Take a look at this MO proposed legislation in its entirety. MO SB594 is out to get some ass-coverage for the facilitators of adoption and some sideways body-slams for the mothers. Hey people, we're already black and blue from the first trauma of separation and, for many of us, the rough road of reunion. Seems like the only good reunions are the ones where either the adopters have passed away or where the mother "knows her place" and settles for crumbs.
As this discussion continues, and believe me, we are not letting go of this, we are learning just how hard it is, here in the United States of Adoption, to get even a semi-clean bill for open records on the table. A truly clean bill would give unrestricted access to the original birth certificates for adopted people and the same kind of access to the amended "birth" certificate for mothers. Then Uncle Big Brother should step back and let the parties progress on their own.
Unfortuntely, what we are getting are specious, conditional passages based on the erroneous idea that mothers can't be trusted to share information with their children, privately, and that the state and agencies need to remain in control of what is done with the infomation once the adopted person has it. And where are the adopters in all this? Are they helping "their" children? If they are helping, how are they helping? I have talked to adopters who didn't know I was a mother of adoption loss. I have been told that open records and reunion are their worst nightmare. The state and the agents and SW's know this and they are not about to offend their primary source of revenue.
People think that open records will fix things. It is just a first step. How many mothers out there fell for the line about new, improved, "open" adoptions? How many had the doors to contact shut in their faces as soon as the adopters could come up with a good excuse? How many women still live in fear of their shameful secret becoming known? How many mothers and adult children have paid the price of their unnatural separation in the coin of addictive disease, depression and even suicide? Why does this supposedly free country still allow such a prudish and unfair view of the mother? We have progressed, technologically, but spiritually and socially, we are still in the dark ages. There are few to no REAL programs to help adopted people and mothers through their trauma.
We need a massive education program for the American public. We need to yell just as loud, if not louder, than the Christian Right and the adoption industry lobbyists. We need to let the nation see that we are everywoman...not sluts, crackwhores or slatterns. It would help if our children carried that message for us, as well. We need to expose the full extent of social engineering being attempted by certain groups. We don't have a thing of which to be ashamed, either mother or adopted person. C'mon, all of you. You have got to be tired of this "you spread your legs and made a choice" for the mothers and "you are so lucky to have been adopted" for the adopted people crap.
The MO bill is a symptom of a national disease, that of puritanical and punitive attitudes and self-serving motivations. These attitudes and motivations have spawned more than offensive legislation. We have been paid lip service and lauded for our "loving sacrifices" until we want to hurl. Don't give us some second-best pats on the back in the guise of (gag) "barf-mother's day" celebrations. Don't put out studies designed to make us believe you see the forest rather than the trees as a way to placate us. Don't take our personal rights away from us with demands for medical information that could plunge us directly into a quagmire of lawsuits or worse. To me, this just proves that we are still being judged by the self-righteous (and secretly insecure).
Maybe we need a bill that would, if passed, elevate natural mothers to the same level as every other citizen in this country. We are not slaves to what happened to us when we were coerced into surrender, nor are our needs secondary to those of adopters or our surrendered children. We are the equal of any one of you, out there, morally, intellectually and spiritually. Such a bill would be a clean one. It would simply state that no natural mother of adoption loss can be forced, coerced or otherwise manipulated to do anything that is not required of every other citizen in this country.
I wonder if it would pass.
8 comments:
No it wouldn't pass...because there would be no money to make in the form of profits for the adoption businesses, agency workers would have no paychecks, state CIs would have to find another line of work, social workers that work for the agencies would be laid off, no fat retainers and lawyer fees to be garnered from the adopters, attorneys as lobbyists for the adoption industry would be out of a job (hence no $$$$$)....and on and on and on.... The Adoption Industry and it's minions are like the Beastly Monster of the Deep...with giant tentacles stretched to places even we don't know about....it's scary! What kind of sick society have we evolved into, when businesses, professions, and jobs have been created on the backs of the most vulnerable in any society...that of women and children. Even worse...the amount of women that engage in these same jobs and professions making a buck off of other women and their children...that is truly disgusting.
I find it shocking, that mothers of the past, the ones of the BSE, are now expected to ante up their medical histories, whether or not they wish contact with their child.
I urge every single mother to write a letter to their Senator in regards to these issues. Take a second, read the bills, and see what contempt they hold for us! We are merely a resource to be exploited. First our children, and now that we are older, whatever information and parts can be gleaned. Not this old mother!
Mandy has it right - the god of the commerce would never allow something as reasonable, morally correct or ethically strong to pass.
Sigh...and we teach this garbage to kids.
*Sigh, probably it wouldn't pass, but I love Musing Mother's idea of repealing the amended birth certificate. If adopters were offered a "certificate of adoption" rather than a birth certificate that implies they actually bore the adopted child, then maybe they wouldn't lose themselves in the fantasy of "as if born to."
Kitta here:
The MO bill is classic, and one of many. Note that it asks for social/psych history..as well as infectious disease.
the biggies that adopters worry about are mental illness so the adoptees won't shoot them,like Mathew Heikkela did, and AIDS.
However, no matter how much medical history a mother might provide on herself, there is no guarantee that the child won't get sick...or develop a mental condition that may be the result of depression from being adopted.
And, everyone has recessive genes, thousands of them, that we don't know about. If we conceive a child with a partner whose genes happen to match ours, we can give birth to a child with an illness that no one ever knew about in either family.
It happens every day...in intact families. Now, whom do they hold responsible...?
What bill are they going to write....
Nj is pulling the same crap with mothers. I blogged about it a little while ago. I'm not sure an action alert is really warranted, but I'm going to get one out just in case.
I think all birth certificates should be open for public perusal to whoever wants to see them. I don't understand the hissy fit about "privacy" when the government has declard us all criminals and terrorists and can spy on us all it wants.
Ideally I'd like to see birth certificates abolished as a intrusion of the state on the individuals, though they do serve some purposes,.
It makes me wonder what they are for, too, BD. If we take a census every 10 years, why does the state need the particulars of our existence?
The ABC is an outright lie, too...or should we say "altered truth?"
Kitta here:
when I researched birth certificate history, I found that at the time that the gov't made them mandatory there was resistance to them.
People did not want to have to register births because they recognized gov't intrusion for what it was.
Birth certificates or birth registrations exist so that the gov't can keep track of its citizenry. One reason was for the military draft. Another reason was simply to find out who was having kids and how many...and to be able to trace people through life.
Before BCs existed, records were kept through the "town clerk's" office in the eastern states as well as the census. I wonder if western states registered births with the "county seat". It would have been done by mail I suppose.
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