Quebec to Recognize "Dual Parentage" Adoption

Biological ties to get legal nod

Two new options; Bill would legitimize links with birth parents

By KEVIN DOUGHERTY, KATHERINE WILTON of The Gazette contributed to this report, The Gazette October 6, 2009

Adoption rules in Quebec will be overhauled to allow continuing links between adopted children and their biological parents.

In presenting a draft bill yesterday to amend Quebec's Civil Code, Justice Minister Kathleen Weil said the changes will affect a large number of Quebec families.

Most of the changes have been enacted in other jurisdictions of Canada and in the United States, she added, but some proposed changes were borrowed from France.

At present, adoption in Quebec is confidential, meaning the adoptive and birth parents often don't know each other.

Weil said the draft proposal would bring into law what many Quebecers are already doing with regard to closer contact between children and biological parents.

Weil proposed a "dual parenting" option, which comes from France, in which a child would be a full member of the adoptive family but continue to have contact with the birth family. The birth parents' names could even be included on the child's birth certificate along with those of the adoptive parents.

Weil is also proposing the concept of open adoption, which means that before an adoption, the birth family and the adoptive family agree to stay in touch afterward.

This option could include the exchange of information about the child, and provides for mediation if there are disagreements between adoptive and birth parents.

Such adoptions, recognizing both sets of parents, would be optional and would be possible only when the adoption takes place in Quebec, Weil said, but a committee is looking into how the concept might apply to international adoptions.

The new rules would also apply to "mono-parental" and "homo-parental" families, Weil said.

The draft bill allows for consultation, with public hearings in January, Weil said.

The new rules would not be retroactive, and current confidentiality rules would apply to adoptions concluded before the changes take place.

"Leave the past alone," Weil said.

But the exception is that children adopted either before or after the changes would have the right to obtain information about medical family history. A court could order such information to be forwarded to medical authorities without disclosing the identity of the birth parents.

Other changes proposed yesterday by Weil would give all adoptive children the formal right to know the identity of their birth parents, unless the birth parents veto it.

Children over age 14 who are wondering if they were adopted would be able to ask Youth Protection.

Youth Protection could also contact the biological parents to determine whether they want to get in touch. But a child over age 18 would have the right to register a veto to prevent such contact.

Mona Propst, manager for adoption services at Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, said yesterday there are advantages and disadvantages to bringing biological parents into the picture; she had not read the draft bill, however.

Apology Refused!

Our Dirty Adoption Secret By Emily Wolfinger

[As reported here on Sept 25] The [Australian] Federal Government wants to give forced adoption victims an apology, but seems very keen to prevent the public finding out exactly what the apology is for, writes Emily Wolfinger

During a meeting at Minister for Families Jenny Macklin's Canberra office on 27 August, the offer of an apology to an estimated 150,000 women and their children who were "unethically" and "unlawfully" separated between 1950 and 2000 was declined by Origins, the official body representing these women.

Macklin's advisor Tracey Mackey phoned Origins NSW coordinator Lily Arthur the next day, asking whether Origins would reconsider accepting their offer of an apology. They declined a second time. But get this: the apology may still go ahead in November. As if it were an afterthought, the Government plans to tack this apology onto the apology to the "Forgotten Australians", those half-million Australians abused as children in institutions. The Forgotten Australians are also upset about this, as they want their apology to be their own — and fair enough. However, it seems the Government is determined to kill two birds with one stone.

Far from being a well-meaning gesture, the offer of an apology is an insulting and deeply disappointing outcome for Origins, who have waited nearly 10 years for a Government response on this issue. They have been campaigning for a national inquiry for even longer, and not once have they asked for an apology. According to the group, it is only through a national inquiry that Australians will learn of the nationwide extent of the crimes acknowledged as "kidnapping" by Family Court Justice Richard Chisholm in evidence he gave at the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into past adoption practices in 1999.

