' [Birth Mother] First Mother Forum: November 2015

Monday, November 30, 2015

Sheldon Silver: A blockage to unsealing OBCs in New York is convicted

SpeakerSilver.jpg
Sheldon Silver convicted of corruption
One of the main blockages to freeing up sealed birth certificates in New York has been convicted of federal corruption charges. Sheldon Silver, who held a viselike grip on the New York Assembly, was found guilty this afternoon of seven counts of federal corruption charges, ending a trial "that was the capstone of the government's efforts to expose the seamy culture of influence-peddling in Albany," according to The New York Times.

Silver, 71, was elected to his seat in Albany from lower Manhattan nearly 40 years ago. While we had enough votes to get a clean bill (or so we thought) to unseal birth certificates

Friday, November 27, 2015

Daughter sues to undo her adoption

Melanie Gilmore and Zella Price
Melanie Diane Gilmore filed a petition in a St. Louis court seeing to undo her adoption and restore the parental rights of her natural mother, Zella Jackson Price. To FMF's knowledge, this is a first of a kind lawsuit. If successful, it would make legal history. It would put another nail in the still popular myth that a child can be seamlessly transferred from one set of parents to another.

Gilmore was born prematurely 50 years ago, on November 25, 1965 in St. Louis. The circumstances of her adoption are murky. Price says a nurse told her that her daughter had died but she was not allow to see her daughter's body nor given a death certificate. Gilmore began searching for her natural mother soon after her adoptive mother died when she was 20. She had her original birth certificate with her
mother's name but was told her mother had died. Gilmore's adult children began searching for Price when they were planning their mother's 50th birthday party. They found her

Be thankful for the people with you

Thanksgiving 2014 at Lorraine's house --Lorraine's brother Tom (next to her), wife Judy, and daughters Sasha (front left, and Adrienne, right of Lorraine)
This morning, the morning after turkey and all the rest, take a moment and be thankful for the people in your life--the ones who know you and cherish you for who you are and what you mean to them. For a time, at least, do not focus on who was missing at your family table, but the people in front of you.

If there are some far away, give them a call and say hello, thinking about you, if yesterday you were too busy.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Wall Street Journal decries loss of 'right' to be surrogate

Indian surrogates
The Wall Street Journal owned by billionaire media magnate Rupert Murdock rarely sheds tears for the poor and downtrodden.  It's come to bat, however, for Indian women threatened with losing income as surrogates if the India passes proposed legislation which criminalizes surrogacy for foreigners. A government-appointed body has already notified clinics they should stop offering such services to couples overseas. Since WSJ's readers are comprised largely of moneyed readers who are the ones to seek out surrogacy services, WSJ's crusading for wombs-for-hire is merely self-serving.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

'Steve Jobs' the movie: Apple's visionary as bitter adoptee

Lorraine
"Steve Jobs" the movie is a surprising anti-adoption tract about a hugely successful marketing genius embittered about being "rejected not selected" as another character points out halfway through the two hours, one minute of the film. Throughout, the angry Apple guru struts and sputters and lashes out at everybody in his sight-line. It's a very long, tedious two hours, one minute.

This includes Chrisann Brennan, the mother of his child, whom Jobs deserted when she became pregnant--while they were living together. While we have statistics that show that adoptee women are seven times more likely to give up a child for adoption themselves than the rest of the

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

How relinquishing a child affected my friendships

Lorraine
Friendship has been on my mind lately as it relates to how my friends have changed because of being someone who relinquished a child for adoption during a far different era, found at fifteen in 1981, and wrote about the experience and talked about it in the media and to legislators, always hoping to effect a change. That records for all would be open. That there would be far fewer adoptions. That mothers--if they chose to give birth--would keep their children.

Along the way, some friends and men in my life understood why I was so committed, but others fell away. But it's not about the men in my life that's on my mind, it's the female friends. Now my connection to adoption has been pretty intense, I'll grant you that, so it goes without saying that friends had to understand me and accept that part of me if we were going to be close.