Inflammatory rhetoric leads to national tragedy

"Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." That was a tagline used by Jesse Kelly, who ran against Giffords, and as one might expect was endorsed by Sarah Palin, about whom I am going to say little because her own words condemn her.

Raising Hell and Awareness at Gladney Fund Raiser in Dallas

Details being added as we discover more information:

Cool young babes with baubles on the arms of rich old dudes set the tone at the fund-raiser for the Uptown Women's Center in downtown Dallas of which the Edna Gladney Adoption Services--home of thousands of unhappy relinquishments--will be a part, according to The Dallas-Fort Worth Evening News. Sarah Palin was a keynote speaker at the main event last Friday evening (April 30, 2010).

Well, not really. I mean, not really was that the story in the local press after the protest against the Sarah Palin speech at the godawful Gladney gala at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas the other night, according to our intrepid reporter and all-around hell raiser, Linda Burns, who organized the protest. "There were many very old, old, ancient old, looking men, with their very, very young--maybe teenage or not much older--wives, said Burns. "They looked like little girls dressed in their make believe make-up and evening wear." (Note: Probably they were older than they looked, just the recipient of some expensive face-lifting. Probably older than they looked and that is why they needed to adopt someone else's baby.) According to Palin's own website (palin4life), parties of four who wished to meet and greet Palin and have VIP seating for the dinner pitched in $25,000 for the privilege.

           Karen Belanger Brown and Elise where drivers were dropping off guests.

Other guests, Burns said, were older women, who became enraged when they read the signs. "They had so much make-up, so much jewelry, and such stiff looking hair, that when they got mad, it was a sight," she observed. "I live on a farm and have a rooster named Rudy.  Some of these women would do their necks like he does, ruffle their feathers, and eyes pointed down the long beaks."

Gladney is been one of the main supporters of keeping adoption records sealed and preventing adoptees from having their original birth certificates and identities; Gladney is a founding member of the numero uno enemy of adoptee rights, The National Council for Adoption, otherwise known as NCFA (pronounced Nick-FA). "We believe the only reason birth records are closed to Texas adoptees is due to the wishes and whims of the Edna Gladney agency," said Burns, who reported for Birth Mother, First Mother Forum. Gladney maintaining an outreach office in the Dallas Uptown Women's Center is clearly an outreach to convince more women to give up their babies to fill orders for their waiting customers, prospective adoptive parents.

According to Burns, many of those attending the gala were quite bothered by the protesters. "They did not like us," Burns noted in her usual understated way. Many who came to hear Palin were guests of the hotel and came outside to gawk--amazed--at the protesters, who carried signs that said: "Genetic Secrecy Kills Adoptees."

One man approached Burns and told her that he had adopted a daughter from Gladney 35 years ago, and he was rather put out by her sign. Burns showed him the scar on her left temple and forehead and told him that people in her family had died from brain aneurysms, but as long as the records were sealed, people like here would not be able to pass this information on to the next generation.

"Medical histories constantly change," Burns said. "Would Gladney keep him informed? When was the last time Gladney told him there was a medical situation the daughter needed to be made aware of? Medical conditions like brain aneurysms kill--this is one of many reasons that adoptees should have open records."

Another protester, Elise Perkins had a sign that read, "Gladney Get Out,  From a 1973 Gladney Survivor".  She and others sometimes chanted, "Gladney Get Out!" Bill Betzen (pictured here with Burns) spoke to many people and offered a hand of friendship and help to any needing to understand adoption.
                            
Not all the guests appeared to be upset with the protest; some smiled at the rabble-rousers as they went in. "I believe there are some that Gladney supporters that just don't have a clear understanding of what the facts are, Burns commented . "I believe these people would not be supporting Gladney if they knew the facts."

As an aside, Palin's teenage daughter did not offer her baby to adopters, but chose instead to raise her, and for that we applaud Bristol Palin. 

