SB 416: Creating More Korean Orphans

S.B. 416 "North Korean Refugee Adoption Act" is about to be voted on. This bill is a travesty that will create more Korean orphans to market.

This article, The Fiction of the North Korean Refugee Orphan, explains exactly what this bill proposes and why it is an evil plot to exploit using words as weapons to redfine children as faur ganme for baby brokers, all coated in sugary charitable language:

Recently fast-tracked to the House floor, HR 1464 (“The North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011”) has passed the House. Exploiting the rhetoric of humanitarian rescue, the bill identifies North Korean hunger as the problem and proposes U.S. adoption of North Korean children as the solution, making the figure of the hungry North Korean orphan a matter of U.S. legislative concern.  ....  Modeled on a failed series of North Korean human rights bills that stretch back to 2003, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011 proceeds from an outdated portrait of on-the-ground conditions and distorted premises. Empirically speaking, the bill misrepresents the reality of the children whom it purports to help. As a placeholder for children who are, by and large, not North Korean, not refugees, and not orphans, the “North Korean refugee orphan” is a dangerous fiction whose elastic license with the truth imperils the welfare of the children this legislation stands to impact. The bill’s alarmist image of “thousands of North Korean children [who] are threatened with starvation or disease” does not, in point of fact, correspond to the reality of the children who—albeit often poor and sometimes in the care of a grandparent—actually have families, have household registration papers, attend schools, are relatively well-nourished, and are Chinese citizens. Strategically loose on the supply-side details, this bill risks instrumentally construing these children as adoptable when, in fact, they are not. Far from ensuring the best interests of the child, as specified by international protocols, including the Hague Adoption Convention to which the United States is signatory, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act, if passed, will give legitimacy to practices that shift U.S. adoption policy toward child laundering ....read more here.
 

BILL TEXT: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.416:**

YOUR SUPPORT TO DEFAT THIS VILE LEGISLATION IS URGENTLY NEEDED!!!

If you wish to take action on this bill it that action needs to happen VERY SOON :-)

 

Below is a list of members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and links for contacting them. I got squashed for time and so didn't include phone numbers for all but you can find them on the links.

 

Contacting your U.S. senator would be enormously helpful -- by phone today or tomorrow, if possible, and then if you can follow up with an email message by the end of the weekend...that would be GREAT!  Here's the list:

Senator John Kerry D- MA http://www.kerry.senate.gov/contact/ (202) 224-2742

Senator Richard Lugar IN http://www.lugar.senate.gov/contact/contactform.cfm

Senator Robert Menendez NJ http://www.menendez.senate.gov/contact/?i=CHD

Senator Barbara Boxer D-CA https://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm

Senator Ben Cardin MD http://www.cardin.senate.gov/contact/ (202) 224-4524 phone

Senator Robert Casey PA http://www.casey.senate.gov/contact/ 866-802-2833

Senator Jim Webb VA http://www.webb.senate.gov/contact.cfm (202)-224-4024

Senator Jeanne Shaheen NH http://www.shaheen.senate.gov/contact/ 202-224-2841

Senator Christopher Coons DE http://www.coons.senate.gov/contact/ 202-224-5042

Senator Dick Durbin IL http://durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/footer-contact?p=contact

Senator Tom Udall NM http://www.tomudall.senate.gov/?p=contact 202-224-6621

Senator Bob Corker TN https://www.corker.senate.gov/public/?p=ContactMe

Senator James Risch ID http://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email

Senator Marco Rubio FL http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact

Senator Jamrs Inhofe OK http://www.inhofe.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm

Senator Jim DeMint SC http://www.demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=CommentOnLegislationIssues

Senator Johnny Isakson GA http://isakson.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Senator John Barrasso WY

http://barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.ContactForm

Senator Mike Lee UT http://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-senator-lee?p=contact

 

Adoptivrefather, Samford University law professor and reknowned expert on child trafficking for adoption, David Smolin writes:

I am writing to support...opposition to HR 1464, The North Korean Refugee Adoption Act. I have been tracking this law for some time. As a law professor I find this legislation particularly ill-conceived and dangerous. For all those who have worked to provide some safeguards in intercountry adoption for children and families, this law is a frightening conception, for it supplies a broad end-run around normal nationality, immigration, and Hague safeguards. The proposed law defines “large numbers” of children under the ill-defined labels of “de jure or de facto stateless refugees” and “stateless, orphaned children,” and proposes alternative intercountry adoption procedures that strip out the basic protections of nationality. Although focused on “North Korean” children in North Korea, China, and South Korea, the law instructs the State Department to search for “stateless, orphaned children” of all nationalities throughout the globe. The law baits us with visions of starvation and disease in North Korea that have little or no relationship to the proposed “solution” of new intercountry adoption procedures....

