Anti-Adoption and PROUD OF IT!

I have shunned the label anti-adoption...and probably still will under most circumstances, for diplomacy purposes.

But the very word "adoption" says a great deal. It is a verb; an action: meaning to take. Adopt does not mean care for or protect...it means only to take.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1):

1.	to choose or take as one's own; make one's own by selection or assent: to adopt a nickname.

2.	to take and rear (the child of other parents) as one's own child, specifically by a formal legal act.

3.	to take or receive into any kind of new relationship: to adopt a person as a protégé.

Take. Take. Take.

American Heritage Dictionary:

1. To take into one's family through legal means and raise as one's own child.
2. 1. To take and follow (a course of action, for example) by choice or assent: adopt a new technique.
   2. To take up and make one's own: adopt a new idea.
3. To take on or assume: adopted an air of importance.

Take. Take. take.

Where is the commitment? The permanence? Where is the care?

Where is there any recognition of the human being "taken" - and taken from whom or what?? Doesn't matter. Just TAKE. TAKE. TAKE.

So why is it then that some defend the process, believing it to be "imperfect, but the best we've got" or that it can be "reformed." Why do some defend the very word against not only more humane practices but alternative names for such alternative means of providing open and honest child care?

Why would we want to continue to use a term that speaks only of the taking and making another human being one's "own"?

What is so frightening about permanent legal guardianship for children who have no extended family who are able or willing to care for them? What is horrifying about not issuing a falsified birth certificate and beginning a child's life on a foundation of lies? Why are some perplexed at the the idea of family members having multiple surnames as so many families do today for a variety of causes such as divorce and remarriage, not to mention first marriages in which women do not change their names.

Let's look at women making that choice in marriage. First, they are adults making a CHOICE - not having it made for them. Secondly, why did the practice of not taking one's husband's name come about in recent decades? Simple. Women decided they refused to be "owned" as property! That is what renaming is about. Yet some insist on continuing the practice of human ownership of other humans.

Yes, I'm talking about children. Children have no rights, rights? Well, sorta true. They have right to know their name and the parents -- in coutries that abide by the Convention of the Rights of the Child. And even in the US, children over 12 are old enough to state a residential custodial choice in divorce. Seems simple enough to enact a name change for a child even as young as kindergarten age who really wants it.

Personally, I would much prefer a word that indicated - and a process committed to - finding a homes for children; or entrusting others with the care of some one else's kids. Not a word that only meant to take, take, take...

Adoption Addiction?

ad·dic·tion /əˈdɪkʃən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-dik-shuhn] – noun
the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

a·dopt /əˈdɒpt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-dopt] – verb

1.	to choose or take as one's own; make one's own by selection or assent: to adopt a nickname.

2.	to take and rear (the child of other parents) as one's own child, specifically by a formal legal act.

Hooked on taking, and taking, and taking...having, owning, possessing...

What else could explain Anglina Jolie's considering yet another adoption while healing from and boding with the birth of her twins?

According to the Chinese press:

Angelina Jolie is considering adopting another child. The 'Wanted' actress - who gave birth to twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline last month - was so affected by footage of the recent earthquake in China she is contemplating giving a home to a child orphaned in the natural disaster.

People can be addicted to anything: sex, shopping (taking, owning, possessing), plastic surgery...so why not adopting? It's just another form of collecting. Some collect dolls, other live ones!

Others have said: "Watch Out China Angelina Jolie Wants Your Children!"

Children are like Pokemon to Angelina Jolie, she just has to collect them all, and now reports are saying she is eying China.

And, of course....who is more "entitled" than Angelina...or more motherly? Her father - who got to see the twins in people magazine like everyone else - is stunned and said she had no interest in dolls when she was young. Guess she's making up for lost time!

Mia Farrow also adopted a bunch of kids. Difference? She did it OUT of the limelight! I also know of no children she adopted who were black market.

Let's Make a Deal!

I recently came across the news that "at least 22,000 children across the country are waiting to be adopted by loving parents" but, just as in the U.S. of A., Canadians are choosing to adopt overseas instead.

So...since we have more than 100,000 kids in the same situation...in foster care and unable to be reunified with any family....

And since adopters by-and-large prefer imports over domestics...

Let's swap "unwanted" foster kids and that way Americans and Knooks can feel the joy of adopting internationally and no one has to feel as if they are recycling or buying second-hand, "previously owned" goods...

I mean, after all...who would want a USED Chevrolet station wagon when one could get an exotic Lamborghini, Porsche, or BMW fresh from the showroom...er orphanage! And all it depends on which models are currently "available" for delivery and the price tag! If there's none "in stock" - people are willing to wait for one with the exact list of "accessories' they need and desire...and they will definitely NOT accept one with dents or any other IMPERFECTION!

If the foster swap program catches on, it would be expanded to Western Europe and even down under, though on a far smaller sale of course in countries that have moral and decent social systems that take care of their own.

Off to contact the consulates with this brilliant plan to "dispose" of both countries garbage...we can call it the "orphan plane."

After all - why should the US have the distinction of being possibly the only nation in the world who both imports and exports its kids for profit...and don't we live in a world economy? A FREE market?

We could change the poem on the Statue of Liberty to reflect the glory of the country that giveth and taketh!


"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless bastards tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door....and I will send thee mine."

The "crime" of truth seeking

Pulling an oxygen tank in one hand and holding a cane in the other, Jill Ekstrom cried and trembled as she was sentenced to 18 months' probation, a $540 fine and $850 restitution to the Davis County Sheriff's Office. According to other reports, whoever, District Judge Ben Hadfield sentenced her to a year in jail, but suspended the term until the mental health evaluation is completed.

