopathic tendencies, any woman who gives birth to a child would prefer to have the help she needs to maintain that relationship. I believe that mothers deserve all the resources they need to achieve that goal. I believe that if they cannot accomplish their goal, extended family should be sought to help care for the child. I believe that this is in the child's best interest as well as the mothers, as most adopted people would much prefer to be blood related to the family that raises them and most people would not simply trade off all kin connectedness for better or more material advantages or a mother and father who have the same 50/50 chance of divorcing as all other couples.

Q: Am I a disgruntled, angry, bitter "birthmother"?

A: I am a mother who was lied to when I was told that adoption would be better for my daughter - my daughter who took her own life at 27 as a result of her "better" adoptive family. I am a mother who was told I would forget and get on with my life 42 years ago, who spends every day of my life working to change adoption policies as a direct result of my loss.

Dedicating my life to preventing other mothers suffering the lifelong, irresolvable guilt, grief and shame of unnecessarily losing her child to adoption is as normal and natural as any mother who has suffered the tragic unnecessary loss of a child, such as Candy Lightner who founded MADD or Maureen Kanka who founded Megan's Law. Are they asked if they are bitter?
My anger is perfectly justifiable and I will never apologize for it.

Q: Are my views radical and far too idealistic?

A: These views and positions are no more radical or idealistic than those of the The United Nations, UNICEF, The UN CRC, the Hague Convention on International Adoption, and Save the Children - all of which call for family preservation first, then kinship care and stranger adoption as a last resort - with international adoption the very last resource after no domestic adoption can be found. They also call for protection of original identity.

See "What is Family Preservation" link

Q: Don't you think that making adoption ethical would resolve all issues and allow it to proceed safely rather than abolishing it all together?

A: The word ethical is totally subjective. Unless we establish clear - enforceable - ethical guidelines, it means nothing more than "nice." All of the agencies who placed children that were kidnapped, or who were abuse or killed are considered reputable and ethical agencies and are still in business. Even the most unscrupulous baby brokers - such as Seymour Kurtz - receive a slap on the wrist simply reopen under a different name or in a different state.

What is ethical about domestic adoption agencies taking women out of state, enmeshing them with prospective adopters and making them feel indebted emotionally as well as financially for expenses paid for the room, board and medical costs? What is ethical about predatory practices such as prospective adopters in the delivery room denying the mother any bonding tome at all? What is ethical about providing one attorney to represent both parties - something that would never be done in real estate transaction but is done in very child adoption.

What is ethical about US adoption agencies - allegedly - accepting or adoption placement children who have been trafficked kidnapped, stolen and papers forged?

What is ethical about placing children with pedophiles and others who abuse or kill them, simple because they can afford to pay the brokers' fees?

What is ethical about exporting US children out of the country while we import kids by the thousands?

What is ethical about falsifying birth records?

There is no way to hold private business to ethical standards that cut into their bottom line in a country that admires, supports and encourages free enterprise and capitalism...and encourages adoption with tax and other benefits yet has NO family preservation programs or budget whatsoever. Who will establish and enforce regulations? The foxes are watching the hen house?

Ethica accepts no financial support from business that profit for adoption. The same is not true, however, of EBDAI which claims to "promote ethical adoption practices" and "better the lives of all those touched by adoption" is funded in part by Spence-Chapin, who established EBDAI, hired a marketing professional as Executive Director, and is also funded by other adoption agencies such as The Cradle and pro-adoption groups such as The Dave Thomas Foundation, according to their 2008 Annual report. The webpage of The Cradle is one big, polished marketing infomercial to recruit expectant mothers. Where are the ethics in this?

Other pro-adoption organizations, such as the NCFA, are more honest and "ethical" about whom they represent, although they lie about "protecting" adoptees and their original families.

Q: Doesn't guardianship amount to baby sitting or foster parenting?

A: Some may perceive it that way. However permanent legal guardianship (PLG) is the way adoption was always practiced up until the 1930's when adoptions began to become secretive and records sealed and falsified to protect the baby brokers like Georgia Tann and their paid clientele.

PLG gives caretakers all legal rights for their child's eduction and medical needs. The need to change a child's name is not necessary to provide care for a child, and never was prior to 1930's. Children are often raised by aunts or grandparents - or in step families - or by married parents with different surnames. With such a high rate of divorce today, there is no stigma to it. Physical and legal custody resides with the guardian and cannot be changed except by a judge and under highly unusual circumstances such as the death of the guardian or the abuse or abandonment of the child by the guardian. In that case, PLG would leave the door open for the original parent to step in, if able to - something not possible under current adoption laws that permanently relinquish all rights of the original parent. In PLG they would be forever in the background as a non-custodial parent in a divorce who generally have liberal visitation rights.

Prospective "adopters" who find this not in their liking do not have to, as there are hundreds of parents vying for each child in need.

Alternative child care is about what is about finding homes and families for orphans and children in need of safe care - it is not the last step in reproductive "rights."

Children need and deserve caretakers who want what is in their best interest not to have them as possessions or replacements or pretense for a biological child.

Caylee and Casey Anthony

2011-07-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

Facebook, like the nation at large, is going viral with anger over the jury's decision.