To those who wonder if Palin's politics were a reason for the protest, Burns wants to make it clear  that she is a registered Republican, and a Tea-Bagger, but anti-Gladney. "Just having a grandson born outside marriage does not make her an expert on adoption," Burns remarked.

The Dallas Police at the scene told Burns and company that they were were the best (Ed, I.E., well behaved) protestors they had ever seen, and several of them agreed with them. "They didn't appear to be is such awe of Gladney as the Fort Worth Police, added Burns, obviously speaking from prior experience which she did not elaborate. 

Three television stations and a newspaper covered the protest but a quick search did not turn up any coverage. Found the below link: --lorraine 

Friday Night, These Folks Wanted to Teach Sarah Palin a Thing Or Two About Adoption
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PS: We  hope that if any women reading this who feel they MUST relinquish their child for adoption will not use the Gladney agency, but find another that supports, really supports, open adoption and our advice would be to hire a lawyer on your own and draft a contract that the adoptive parents sign in the presence of a notary. As well as your own lawyer. Adoptees who come through the Gladney process and want to find the truth of their origins later in life are generally screwed. Do something better for your child, no matter how cushy the comforts of the agency home. You can say no. You can. Say. No.

Increasing Adoptions Act....NOT

A new law designed to help states cope with foster care has some good provisions--it encourages greater efforts to keep siblings together, for instance, but it appears that it might also streamline the process for parental rights to be terminated. As the AP notes, it has "enhanced adoption incentives," which is the kind of language that gives me the creepy-crawlies.

From the AP story:

"As encouragement to the states, the bill calls for doubling the per-child bonuses they receive for placing foster children in adoption. Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, says this could aggravate an already worrisome phenomenon.

That means an even greater incentive for quick-and-dirty, slipshod placements, for placements more likely to disrupt, and for the creation of more legal orphans, as states rush even faster to terminate parental rights," Wexler said in an e-mail."

But what does the bill not do? It does not take on the worrisome problem of combating neglect and abuse so fewer children are removed from their families in the first place. There is not one penny for keeping families together.

The name of the new act says it all:

Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act

I know that adoptions are necessary, and in some circumstances good, but we need to encourage keeping families together, and whether that means helping the parents reform, giving them more financial aid, or whatever, the country is going down the wrong road on this. A friend's sister adopted a baby from a fully-formed family in Rhode Island a couple of years ago. That was pitiful--the story I heard was that poverty was the reason the child was available. So somewhere in Rhode Island there is a family--a mother, a father, siblings--who have lost a member of their kin. I wonder how often the mother thinks about the child when she sets the table.

Then I recall that gee-chucks Sarah is in favor of "adoption made easier."

You betcha I'm going to oppose that. You betcha.

"Adoptions Made Easier" Does Not Get My Vote

Oh there they go again, the Republicans urging as ever, "adoption not abortion," which has been the slogan of the two Bushes in office, and now of course we have Sarah coming on strong...

This is from the Katie Couric interview that was broadcast on Tuesday.

Palin: I am pro-life. And I'm unapologetic in my position that I am pro-life. And I understand there are good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion, and when it should be allowed. Do I respect people's opinions on this. Now, I would counsel to choose life. I would also like to see a culture of life in this country. But I would also like to take it one step further. Not just saying I am pro-life and I want fewer and fewer abortions in this country, but I want them, those women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal, for them to be supported, and adoptions made easier.

My question is, Easier for whom? First Mother would like to keep politics per se out of firstmother forum, but when a candidate makes a inane, uninformed, asinine, hurtful, BS comment like that, there's nothing I can do but blast her and the party of grand old guys that she stands for.

No one is for abortion; neither should anyone tell another person what to do with her body.

So for Sarah Palin to blithely suggest that Hey, girls, we'll make adoption even easier for you than it is now! I just want to punch her in the gut.

Let's start with the fact that there are so few available infants for adoption that giving up a child is amazingly streamlined in this culture. It could be quicker, first mother supposes, if women signed the relinquishment papers before the baby was born! Or before they were completely out of anesthesia! Or within the hour after birth!