I do not doubt that there are some good intentions behind this law, but nonetheless HR 1464 would create a terrible precedent. In that way, its negative significance could go beyond the particulars of the situation its title addresses. 

David Smolin

 

CALL TODAY!!  Tell your legislators to stop intefering in N. Korea and instead to fiocus on the half nmillion in U$ foster care, more than 100,000 of whom COULD be adopted!!!

Lies are the Real Debt

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....

LDS: Tiger Changes It's Stripes? Supports Open Adoption

In a dramatic turn-about, LDS adoption agencies are now supporting open adoption placements.

Two recent articles: LDS Family Services encourages open adoptions and Open Adoption: "There's definitely a love between adoptive parents and birth parents" "witnessed the change from totally closed adoptions to those that are so open that the birth parents almost become another member of the family."

"In the face of such trends [declining numbers of infants being relinquished for adoption], the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is promoting a stance in favor of new baby adoptions."

Marketing is marketing. They've made at least one convert.One mother says: "It's the hardest thing I ever did but at the same time, it was the best thing I ever did."

Now - how will this effect their strong position against access for those already adopted. me thinks they'll stick to the old "promise of confidentiality" lie. After all, what's done is done and they are only interested in increasing adoptions in the here,now and future to have more converts.  So, by sticking t their made-up promises we were never given, they get to have their cake and eat it too.

Let us also remember that LDS families are not free of lying to mothers and breaking promises of unenforceable openness, either. Many a battle has ensued from an LDS so-called open adoption.

Third Party Reproduction and Adoption

Third party reproduction involves the use of sperm, egg or womb of a "third party" to the person or couple attempting to become parents of a child and creates a child who may not be related to one or both parents.

Dawn Davenport, director of Creating a Family, who hosts a webcast radio program on "infertility and adoption" describes adoption as "moving up the treatment ladder" of infertility treatment. Really? Is that how WE think of adoption? Is that the intent of adoption? Is it really all about infertility?

The hottest topic today within this "third party" realm is embryo or gamete adoption.

Karen Roeb, Clinical Administrator of Fertility Miracles, a division of the American Fertility Institute, is quoted on MomLogic.com 9/8/09 as saying that "snowflake" embryo adoption is "a little easier than adopting a child. Psychologically it's almost the same. You still get to experience the birth. When a donor donates, she gives up all legal rights to any children that are produced -- even the egg. She's not entitled to the child or the embryo."

Just two days prior, on Sept 6, a blog post entitled, "Is Embryo Adoption Adoption?" references a Social Science Research Network article entitled, "Embryo Exchanges and Adoption Tax Credits."

I encourage you to listen to Dawn's webcast interview with Adam Pertman, shortly after EBDAI published the study titled “Old Lessons for a New World: Applying Adoption Research” and Experience to Assisted Reproductive Technology” and Marna Gatlin, founder and Director of the nonprofit, Parents Via Egg Donation.

All three parties involved in the webcast agreed that children must be told how they were created - yet sadly they say that most "recipient" parents do not want to or will not tell their child. However, all of these sources missed totally in comparing these methods of OBTAINING a child, the sealing of a child's original and true birth certificate.

None of these sources mention what I see as the difference between the two:

“Gamete adoptees” ARE in fact born to their “adopter” – so that complicates everything in terms of calling them adopted. The “gamete adoptee” - and correct me please if I am wrong - does not have original identity that gets erases when they are adopted.

To make laws requiring people to inform their adopted embryo kids the truth is impossible to enforce, just like it is impossible to enforce telling any child if sperm or egg were purchased and thus he is not biologically connected to one or both of the parents who raised him. No more than you can force anyone who cheats on their spouse and gets pregnant to reveal the truth of their father.

In regular adoption the situation is quite different. Laws can and should be changed to allow equal access to the true record of one's birth which exist.

The child of DI or embryo adoption - a “gamete adoptee” - has no original birth certificate to access and thus could only find the truth if his parents choose to tell him or through medical records of their mother, which are protected by HIPAA law.

Emotional Bullying: Internet Road Rage

One of my blog reading "fans" was kind enough to send me a link to an article on emotional bullying. It is very accurate, and I hope that you will find as helpful as I did ... most especially for those of us who purport to be in the "business" of providing SUPPORT. So I thought I'd share some of it.