Tonight on ABC's PrimeTime/NightLine one of jurors spoke and said, simply, without a cause of death they could not connect the dots. She said hey never proved a murder occurred, despite the forensic experts stating that a body with duct tape on it is a clear indication of murder. Other murder cases have been won based on circumstantial evidence, some even without a body at all. But this jury did not.

The public wanted vengeance for the angelic little angel. They and feel cheated.

But this is how our justice system works. The job of the defense was to create doubt and they succeeded. As long as there is doubt, a conviction "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not possible. Perhaps the prosecution shot to high going for death penalty murder.

Three small silver linings:

1. I sure wouldn't want to be Casey Anthony. Besides the risk to her life and safety due to the hostility of the public, especially in Florida, what will she do and where will she go? How can she possibly go back to living with her parents after the accusations made by her defense? Unless they were all in on the game to confuse the jury! It's possible because anything is possible, but I doubt it. I wouldn't want to be her, and yet there are people who idolize and marry convicted murderers, so...

Will she write a book and try to profit from it all? That will only illicit far more anger.

2. While one loose screw on Facebook started a petition "demanding" federal charges against Casey for violating "various" civil rights of Caylee... there is a serious petition that has resulted from this.

Someone created a petition to create Caylee's Law, making it a felony to fail to report a missing child in a timely manner. This makes a great deal of sense and had it been in place, would have led to punishment for the adoptive parents of Edward Dylan Bryant, who would today be 18 years of age. He disappeared as a child in 2001. Austin Bryant, who would be 15, went missing around 2003.

The boys' adoptive father, Edward Bryant, 58, and mother, Linda, 54, who are separated, were arrested in Texas and in jailed in Colorado. But they have not been charged with the disappearance and possible murder of these two boys, just of keeping subsidies after they disappeared.

Support this petition! If the link doesn't work, it's because it is getting so many hits!! More than 37,000 supporters join in less than 24 hours. Try it again in a day or so.

3. I'm tickled that the verdict pisses off Nancy Grace! Casey Anthony was her pet cause since the child first went missing. Grace had her hung from the start and never let up for a second, pissing off TMZ's Harvey Levin for her attack of the jury.

I just simply cannot stand the working mother who is far too judgmental of mothers for my taste... and am tickled that this really pisses her off no end.

Who is responsible for what happened to that poor innocent child we will never know for sure. Was it an accident and cover up? Why was Casey googling chloroform? Why did she make up a Nanny that didn't exist? Why didn't the jury find that enough to find her guilty as the public surely did?

All we know for sure is that a child was killed and left to rot in the woods and her mother, Casey Anthony, danced and partied...

The Fresh Air Fund is in Need of 850 Loving Host Families

2011-07-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

If you or someone you know is able to host, please sign up now. In 2010, The Fresh Air Fund's Volunteer Host Family program, called Friendly Town, gave close to 5,000 New York City boys and girls, ages six to 18, free summer experiences in the country and the suburbs. Volunteer host families shared their friendship and homes up to two weeks or more in 13 Northeastern states from Virginia to Maine and Canada.

Thanks to host families who open up their homes for a few weeks each summer, children growing up in New York City’s toughest neighborhoods have experienced the joys of Fresh Air experiences.

More than 65% of all children are reinvited to stay with their host family, year after year.

Fresh Air Fund Host Families

"It is rewarding to see the smile on our Fresh Air child's face as she enjoys the simple things we take for granted..."

Friendly Town host families are volunteers who live in the suburbs or small town communities. Host families range in size, ethnicity and background, but share the desire to open their hearts and homes to give city children an experience they will
never forget. Hosts say the Fresh Air experience is as enriching for their own families, as it is for the inner-city children. There are no financial requirements for hosting a child. Volunteers may request the age-group and gender of the Fresh Air youngster
they would like to host. Stories about real Fresh Air host families and their New York City visitors are just a click away!

July 28: National Adoptee Rights Day

2011-07-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Adoptee groups petition to declare July 28 National Adoptee Rights Day

By Lori Holden

Lori Holden was named a Must-Read Mom by Parenting magazine and has written for Adoptive Families magazine, for regional newspapers, and for the readers of her blog, Write Mind Open Heart.

Read the article, sign the petition, pass along the link.

http://tinyurl.com/adoptee-rights-day.

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Plan demonstrations at your local vital records; or go to your local police stations and turn yourselves in for being in possession of false ID! Send out PRESS RELEASES and get the attention of the media.

Bring signs and banners! Wear your group tee shirts or get shirts at Cafe Press or EqualAccess4Adoptees,org Be colorful and be LOUD!

Demand EQUAL ACCESS! Tell the press this is a civil and human rights issue.

Tell them why we have chosen July 28 to demonstrate: Because on that day in 1868 the 14th Amendment was ratified and became the basis for all the Civil Rights legislation in the last 125 years.

For more details: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/declare-july-28-national-adoptee-equal-rights-day/

OR: http://tinyurl.com/adoptee-rights-day

HAVE YOU SIGNED THE PETITION??? IF NOT, DO IT RIGHT NOW!!

PLEASE: Copy and share this message!

*** IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER ***

While the National Adoptee Rights Day petition is sponsored by four organizations including the AAC, the activities suggested in this event announcement are solely those of EqualAcess4Adoptees.org and any and all other groups, organizations and individuals who choose to support them. THE SUGGESTED DEMONSTRATIONS ARE NOT SPONSORED OR SUPPORTED BY THE ACC.