If someone wants to place a child, just look at the place mat at your favorite hamburger joint, you'll likely find an ad there for prospective adopters. Or like Juno, find someone in your local penny saver, or the classified ads in your hometown newspaper. Or type in the word "adoption" in your gmail, and whadda ya know? Three ads pop up--one for surrogacy, one for a list of agencies, a third for a lawyer in North Carolina. I clicked on one of the sites one day and found that it promised to make the surrender of your child "a beautiful adoption experience."

I'm not kidding. And I'm mad as hell at anyone who tells me that "adoption not abortion" is the answer.

I don't have a link to it, but I did hear Obama say once that he wanted to provide support for single mothers. I don't know if we can get him to take on the issue of open records for adoptees, but at least he's aware that if his father hadn't married his mother...his life might be a different story and he wouldn't have a clue what his roots were.

"Abortion Not Adoption" the Mantra of the GOP

Officially, Firstmother Forum is not taking a position on the upcoming presidential race, but there are issues raised and comments made by people running that deserve our attention--and form our opinions. Such as: during the interview with her good friend at ABC, Charlie, Sarah Palin made a quick reference to adoption in lieu of abortion. Any mother worth her hormones knows that the two are not interchangeable.

Senator McCain also made the same statement at another time. Both candidates are opposed to abortion to varying degrees. Sarah Palin, the veep choice of McCain, would only allow it if the mother's life were in danger; McCain, I believe, is a wee bit more liberal. Perhaps you can get an abortion if you were raped.

Abortion is either a simple procedure not involving a crisis of conscience, or a morally difficult solution. But it is final. It has a beginning and an end. It is not a living death with out peace, as is giving up a child--particularly in a closed adoption. Given the emotional fallout after the heated discussion with the aforementioned Aston(I became physically ill by the end of the week), I took to re-reading parts of the Donaldson Report on birth parents and came upon these words on Page 50:

...Birthmothers in fully disclosed adoptions (all parties share their identities) had significantly better grief resolution than those in confidential adoptions at both the first and second follow-up periods of [the study].

Paraphrasing here, the study goes on to say that at approximately eight years after "placement," only 30 percent of the women had a good or very good level of "grief resolution" in closed adoptions (as in the case of Jane, Linda and myself, the three bloggers here ) and 25 percent of the women involved in "time-limited mediated" adoptions which I presume means a limited period of time when one gets news of the placement but without contact or the names of the adopters; and "ongoing mediated," 52 percent had good or very good grief resolution; and fully disclosed (which I would take to mean an open adoption), 68 percent.

That means that 70 percent of the women who were forced into, or given no choice, or agreed to a "closed adoption" have poor grief resolution eight years after the relinquishment. Sounds like a pretty poor rate of success, for the life-givers.

More than a dozen years ago I wrote about the first Bush advocating "adoption not abortion" an op-ed that was picked up by newspapers around the country. That was about crack/AIDS babies; I didn't get into the unresolved grief of the person who gave life to the baby. Because, as most of us are aware, in the minds of many--if not most of the people who have not walked in our shoes--the emotional turmoil and long-time grief that we suffer is too effin' bad. When I was having that dust-up with Aston, I said something about how adoptive parents really wish us dead; he demurred, but I was right. They do want us dead. If they don' t think about that literally, they certainly want us dead figuratively. They don't want to have to deal with us, or the idea of us coming back. They want us gone. Forever.

And the other day I happened to catch Barack Obama on the tube answering a similar question about children, and I swear to god, I heard him say that the country needed to provide support for mothers who wanted to keep their children.

There you have it.

---lorraine

Bristol Palin will be more than a firstmother.

Sarah Palin. Bristol. Five months pregnant. It might be a personal tragedy in their family, but given the background, maybe not. It's not clear that Bristol is giving up college for baby and marriage to the hockey hunk Levi. She is following in her mother's footsteps, who was pregnant when she got married. In terms of marriage, that has worked out.

