The difference between the gay marriage movement and adoptee rights

Lorraine

Jane, while I personally applaud all that you say (see previous blog*), in New York and New Jersey I believe we have tried everything we can do at this point--until huge numbers of adoptees and fellow travelers (first parents, adoptive parents, friends and relatives) come out in numbers. Big numbers. Like the gays did for the marriage equality bill. But here are some of the disparities between our population (of first mothers and adoptees with a small smattering of adoptive parents) and the gays:

Gays have political clout; bastards don’t. Lessons from New Jersey and New York.

Jane

Last week New Jersey’s Governor, Chris Christie, sank a bill which would have allowed adoptees to access to their original birth certificates. The New York legislature tabled a similar bill after New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent a lobbyist to Albany to oppose it. Meanwhile the New York legislature passed a bill to allow single sex couples to marry, a measure which would have been unheard of a few years ago.

What Does Christie's veto really mean?

Lorraine, when smiling

Governor Chris Christie's veto of the adoptee reform bills to give adopted people their original birth certificates memo is a suggestion that goes back to the Senate for POSSIBLE passage next session. It sets up an intermediary system, plain and simple, with all the power in the hands of the birth parents who wish to stay in the closet. Here is the press release language:

CHRISTIE Vetoes Adoptee Rights in New Jersey and other legislative news

Lorraine

Deflated. That's how I felt when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's threw out the adoptee-rights bill (some 30 years in the making) with a massive, unconscionable, cave-to-the-closet statement on Thursday:

"The decision of any biological parent to seek adoptive parents for a child is an enormously complicated choice. The emotional struggle preceding any adoption is unlike any other step facing a parent, with ramifications for the mother, father and child that will endure throughout their lives."

Jessica Lost: The meaning of motherhood when adoption steps in

While my hand is still incredibly weak, and typing anything is laborious, I asked Linda, a first mother who used to blog regularly at First Mother Forum, to review a new first/birth mother memoir, (Jessica Lost: A Story of Birth, Adoption & The Meaning of Motherhood). See sidebar for news re legislation in New York and Rhode Island--and of course, New Jersey. --lorraine

Linda's review:

Since my  five-year, on and off roller coaster reunion ended six years ago,  I moved on without my daughter—again—

First Fathers Matter

Jane

It’s easy to understand why first fathers think they don’t matter to their children. The fact is that they do matter in spite of efforts by law makers to obliterate them. Many states prohibit vital statistics registrars from including the names of unmarried fathers on birth certificates unless both parents file affidavits of paternity, something they are likely unaware of.

Jennifer Lauck's "Found" reveals the painful truth of adoption

Jane

“This is your mother,’ my mother’s voice is weak and broken, a frail warbling. ‘I want you to know not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you.’” Thus begins 44-year-old Jennifer Caste Lauck’s reunion with her mother Catherine as recounted in her new memoir, Found.


As she hears Catherine’s voice, Lauck feels "a rise of love so pure and utterly familiar. It is the same feeling I have for my children, which began sprouting the moment I knew I was pregnant with them.…I know I have been waiting--for my true mother, for Catherine—in order to finally release this universal love in the other direction. Love has always been in my heart waiting for the right person to trip the code.”

Want to "star" in reality TV? Sign up to give your baby up

Lorraine

Decry the adoption culture all day long, but from the Adoption Option (see sidebar) to a casual comment the other evening about adopting a child instead of raising a chimp in one's home (who later goes berserk and chews up a neighbor's face), it's with us everywhere. Today's New York Times has a story about gay adoption and how it is on the rise. That story featured Matt and Ray Lees of Worthington, Ohio, who adopted eight

Cultivating a Culture of Adoption

Jane

“Adoption is the natural result of our redemption.” I came across these words when I Googled “Culture of Adoption” looking for follow-up materials to my article “Does Adoption Run in Families?. The words came from an article by Carolyn Curtis, “Cultivating a Culture of Adoption”* in the Presbyterian Church in America’s web magazine.

Does adoption run in families?

Jane

Are adoptees more likely than other mothers to surrender their children for adoption? In 1966, a new social worker at the Florence Crittenton Home in San Francisco told me that many of the pregnant girls at Crittenton were adoptees, hinting that perhaps adoption was not the panacea for unwed pregnancy that it was made out to be. However, she added, other workers assured her there was no correlation between being adopted and subsequently giving up a child; it only seemed that way.