That inquiry only served to reveal the extent of criminal and unethical adoption practices committed in NSW. Origins fears that until all states are held accountable in a national inquiry, Australians forcibly removed from their unmarried mothers in other states will remain in the dark about the circumstances surrounding their adoption. A national inquiry will also provide an opportunity for mothers from all states to tell their stories. Origins says it is very unlikely that any of this will happen if the Government goes ahead with the apology, because such a move would look to many as if some degree of recompense had been made.

It makes no sense at all for the Government to insist on making an apology before Australians even know of the nationwide extent of the crimes to which such an apology would correspond. The Indigenous Stolen Generations had their national inquiry first, and it demonstrated very clearly just what was being apologised for. Why not use the same process for mothers forcibly separated from their children through adoption? Is this offer of an apology an attempt at an easy way out of actually doing something to address the damage caused by Australia's adoption practices? Perhaps, worse still, it is an attempt at a cover-up of the extent of the crimes perpetrated against these women and their babies.

Lily Arthur believes it is. "The reason why they want us to accept an apology is [so that they can] continue to hide the unlawful practices." She says that the Government is trying to cover for the states who are afraid of what a national inquiry could reveal, and in turn, how much it could end up costing them in terms of redress and litigation.

It's not hard to see why the many victims of these criminal adoptions are deeply sceptical of government bona fides on this issue. Beyond failing to fully investigate and acknowledge what happened to these women, the federal and state governments are still misinforming people about the bumper adoption era that occurred from the 1950s to the 1980s and even trivialising what happened. The Victorian Government, for one, attributes the decline in adoptions from the mid-70s to "... a number of interrelated factors: the introduction of government benefits for single parents, increasingly tolerant community attitudes toward exnuptual births and single parenthood, improved contraception [and] the widespread availability of pregnancy terminations".

In fact, while the Supporting Mother's Benefit for single mothers was not introduced until 1973 under the Whitlam Government (and it did not extend to fathers until 1977 under the Fraser Government), financial assistance was actually available to single mothers well before the 1970s, as outlined in a 1956 government publication titled Children in Need by Donald McLean: "To avoid any misunderstanding or any suggestion that the mother was misled or misinformed, District Officers are instructed to explain fully to the mother, before taking the consent, the facilities which are available to help her keep her child. These include...financial assistance to unmarried mothers under section 27 of the Child Welfare Act ..." However, as documented in the transcripts of the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry this fact was largely concealed from mothers.

While that inquiry has put on the public record much that needs to be better understood, there is still much more that needs to see the light of day. An apology, therefore, would be an irresponsibly premature step on an issue already so marked by institutional culpability. Origins want full acknowledgement and accountability first — which they believe a national inquiry would ensure — then suitable redress, and then perhaps an apology.

The other point about government apologies is that they must be done properly, and at the right time — that is, when people want them — otherwise they become devalued. As Arthur also points out, in their eagerness to issue an apology, the Government is reducing the significance of the apology to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous people. "If they are prepared to offer an apology to people who don't want one, what kind of substance does the original apology to the Stolen Generations have?"

So, what were some of the unethical and illegal practices perpetrated against these women? Well, as documented in the transcripts of the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into past adoption practices, they include: the detainment of unmarried women during pregnancy; the immediate separation of mothers and babies following births (many mothers were not allowed to see their babies until they signed adoption forms and many others never met their babies); the use of coercion to solicit adoption consents from mothers (in some cases, mothers were told the adoption papers were discharge forms); the use of mind altering drugs (not administered to married mothers) following births and preceding consents; promises of a 30-day cooling off period to get mothers to give consents when the rights to revoke consent during this period were rarely observed; the absence of any counselling prior to and following adoptions, and the failure to notify mothers of alternative options to adoption (as noted above, many mothers did not know that financial support was available).

It is not surprising then that these mothers suffer a number of mental health conditions ranging from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder. Half of these mothers did not go on to have more children, while the female suicide rate was highest between 1962-72, reaching an all-time high of 13 per 100,000 women in 1967, compared to 4.3 today. This period coincided with the peak in adoptions — nearly 10,000 in 1971-2. Taken together, these facts represent an appalling and poorly understood blemish on our human rights record.