The article begins:

Emotional bullying is when someone tries to gain control by making others feel angry or afraid. It is characterized by verbal abuse such as name-calling, sarcasm, incessant teasing, threatening, mocking, putting down, belittling, ignoring, and lying. Also known as adult and workplace bullying, emotional bullying also includes such abuse as exclusion from a group, tormenting, ganging up on others, or humiliation. Moreover, this type of bullying also extends to racially or sexually abusive comments and behavior.

Ah yes, we have all experienced this on every list we've been on! We can name names and recognize very specific examples of each and every negative behavior listed here: name-calling, sarcasm...I know I for one have seen a great deal of that, as well put downs and lies.

The article goes on to describe the effects on one's health and emotional well-being - including suicide.

The author then very much echoes what I had concluded about the low self-esteem of the emotional bully. They are most often people who feel so badly about themselves that they can only feel better by belittling others. Putting others down is their only means of feelings superior in a world in which they feel so immensely inferior. Anyone who has been in a verbally abusive marriage or romantic relationship knows this all too well. It also happens in the workplace.

....[emotional] bullies exist along the same continuum as personality disordered persons who have anti-social tendencies and sociopaths. "While they may never exhibit criminal behavior, their inability to have compassion and understanding for others links them to these more severely affected persons. Psychologically, the root of all of these self-serving traits along this continuum is an internal lack of selfhood."

As for how to cope with this cruel and deviant behavior the article goes deeper than simply the advise to ignore them that we have all heard, and I for one often have trouble doing. I am very much guilty of attempting to argue back or trying to "defend" myself against very personal vicious attacks. It is far easier to tall someone to "not take it personally" than it is to do, when YOU are called a hurtful name, at least it's hard for me! The NY "don't back down" in me often gets triggered. But like road rage, we all know where that can lead and it aint good! And "you started it" needs to be left in elementary school yards and toddler playgroups. I assume those who can rad can very easily draw their won conclusions.

I am getting better at "taking it from the source"... turning the other check and walking away from it...though I am still learning. I am not by nature passive, so it is a challenge. I try and remind myself that we are all damaged by our loss and suffering in pain and a great deal of that comes out as misdirected anger. As the article says:

...it becomes easier to ignore a bully once you understand that they are acting out of their own pain and insecurities and that to take it personally doesn't do you any good whatsoever.

There is apparently, too some conflicting advise in this area:

Experts say that the best way to address bullying is to take a strong, proactive stance. In other words, stand up to bullies. If enough people stand up to a bully, the reasoning goes, eventually the bully will be forced to change. However, according to web counselor Burr, "it depends on what you mean by 'change'."

I think some of us got this advise from our parents when we were bullied as kid sin school. In my experience, this works for the occasional, out of character, loss of temper nasty comment from an otherwise balanced and professional person. The article continues:

...while it would be in everyone's best interests for the bully to recognize and change their behavior, it isn't always possible. In other words, it is up to you to change your behavior and your response to the bully....[by] spending as little time, energy and attention as possible on the bully and his or her antics.

One of the final suggestions is:

- Be confident and look bullies in the eye. Speak in a calm and clear voice and name the behavior you don't like and state what is expected instead. For example: "Stop teasing me like that. I want you to treat my feelings and opinions with respect."

I hope you will all read this article in full and pass it around. (The link is in the first line of this post.) I found it insightful and very helpful, and again, I want to thank the anonymous person who sent this to me. We can all - including me - use all the help we can to deal with be being bullied...without falling into the trap of trying to fight fire with fire.

No, I am NOT playing victim. Victimhood is not a position I am at all comfortable with, and not part of my persona. I have plead guilty to, and take full responsibility for my part in these flaming wars and vow to work harder still to change. If each of us would so the same...take responsibility for OURSELVES and stop looking at others faults or what we dislike in them... the Internet - and the earth - would be far safer, saner, and more enjoyable places!

And so...I paused to rethink my "free speech" policy in regard to flaming, abusive comments. As a former university student and employee I know all too well the battles and debates over freedom of speech versus hate speech versus censorship. After some thought I have to conclude that what a publicly or private ly supported/financed institution does is one thing. This is a privately owned and controlled blog. My blog. I want to keep it a SAFE PLACE, and will exercise that right from this point forward.

DISCUSSIONS are clearly welcome on this and any future (and past) topics posted, of course! But discussion must be limited to the FACTS and ISSUES presented in the post. personally attacking or flaming comments will NOT be posted-- or a best will be carefully censored and name-calling etc. DELETED!

Please consider this when attempting to comment on this blog.


Peace...