Demand for babies leads to adoption abuses

It is the rare adoptive parent who, after adopting from overseas, can wrap her mind around the idea that "her" baby might have been stolen, sold or bartered to fill the huge demand for adoptable infants in wealthy nations, of which she herself was a part. 

Is Scott Simon Angry with us?

Scott Simon, author of Baby We Were Meant for Each Other: In Praise of Adoption is upset over three posts* critiquing his memoirs and media appearances.

The gist of our posts was that while Simon found adoption to be “a miracle, the work of divine agency,” it is catastrophe in someone else’s life that led to the child being available to be adopted, and that this aspect of adoption is once again ignored by pleased-as-punch parents, which he and his wife claim to be.

Newsday and the backlash.......'More Adoption Information may not be good'

Help adoptees reach first parents

Published: May 12, 2011 7:10 PM in Newsday
By LORRAINE DUSKY

Photo credit: iStock | Adoption

Lorraine Dusky of Sag Harbor is the author of the memoir Birthmark.

Ask the man on the street if people who were adopted as babies should be able, as adults, to find out the identities of their original parents, and the typical answer is: Sure, isn't that their right?

Sperm donors in the news again

looking to mate

In case you think that all sperm-donor daddies want to stay behind a closed closet door...a father in Australia is doing his best to do just the opposite: he is fighting to keep his name ON the birth certificate. The gay partner of the mother wants to put her name on the birth certificate in his place. We say, if birth certificates were not so critically important as both a real and symbolic document of identity, this would not be happening.

In the current dust up Down Under, Neil Richards, 58, of Sydney, answered a gay couple's magazine advertisement more than 10 years ago for a sperm donor and provided sperm to Jesse Star, 49, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. This is a man who wanted to have a child:

Kudos to Walmart

Walmart's Robin Morse

Thanks to Walmart for selling hope and opportunity to teen moms. In a series of ads in the Portland, Oregon area, Manager Robin Morse tells us that as a single, 19-year-old mom, she took a job at a Walmart electronics department. She worked her way up the ladder becoming Manager of the Walmart in Hood River, a town of 7000 50 miles east of Portland. She met her future husband there.

Anonymous baby making in British Columbia is outlawed

Lorraine

Sperm donors will no longer be allowed to be anonymous in British Columbia if a decision from a Supreme Court judge there today stands. Judge Elaine Adair wrote that anonymous donation, "is harmful to the child, and it is not in the best interests of donor offspring." The ruling found sections of the B.C. Adoption Act and Adoption Regulations unconstitutional. Anonymous sperm and egg donation is already outlawed in Great Britain.

Sympathy for the Other Woman

Lorraine

Why do I feel sympathy for the women caught up in sex scandals? Because they never get over it. It will be a long time for the woman to have a second act. Arnold Schwarzenegger will have a movie career apparently. Patty Baena will always be "that woman." I hope the boy can have some kind of meaningful relationship with his father.

'Love child' is preferable to 'adopted child'

Lorraine

I admit to a certain sympathy for the women who bear the children of married men, famous or otherwise. Arnold Schwarzenegger's revelation that he fathered a son with one of the household employees, Mildred "Patty" Baena, more than a decade ago is making front-page news, even in gray lady of journalism, The New York Times.

Abandonment issues in adoption on America's Next Top Model

Lorraine

America's Next Top Model is not the place where you would expect adoption issues to be discussed but this season features Molly, a young woman Tyra Banks told repeatedly that her mean, sourpuss demeanor when the camera wasn't on her would lose her bookings--even though she took totally fab pictures. Molly is one of the two finalists, the winner to be revealed on Wednesday.

Then, a few weeks ago in her talk-to-the-camera segment the 22-year-old from Charleston, South Carolina, comes out with:

"I think I have a couple of places where the anger comes from. I've had a lot of sadness, a lot of hurt. You know I think being adopted gave me some issues, you know, abandonment issues

Help Adoptees Reach First Parents

By LORRAINE DUSKY

Lorraine

Ask the man on the street if people who were adopted as babies should be able, as adults, to find out the identities of their original parents, and the typical answer is: Sure, isn't that their right?

Only for the fortunate few. In all states but six -- and New York isn't among that half-dozen -- individuals adopted at birth are still denied the unrestricted right to even look at a copy of their original birth certificates. Without that piece of paper, it's hard to have that longed-for mother-and-child reunion.