In a press release on the Sunday following the meeting at Jenny Macklin's office, the minister said that she had "begun a dialogue" with mothers separated from their babies. However, when asked whether this means a national inquiry is on the cards, a spokesperson from Macklin's office would not say, sending instead this vague response: "This dialogue will explore what sort of acknowledgement of their experiences would assist their healing process."

Clearly the Federal Government wants this issue to go away, but that isn't about to happen any time soon. Arthur says that mothers like her won't go away until the so-called past adoption practices — or, as she calls them "abduction practices" — are seen for what they were.

Next year will mark 10 years since the Final Report into past adoption practices in NSW, titled Releasing the Past, labelled those practices "unethical" and "unlawful". It will also mark 15 years since Origins was founded and first started campaigning for a national inquiry. It is time that the Federal Government allowed the country to face the reality of this part of Australian history and set up a national inquiry. National inquiries have been instigated for much less serious reasons than the theft of over 100,000 children.

These mothers want their children to know the full truth. They are not asking for much.

Being Radical and Tooting Our Own Horns!

I have been called a radial and I have also been "accused" - by some of my "peers" - as being "too" self-aggrandizing or self-promoting. If you feel this way and that aspect of my work is offensive to you, delete now because I am going to tell you with pride what my radical out-spokeness is accomplishing.

No social change was ever made without changing attitudes and preconceived notions. I am changing things. People ARE starting to "get it" and that is because some of us have dared to be "radical" enough to stand up and speak out. It is the ONLY way that the oppressed have ever made changes to their condition. I am proud to be a stand-up radical!

I am presenting to a feminists organization, Assoc. of Research on Mothering (ARM), at York University, Toronto on the 23rd of this month and again in Puerto Rico in February. Getting feminists to hear the pain of adoption loss and understand that adoption pits women against women: rich against poor - is bIG! And they ARE listening!

Every time I get an article published as I recently did in Conducive Magazine and being considered for publication in Mothering - it's getting the news out there to people who may never have thought of adoption as anything but a win-win.

Another article - based on my trip to Guatemala and the kidnapping of children there for adoption was just been accepted for publication in Adoption Today magazine (a very pro-adoption venue) for the Dec. issue.

I was also INVITED to present at the PLI Adoption Law Conference. I will be on a panel discussing fees and ethics presenting to attorneys and law students interested in adoption law.

I - and others - are speaking out and SOME are listening.

Everyone of us can do the same on a one-to-one. Every time we share our story with a neighbor or new acquaintance we are educating and enlightening and changing attitudes.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.... And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles," 1992 (commonly misattributed to Nelson Mandela, 1994 inauguration speech.

Well behaved women rarely make history. Laurel Thatcher Urlich
(more powerful women wisdom quotes at this link)

Group Resists Korean Stigma for Unwed Mothers

New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea — Four years ago, when she found that she was pregnant by her former boyfriend, Choi Hyong-sook considered abortion. But after she saw the little blip of her baby’s heartbeat on ultrasound images, she could not go through with it.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

This 29-year-old woman, nine months pregnant, has decided to keep her baby instead of setting up adoption.

As her pregnancy advanced, she confided in her elder brother. His reaction would sound familiar to unwed mothers in South Korea. She said he tried to drag her to an abortion clinic. Later, she said, he pressed her to give the child up for adoption.

“My brother said: ‘How can you be so selfish? You can’t do this to our parents,’ ” said Ms. Choi, 37, a hairdresser in Seoul. “But when the adoption agency took my baby away, I felt as if I had thrown him into the trash. It felt as if the earth had stopped turning. I persuaded them to let me reclaim my baby after five days.”

