Book Give-Away!

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 Today Magazine Review by Denise Roessle

Adoption Today Oct/Nov 2008(pages 58-59).

“The Stork Market: America’s multi-billion dollar unregulated adoption industry,” Mirah Riben, Advocate Publications, 2007

The Stork Market is not an easy read, whatever your perspective on adoption. Chances are you will squirm, gasp and shake your head in disbelief (as I did). Then, you will likely come to realize that this book is an important addition to the body of adoption literature — in fact, a must-read for every mother who is considering surrendering a child, every couple seeking to adopt, and every adoption professional and legislator in the United States.

You won’t find a more straightforward account of the adoption industry as it exists today. Concise, well researched and documented, The Stork Market offers a comprehensive history of current adoption practices, including the lack of regulations (no requirements for training, licensing and reporting) for agencies and facilitators in 47 of our 50 states, transgressions committed against both natural mothers and adopting parents (including recognizable names like Georgia Tann and Seymour Kurtz), varying international adoption policies, trends toward rushing mothers into the decision to surrender, unenforceable open adoption agreements, safe havens, foster care, and sealed records.

Mirah Riben’s conclusion (a view shared by Origins-USA, on whose board of directors she serves) is that family preservation is the answer — with kinship adoption and legal guardianship as viable alternatives to adoption by strangers, the end to amended birth certificates, enforcement of open adoption agreements, and a greater focus on finding families for older children in foster care.

“It is far easier for the general public to identify and empathize with the plight of someone who desires to be a parent and cannot, than with expectant mothers needing support,” Riben writes. Many in the media “lament the ‘shame’ of the lack of ‘adoptable’ babies, and describe painfully desperate attempts to adopt and ‘deserving’ couples being forced to endure long waiting periods, traveling overseas and/or paying exorbitant fees, and being victimized by scammers. What is overlooked is that the intended purpose of adoption is not to fix infertility but to find homes for children whose families cannot raise them.”

After reading The Stork Market, I believe family preservation is an aim worthy of our consideration and effort. At the very least, major reforms are in order. Riben (along with Evelyn Robinson, a social worker, author and speaker on the long-term outcomes of adoption separation, who has lived and worked in Australia since 1982 and wrote the book’s foreword) cites Australia’s Children’s Protection Act of 1993, an adoption alternative model based on the best interests of children that might well provide a road map for changes here in America. The act makes private adoption illegal, bans commercial adoption agencies and payments of any kind connected to adoptions, encourages and supports expectant mothers in raising their children, requires counseling after birth at least three days prior to consent for adoption, prohibits consent for adoption until the child is at least fourteen days old, and includes the names of both the natural and adoptive parents on the birth/adoption certificate.

Change of this magnitude takes years. In the meantime, The Stork Market provides vital information on mothers’ and fathers’ rights and how adoptive parents can avoid being victimized by unscrupulous agencies and facilitators.

“Adoption is a very personally and emotionally charged issue for those touched by it,” Riben acknowledges. “Few can think about or discuss it without passion. For that reason, this may be a difficult or painful book for some to read. It may make you sad, it may shock you, or it may make you angry. But it is for just these reasons that you might need to read it.”

I hope you do.

Telling it Like It Is

Telling It Like It Is

Book review by Jane Edwards, Regional Director, Concerned United Birthparents

"The Stork Market" is a must read for those considering adoption or surrendering a child for adoption; and for public policy makers.

Adoption is usually thought of as a positive event - finding a family for an unwanted child; helping a woman go on with her life without a burden she cannot bear.

In fact, adoption has become a total distortion of the intended purpose of finding homes for orphaned children. It is a multi-billion dollar unregulated business which exploits mothers and commodifies children.

The demand for adoptable children - particularly healthy white infants -- far exceeds the supply. Couples and singles desperate to be parents pay thousands of dollars for the babies that become available. Meanwhile American children who need homes are languishing in foster care.

"The Stork Market" leads us through the seamy side of adoption: Trusting couples desiring a child scammed of thousands of dollars. Women convinced to travel across country to deliver a child in a state "friendly" to adoption. Women required to pay thousands of dollars because they did not turn over the "goods." Men denied their paternal rights by convoluted laws requiring them to sign up on "putative father registries." Poor children in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America kidnapped and smuggled into the United States.

And its not just prospective adoptive parents and natural parents who suffer. Adoption cuts children off from blood relatives and denies them the right to know their origins. Unscrupulous adoption practioners place children with anyone who can pay their fees. Sadistic adopters abuse - even murder - children entrusted to them.

Riben not only exposes the problems but offers common-sense solutions. Mothers should be made aware of their options. They should have sufficient time to consider and re-consider their decision. Fathers should have actual notice of the birth of their child and the pending adoption so that they can assert their rights. International adoption should be curtailed and resources made available to poor women to allow them to raise their children. Adoption agencies should be licensed and regulated. Private adoptions conducted by "facilitators," attorneys, doctors, and others should be outlawed.

Finally Riben recommends that adoption - cutting off all legal ties between the child and his original family -- be replaced with guardianship-like arrangement. Adoptive parents would have custody but the child would retain a relationship with the original family.