Linda, one of the other bloggers on Firstmother Forum, has been upset about this and the girl's life going forward, but perhaps I'm more jaded. I just see the pregnancy as the typical response to having abstinence-only sex education classes, which is what Ms. Palin advocates. And I would assume, she would work to further abstinence-only sex education should she end up as vice president. Here's a snippet of a column I wrote for a local newspaper a year ago:

Everyone can agree that abstinence will prevent pregnancies as well as sexually transmitted diseases. Abstinence-only programs have been promoted by every GOP Congress and president since Ronald Reagan, who instituted them in 1981. In 1996, a GOP Congress mandated that $50 million each year go to abstinence-only programs, with another $37.5 million coming from the states in matching grants.[Obviously they had no trouble getting this money in Alaska.] Since then the government has spent $1.5 billion on such abstinence-only sex education, despite plenty of evidence that they are simply bogus.

They don't work in the long run--heck, they don't even work in the short run. The studies are numerous, but a favorite of mine is one done jointly by Columbia and Yale universities. It found that while "virginity pledges" seem to encourages teenagers to delay sex the effect was short lived. Eighty-eight percent--call it an overwhelming majority--of those who signed such a pledge ended up having sex not only before they married, but--equally fascinating, before the study ended. Hmm...sounds like most of the virgins stuck to the pledge when it was convenient, but not once they found someone to love.

Two other bits of data from that study stand out: Those taking the pledge had the same rate of sexually transmitted disease as those who did not. (Zero gain.) And they were less likely to use a contraceptive when they put their booties under someone else's bed. (Negative loss.)

And if those same teenagers are having unprotected sex, they are more likely to have unintended pregnancies. [I'm going to assume Bristol's pregnancy is unintended.] Which brings us back to that nagging abortion rate that's been stuck in neutral under Bush's watch, this is, not going down as it had under Clinton. In short, abstinence-only programs lead to more unintended pregnancies. According to the Guttmacher Institute, half of the 6.4 million pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unintended. Half of them are carried to term.

In April of 2007, the Department of Health and Human Services quietly released a long-awaited, Congressionally mandated evaluation of Title V-abstinence-only programs. The conclusion: "Youth in the program group were no more likely than the control-group youth to have abstained from sex, and among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age."

The good news was the the Democrats finally pulled the plug on such an inane and failed program. They planned to let a $50 million grant expire in June, 2000. Conservatives were outraged.

Along with their outrage, I would assume conservatives had more unplanned pregnancies in their teen population. I am a old-timer who went to Catholic schools and had sex at the time when guys who said that they didn't like using condoms got away with it. (Yes, my daughter's father did say that.) Today, more teens are having sex than they were in my day, but in a sane world they are given the education, and easy access to contraception, they need to have sex that is not only safe, but does not lead to an unplanned conception.

No matter how we feel about this family personally and politically, no matter how we feel about abortion, what I applaud and feel good about is that this child will not be given up for adoption. That would be the real tragedy. And we might not hear, as both the Bush presidents have been want to spout--"adoption not abortion."

Bristol's road will not be an easy one, but she will have her baby. And keep it.

--lorraine

PS: For those of you who listened to my lament about Yvonne, we spoke. She denies, denies that she could have ever called women who give up babies "reproductive agents." I believe she believes that she did not say that. She sat quietly and listened while I tried to educate her and open her mind somewhat. I may have succeeded. Or maybe not.

Yvonne is not/never was against adoptees searching, and thank god, her hairdresser (who eventually married the father) has had a successful reunion with the daughter the couple lost to adoption. Among the many things I said was that sometimes the adopted person is not able to do the search because the original birth certificate has been altered, or for other reasons. She was aware that in France the OBCs were never sealed. Can we be friends again? I hope so, in time. Right now I'm still internally reeling from her outburst.