Her crime: Helping to reunite people separated by fraudulent state issued falsified birth certificates!

Ekstrom told reporters she took a plea deal because the case was affecting her family, not because she was guilty. She also said she accepted the plea because because of her health, because her public defender was overworked and the lack of money to hire better legal representation. She said she wrote a letter to the judge asking if she could do community service instead of jail so she could help people and turn her case into a positive experience.

Ekstrom - who called herself a "confidential intermediary" - was caught in a sting when a Davis County sheriff's deputy posed as an adopted child (sic) seeking a birth parent.

What a shame she was not able to stand up as a martyr for the unconscionable destruction of fmailies and the criminalization of certain people - those adopted - completing their genealogy as freely as those non-adopted.

Decades earlier Sandra Muser did just that! She stood fast and served her prison term and wrote "To prison With Love."

And when my friend and co-founder of the origins origins - started in NJ in 1980 - Lucy pare was likewise caught in a strong operation on camera, she said for national TV that she related her work to that of those who smuggled slaves through the underground. She said that, like them, she was practicing CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE and conscientious objection to unjust laws.

I am proud to know such civil rights fighters and sad that in 2008, this is still being prosecuted as a crime.

Adoptee Opins Sought

Many on the receiving end of adoption, celebrate a "Gotcha! Day."

From where I sit, as a loser in this uneven, lopsided transaction...I find it a bit offensive.

I cannot help wondering how adoptees feel about it?

Were any of you subjected to it growing up, or is it too new? Either way, how do you feel when you hear adoptive families celebrating the day the "Gotcha!" -- snatched you up and away!

This needs to be added to my list of "Adoption Dichotomies" posted on the 8th.

On other issues:

• How old is old enough to be found by the mother who bore and lost you to adoption?

• How old is old enough for a mother to go directly to her offspring and not ask the "permission" of his/her adoptive parents? 18? 21? older? younger? Never?
  As soon as she can?
  

• Would it have been preferable of you - and at what ages - to have had contact made to your adoptive parents first?

• OR, would rather have been just left alone forever, until YOU were ready to initiate contact?

• What was done right/wrong for you in YOUR contact?

• How do you feel in general about having been adopted?
  
• sucks
• no big deal
• would have preferred to have been born into adoptive family
• would have preferred to stay with and been raised by my immediate family?
• What's the best and worst parts about being adopted? Has it caused you pain? Confusion? Anger? Other feelings?
  
• Would you recommend others adopt?
• Would you recommend someone you love place a child for adoption?
  

Annette Baran: Pioneer of Open Records

A pioneer of Open Records and open Adoption speaks out about HONEST, ethical child alternative care and the importance of maintaining consanguinity and provenance.



You need to watch and listen to ALL!

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibxq6Wgvh0s&feature=related

Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a10ywSZgdpA&feature=related

Part Four: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYMf_YSBLfQ&feature=related

Part Five: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM6yeEbcbVE&feature=related

I hope there will be a Part 6 in which Annette would repeat what she has said previously:

“It seems to us that, if we take off our blinders, we must admit that we have been co-opted in supporting a system that causes pain and lifelong suffering to all the parties involved. ... Relinquishment of children to a new set of parents, as a final, irrevocable act, severing all rights of the birthparents, must be discontinued...

“Open adoption, which we helped pioneer, is not a solution to the problems inherent in adoption. Without legal sanction, open adoption is an unenforceable agreement at the whim of the adoptive parents. Instead, we propose a form of guardianship adoption that we believe would be in the best interests of all concerned, with special benefits for the adoptee for it would decrease the abandonment/rejection issue and permit the child to know the birthparents as real people who cared about him but could not raise him...

“We have always maintained that adoptive placement is the last resort, to be considered only when all other options have been thoroughly explored….The struggle to open records and address the wrongs of the past must continue. However, simultaneously and with equal emphasis, we must begin to look at the future and address the need for sweeping change...

“Why have we not made prevention a major issue?

“We have always maintained that adoptive placement is the last resort, to be considered only when all other options have been thoroughly explored….The struggle to open records and address the wrongs of the past must continue. However, simultaneously and with equal emphasis, we must begin to look at the future and address the need for sweeping change.”

Adoptive Monster of the Year: Judith Leekin, The Face of Evil

In this AP photo, Judith Leekin adorns a comb-over to cover her devil horns.

This one-woman "diabolical" axis of all that is evil wins the prize of
Adoptive Monster of the Year -
hands (or thumbs) down!

We can only hope that he is treated deservedly when she enter prison for ten years for a fraudulent scheme in which she adopted 11 disabled children under four aliases, while collecting $1.68 million meant for their care to support a lavish lifestyle.

Leekin separately faces 10 counts of aggravated child abuse and other charges in Florida, where prosecutors say she used physical violence against the children, restrained them with plastic ties and did not allow them to go to school.
The be-ach cried in court, saying she missed "her" kids. I wonder if she misses the severely handicapped boy who disappeared from her home in 2000 and has never been found!

BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!! New York City child welfare managers helped steal hundreds of thousands of dollars meant to help adopted children. Three workers -- the Supervisor of Adoptions for ACS, the deputy director of ACS's payment services department, and an outside contracting agency that works with ACS -- funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars out of ACS accounts to Stay Thompson who did not have any adopted children.

Some of the money was used by these greedy men to "adopt" cars like a BMW and a Range Rover.