Now, Ms. Choi and other women in her situation are trying to set up the country’s first unwed mothers association to defend their right to raise their own children. It is a small but unusual first step in a society that ostracizes unmarried mothers to such an extent that Koreans often describe things as outrageous by comparing them to “an unmarried woman seeking an excuse to give birth.”

The fledgling group of women — only 40 are involved so far — is striking at one of the great ironies of South Korea. The government and commentators fret over the country’s birthrate, one of the world’s lowest, and deplore South Korea’s international reputation as a baby exporter for foreign adoptions.

Yet each year, social pressure drives thousands of unmarried women to choose between abortion, which is illegal but rampant, and adoption, which is considered socially shameful but is encouraged by the government. The few women who decide to raise a child alone risk a life of poverty and disgrace.

Nearly 90 percent of the 1,250 South Korean children adopted abroad last year, most of them by American couples, were born to unmarried women, according to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.

In their campaign, Ms. Choi and the other women have attracted unusual allies. Korean-born adoptees and their foreign families have been returning here in recent years to speak out for the women, who face the same difficulties in today’s South Korea as the adoptees’ birth mothers did decades ago.

One such supporter, Richard Boas [recipient of the Family Preservation Hero of the Year Award, 2007] an ophthalmologist from Connecticut who adopted a Korean girl in 1988, said he was helping other Americans adopt foreign children when he visited a social service agency in South Korea in 2006 and began rethinking his “rescue and savior mentality.” There, he encountered a roomful of pregnant women, all unmarried and around 20 years old.

“I looked around and asked myself why these mothers were all giving up their kids,” Dr. Boas said.

He started the Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network, which lobbies for better welfare services from the state.

“What we see in South Korea today is discrimination against natural mothers and favoring of adoption at the government level,” said Jane Jeong Trenka, 37, a Korean-born adoptee who grew up in Minnesota and now leads Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea, one of two groups organized by Korean adoptees who have returned to their homeland to advocate for the rights of adoptees and unwed mothers. “Culture is not an excuse to abuse human rights.”

In 2007, 7,774 babies were born out of wedlock in South Korea, 1.6 percent of all births. (In the United States, nearly 40 percent of babies born in 2007 had unmarried mothers, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.) Nearly 96 percent of unwed pregnant women in South Korea choose abortion, according to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.

Of unmarried women who give birth, about 70 percent are believed to give up their babies for adoption, according to a government-financed survey. In the United States, the figure is 1 percent, the Health and Human Services Department reports.

For years, the South Korean government has worked to reduce overseas adoptions, which peaked at 8,837 in 1985. To increase adoptions at home, it provides subsidies and extra health care benefits for families that adopt, and it designated May 11 as Adoption Day.

It also spends billions of dollars a year to try to reverse the declining birthrate, subsidizing fertility treatments for married couples, for example.

“But we don’t see a campaign for unmarried mothers to raise our own children,” said Lee Mee-kyong, a 33-year-old unwed mother. “Once you become an unwed mom, you’re branded as immoral and a failure. People treat you as if you had committed a crime. You fall to the bottom rung of society.”

The government pays a monthly allowance of $85 per child to those who adopt children. It offers half that for single mothers of dependent children.

The government is trying to increase payments to help unwed mothers and to add more facilities to provide care for unmarried pregnant women, said Baek Su-hyun, an official at the Health Ministry. But the social stigma discourages women from coming forward.

Chang Ji-young, 27, who gave birth to a boy last month, said: “My former boyfriend’s sister screamed at me over the phone demanding that I get an abortion. His mother and sister said it was up to them to decide what to do with my baby because it was their family’s seed.”

Families whose unmarried daughters become pregnant sometimes move to conceal the pregnancy. Unwed mothers often lie about their marital status for fear they will be evicted by landlords and their children ostracized at school. Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, according to a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women’s Development Institute.

“I was turned down eight times in job applications,” Ms. Lee said. “Each time a company learned that I was an unwed mom, it accused me of dishonesty.”

