Hair New Era

In September the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism released a report called "The Baby Business," which detailed many cases of fraudulent international adoption practices from various countries, with particular attention to Vietnam. The report uncovers cases where mothers went to the hospital to have their baby, then were told they had to pay enormous hospital fees to obtain their child and next thing they knew their child was gone. Or women who were told their children would be taken to orphanages for temporary care while they recovered from "medical conditions" and never returned.

The U.S. document cited in the article below.
Disturbing Cases of Fraudulent International Adoption

Child trafficking (for example, stealing children and selling them to adoption agencies) is nothing new. The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption in '93 set requirements to prevent such activity, which the U.S. has implemented since '08. But we still adopt from many countries that are not part of The Hague plan, which means we ought to pay special attention to adoption practices in those countries.

First of all, we definitely don't want abused and unwanted children to stay in their homes--a stable home for them is the highest priority, even if it means launching them to another country. If doing away with international adoption isn't the answer (and I don't think it is), is more government regulation the key? How can we implement it?It's important to note that it's not just the adoptees and birth families that get screwed when international adoption doesn't follow best practices: adoptive parents get charged astronomical fees and rarely receive adequate information or the education and support for adopting.

Experts respond and give their advice here. Mostly they say more regulation by feds isn't gonna cut it. They vote for more transparency overall, and more education and support for adoptive parents. More accountability for agencies.

Yet, while we improve these inter-country adoption practices, let us continue to hope for a world in which adoption--international or domestic--isn't necessary.

Check out powerhouse adoption advocate Jean Strauss's article in the Huffington Post detailing the absurdity of closed adoptions. (Absurd sums it up perfectly.) It focuses on a case in my homestate Illinois: an adopted woman found pre-cancerous breast lesions and her doctor told her to get BRCA DNA tests to see if she carries the gene for breast/ovarian cancer. Her insurance company refused to pay for it because she couldn't prove family medical history. A judge refused to release her records, stating that he'd only do so if she had Stage IV cancer. Outrageous, right? Emphasis on rage. Luckily Illinois is opening records next November, but still--time might be of the essence for this woman, and it's not fair that she must wait.

Please visit the article and add comments. The more the media and legislators see that this is an important issue for many citizens--not just the thousands of adoptees whose physical and emotional health are affected--the more likely changes will be made in the 40 U.S. states that continue to seal birth certificates.

Ethiopia is becoming the nation of choice for international adoptions. Part of the reason is that they've had fairly lenient rules about the adoption process, and therefore adopters can get kids quicker. Another reason is that they have an overwhelming number of orphans (something like 5 million).

Here's a letter from the Pennsylvania Adoptee Rights regarding two bills going through PA legislation right now:

Dear Advocates,

As you may have known, there were two bills in the Health and Human
Services Committee that seek to change the portion of adoption law
that governs an Adult Adoptee's access to identifying information.

HB 1968 is the BAD bill (not full Original Birth Certificate access). HB 1978 is the GOOD, equal rights, bill (full access).

Unfortunately, despite all of our outpouring of support for HB 1978,
it is still sitting in the HHS Committee.  HB 1968, on the other hand,
has made its way out of committee and is now before the PA House of
Representatives for consideration.

It is of utmost importance that HB 1968 be defeated.  HB 1968 not only
does not change the current law much at all; it actually makes it
worse.  Worse even yet, should HB 1968 pass, we worry that legislators
(1) will believe that the law is improved when it isn't and (2) won't
want to re-address this issue and portion of law, and will leave HB
1978 to die in committee.


Basically, this other bill, which may appear to legislators to be a compromise that pleases people on both sides of the argument, may make things worse for adoptees. If you can spare a minute, please contact the primary sponsor of the bill,  Representative Sonney at csonney@pahousegop.com. Your support really does make a difference--look at what we were able to do in Illinois with HB 5428! I get my birth certificate November 2011!

You can join the PA Adoptee Rights group or keep up with legislation info at www.adopteerightspa.org.

It passed, yesterday 4-21-10.

Tough to weed through all the buzz about the bill--it's controversial and there are many misperceptions out there. Full text of the bill is supposed to be posted here, but it's not. However, here's what I can discern:

The bill is a restricted access bill, which--for now--restores rights to original birth certificates only to adoptees born before January 1, 1946. For adoptees born after that date, we're still potentially blocked--access is restricted according to preferences of the birth mother.

Again we see the confusion between access to birth certificates and search/contact between adoptee and birth parent: the first is a right, and the second is a choice. A birth mother should not have the right to block adoptees' rights to their own original identity. A birth mother should have the choice to request no contact. It's conflating rights with reunion, which are two different things.


P.S. Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire and Maine have restored unrestricted access adoptees' original birth certificates in recent years. ~17,000 birth certificates have been unsealed, with none of the “social unrest” that was feared. (Bastard Nation)

In some ways, it's a victory, because more people have access to their birth certificates, which is a basic civil right (adoptees are the only people who are blocked from accessing their own birth certificates.) But it's not a full victory, because many, many people are still blocked. And, as Bastard Nation points out, having a partial-restoration-compromise-type bill often just adds more red tape and makes it difficult to convince legislators to revisit the issue in the future.

Now, in November of 2011, if no contact veto has been filed by a birth mother, then supposedly ANY adoptee can apply for his/her birth certificate. This date seems arbitrary, and the term "supposedly" was used by a fellow adoption advocate (have these provisions failed in the past?) It seems to me a light at the end of the tunnel, though a lot can happen in 18 months.

As of 4/6/2010, Illinois HB 5428 has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary committee. This is a bad, bad bill that makes it even more difficult for adoptees to access their original birth certificates and identities. Please visit the petition site on Change.org to sign your NO vote to the bill. 
The sum of Bastard Nation and others' arguments against the bill:

• Identity is identity, whether you are adopted or not.
• HB 5428 cannot be amended to support adoptee rights. It needs to die in committee.
• HB 5428 contains a disclosure veto disguised as a contact “preference.” There's a difference between the right to identity and search or reunion. The former is a basic right of all citizens, the latter an individual choice.
• HB 5428 penalizes adoptees who research their origins to the tune of $10,000 or more – for what non-adopted people refer to as “genealogy.”
• Some adoptees cannot afford the existing intermediary program, or are not accepted into it.
• The sole entity contracted to provide these services has pre-approval over petitions before the judge sees them.
• There is no oversight nor accountability.
• In states with birth certificate access, abortion rates are lower, and mothers feel more comfortable considering adoption knowing that their children, once adults, will have access to their origins.

Full Petition text:
"In the USA and all civilized nations, a birth certificate is the proof of the individuals existence and the cornerstone of his or her identity. Currently, when people are adopted in Illinois, they are issued a totally new and fraudulent birth certificate instead of a document verifying that they have been adopted. It's as if one's existence has been erased. It is a violation of the human rights of an individual who is most likely an infant and unable to defend his or her original identity.