Ms. Choi, the hairdresser, said her family changed its phone number to avoid contact with her. When her father was hospitalized and she went to see him with her baby, she said, her sister blocked them from entering his room. When she wrote to him, she said, her father burned the letters. Last year, about three years after the birth, he finally accepted Ms. Choi back into his home.

“That day, I saw him in the bathroom, crying over one of my letters,” she said. “I realized how hard it must have been for him as well.”

Bethany's Coercion Received Fed Funding

Following on to Kathryn Joyce's piece on Crisis Pregnancy Centers and adoption today on RH Reality Check (in which Joyce points to Bethany Adoption center as an example), Sarah Posner reports today in the American Prospect that in addition to other federal money, Bethany has received 8 federal grants totalling over $3 million in 2009:

Bush-era abstinence-only funding isn't the only federal funding Bethany has received -- or continues to receive. According to a Department of Health and Human Services database, Bethany received eight federal grants worth over $3 million in 2009, including for abstinence-only education, healthy marriage promotion, and "embryo donation and/or adoption public awareness." And HHS used a Bethany representative on a panel in August for its conference entitled "Strong Practices, Bright Promises," about healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood programs.

Is Adoption Natural?

An interesting subject is being blogged about by adoptees and aps...and you'll never guess where they stand on the subject!

Issycat, who calls herself an "ambivalent adoptee" asked: "Are all potential adoptive parents so desperate for a kid that they lose IQ points?"

Apparently, I’m not supposed to call the woman who gave birth to me my natural mother. I’m not supposed to call her that because it implies that adoption is unnatural.....

You know what is natural? Babies going home and being cared for by the mothers who carried them in their bodies. That is natural. Anything else is just a little sad.

I’m not saying I hate adoption. I don’t. I’m not saying that adoption isn’t necessary in some cases. It is.

But there is no way in hell I would ever call it natural.

The discussion continues over at AdoptionTalk by an ap who says:

The "natural" thing is another one of those "givens" in adoption language -- adoptive parents are supposed to be upset about adopt-a-whatever programs, we're supposed to say we're the real parents, not those pesky birth parents, and we're supposed to say that adoption is natural, just another way to add to your family.

I was brainwashed to believe it, weren't you? I completely bought into the "same as" narrative, that raising an adopted child was the same as raising a biological child, nothing less and certainly nothing more.

It's not the same.

There are a growing number of aps who "get it" - mainly because they have to. It's pretty hard to pretend a child of another race or ethnicity is "the same as" the one who might have been born to you! Most have changed that to the "rescue" myth and how these kids would be starving in the streets or languishing in orphanages of not for their saving graces! Too bad the kids in orphanages are still there, left behind, as orders are filled - via kidnapping, stealing, or coercing - by human traffickers for younger tots.

Is Adoption Natural?

An argument I had seen put forth many years (decades?) ago for this position is the animal kingdom in which we hear anomalies of dogs adopting kittens etc. Cross breed nursing and nurturing.

THAT is natural, albeit very unusual. But it is natural because the animals are operating on survival instinct. The infants will latch on and nurse from ANY teat and the mothers that are lactating are feeling very maternal and will not push the babies away.

It is also natural because it only happen when the baby animals are truly ORPHANED - as in their mother abandoned them or died.

THEY DID NOT SEEK OUT these orphans nd pay large amounts of kibble for them! They did not do it to meet any NEED of their own to be a parent because they were barren, or even out of altruism to save the babies from death. They just did what comes naturally - a baby suckles.

It is also natural because the kitten, while it may act like a dog and have some learned behaviors - is still a kitten. No one rewrites its past history and renames it a dog.

Following this example, in-family adoptions are - to some extent -natural. A grandmother or sister raising her nieces or grandkids because the mother is deceased or incapable is a very natural thing. Raising them and caring for them is natural - changing their names and pretending the grandchild is the child of the grandmother is NOT!

For me the line between natural and unnatural is two-fold:

1. Motivation. Is the child being cared for first and foremost for the sake of the child regardless of the caretakers ability to have children of "their own" or not and regardless of their desire to be a parent. The dog did not NEEDm want or seek to have a kitten. The grandmother likewise did not pursue having a baby to raised at this time in her life. They filled a need of the child and did what had to be done.

2. Pretense and name changing. This again comes down to best interest of the child. Long before adoption got all tangled up in laws when a child needed care someone in the community or parish stepped up and provided that care. But because the motivation was as stated above, there was no need to pretend the child was 'theirs' or to change the child's name. It was perfectly acceptable to know that the Jone's were raising the Smith's boy...or that my Aunt Sally was being like a mother and caring for me.

It is the reversal of the natural order that makes adoption unnatural. It si the u=turning it upside down and putting the needs of those adopting before those of the children. It is seeking out often through devious means children to fill a demand that is very unnatural and unsavory and immoral. It is PAYING for them that is unnatural. Buying them. Owning name. Renaming them to make the ownership complete. Eradicating their past. That is what is unnatural.

Perhaps that is what Issycat means in her ambivalence? She, like most adoptees, does not resent having been provided good care - when that is the case - but they resent - and rightly so - the trade off, what was taken form them in exchange for tht care - their kin, hertige and identity.

What do you think?

Anita Tedaldi at it Again

Once upon a time adoption was secretive. Now the doors of reality have swung wide open revealing every nuance of ugliness...

You might recall my blog post about adoption give-backs and great deal of hubub in the adoption blogger community and general media about the woman who terminated her adoption after 18 months because she and her other five kids just "didn't bond" with the adopted baby...and her military husband was away a lot, etc...

Well, this woman seems to be a major glutton for attention - albeit mostly very negative attention, appearing on an NBC Today show segment

Although in the original Times blog, Tedaldi wrote that she "wasn't connecting with [the baby] on the visceral level I experienced with my biological daughters" she blames the child as well, telling Matt Lauer: "The child, D., wasn't connecting with us."

Ironically, Tedaldi wrote a column for Military.com called "We Can't Trade In Our Children or Husbands" back in January 2008. (Military.com has pulled the piece, but the Adoption Talk blog has some of the text.)

Is she sharing this to unburden her guilt or for those who praise her for her honesty? or is it just one more aspect of the "tell all" generation, who reveal on Orprah having "consensual sex" with their father as Mackenzie Phillips did recently. Is it just all about the shock value and selling books?

More importantly...

We have all read of cases of people suing adoption agencies for “wrongful adoption” because the agency did not disclose all medical facts.

Someone should sue Anita on behalf of Baby D for failure to disclose she was not prepared to parent another child, and to pay for the lifelong psychiatric care he will need for having been rejected by her and her family. She should be made to pay dearly for what she did and so too anyone else who does likewise.

Adoption is a forever commitment. When one decides to divorce, and end another lifetime commitment, one often has to pay the piper in terms of spousal support for the partner who may have given up a career to parent or is simply the lesser earner and depended on the promise of of forever. Seems perfectly logical to me to make people for destroying children’s lives by adding to the burdens they all ready have to bear.

If she gets away scott free - and gets to “brag” about it, and/or gets pity or support for her honesty — what lesson is learned? The person who originally posted her story on Motherlode and went on the Today Show with her says:

she is now loath to sit in judgment of other parents because she has come to understand how one can end up in a place they never thought they would be. That’s the message that resonated with me. That is why I published her guest post. Today’s parents are often too stressed themselves, leading them to be too quick to judge others. Perhaps seeing how easy it is to mess things up in spite the best of intentions — and Anita is the first to say she completely messed things up — might make all of us pause and realize that we could just as easily become “that kind of parent.”

But what does it say to other prospective adopters: I can give this a “TRY" and if it doesn’t work, the public will be sympathetic and forgiving? Is that the message we want to send?

We need to always put the rights and needs of children above adults. She is not the one who deserves sympathy and pity here - Baby D is.