Those Lyin' Bastards! Mirah says.
BASTARDS DO NOT LIE! Anita says.
I am refuting the statements concerning Bastard Nation made on the blog site
www.AdopTalk.blogspot on Jan.3, 2007. The blogger, Mirah, asks why Bastard
Nation does not advocate for the rights of minors.
Bastard Nation’s mission statement says that it advocates for adopted adults.
We founded our organization around this principle. We have chosen one specific
mission and we adhere to it. All adopted adults shall have equal access to their
original birth documents, unconditionally and without falsification.
In the United States today, ALL children have limitations upon rights which
they will ultimately receive when they reach the age of majority. These laws are
in place for children because it is assumed that they are not intellectually,
educationally, or emotionally ready to assume the responsibilities that go hand
in hand with the rights of adult citizens.
Minors cannot enter into valid contracts. They cannot vote, run for office or serve on a jury.
They cannot purchase cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. They cannot drive an
automobile. All states have laws governing the age at which a minor can enter
into a legal marriage. All states also have restrictions on the legal age for
requesting and receiving a birth certificate. Children under the legal age must
be represented by a parent or guardian. A fourteen year old girl in Illinois
cannot request and receive her own birth certificate, whether or not she is
adopted.
Parent, stepparent, foster parent, legal guardian - all are charged with the
responsibly of making many decisions for their children. This is a “given” in
our society and our laws reflect this “given.”
Children of adoption who have reached the age of maturity theoretically join the
general population with regards to civil and human rights given to all citizens
by the US Constitution and the various state constitutions.
And it is at this juncture where Bastard Nation recognizes an injustice. Adopted adults cannot request and
receive their original birth documents in the same manner as all other adult
citizens. It is this particular injustice to which Bastard Nation addresses
itself.
Mirah claims that BN doesn’t help adopted children who need a life-saving
treatment or are suicidal?
Adoptive parents or legal guardians of adopted children are charged by law with
maintaining the higest possible standards of safety and health care for their
children. If some adopted children need information concerning health decisions,
by law, (which Bastard Nation did not make) the guardians must turn to the
courts.
Whether or not courts are as responsive to the health decisions and needs of
adopted children is a totally different issue, one that other groups
representing adoptive parents might chose to take up.
Adopted adults with health issues are also given an option to petition the
courts and show good cause why their birth records should be issued to them.
In so many cases, courts are not responsive to the needs of adopted adults. When
I was reading case law and doing research for my own petition, I was appalled at
the seemingly lack of feeling and understanding of the court. I cried when I
read cases of adopted adults whose life threatening illnesses were not
considered good cause for issuance of original birth records.
I deplore the system which allows this to occur. That is one of the reasons I
became a member of Bastard Nation. This organization is trying to get to the
bottom of the issue - change the laws! We believe a huge injustice is occurring
wherever laws exist that treat adopted adults differently than all other
citizens. Our mission statement reflects our outrage.
Mirah wonders why BN doesn’t help adoptees who don’t know they are adopted.
BN cannot prevent adoptive parents from withholding the true circumstances of
their children’s births from them. BN cannot interfere with how adoptive parents
run their lives, just as the state should not run the lives of adopted adults.
I am certain that there are groups and organizations whose goal it is to assist
adoptive parents who need help with rights concerning their adopted children.
This worthy objective is not within our mission.
Mirah insists that we haven’t replied to her question of why adoptees accept
living a life of lies until they are adults?
Children who have been adopted accept the life that is given to them by the
state. They have no choice of homes and they do not have any choice over how
their adoptive parents raise them. This is the same for all children, not just
adopted ones.
And then Mirah said:
And then, it finally hit me! Suddenly the answer was perfectly clear. And I
presented it: They don’t mess with the falsification of their birth certificates
because they want to have their cake and eat it to. They love having been
adopted into a higher socio-economic strata. And they don't dare rock the boat
or bite the hand that feeds them and has educated many of them very well indeed!”
This is pure and unadulterated POPPYCOCK! There is not an iota of truth in this
statement. Whether or not Bastard Nation members love or hate being adopted does
not enter into the paradigm under which we work. Bastard Nation members do
however state that we are not ashamed of being adopted and therefore do not want
to be treated with secrets and lies. We know that this treatment creates shame.
Mireh say that adoptees want to control where and how and when information
should be released. She thinks it’s all about us wanting to maintain control.
She is dead-wrong! Our issue involves removing control. We do not want the state
or anyone else to control us simply because of the circumstances surrounding our
births.
“They prefer to live their lives, pretending to be born to their adoptive
parents, and have the control to choose where, when and what they do with their
true information once they are adults.” says Mirah.
MORE POPPYCOCK! Many adoptees report that their adoptive parents chose a life for them that was
based on the pretense that they were the biological offspring of their adoptive
parents. These children did not have any say in the matter in the same way that
non-adopted children cannot make their own choices.
The choice as to where, when and what information is available to all
non-adopted adults is the standard by which we judge the rights of adopted
adults.
Finally, Mirah reiterates: -- Don’t claim that you want equality for ALL adoptees
when you want adult adoptees to have special privileges you wish to keep minor
adoptees deprived of.--
Here we go again. We do not want minor adoptees to be deprived of their rights.
Mireh, by law, all minors in the United States have restrictions on their rights
and often they differ from those rights of adult citizens. We do not advocate
for minor adoptees because they are governed under separate laws and conditions
than adults.
Mirah, you must be able to separate the idea of advocates for children versus advocates for adults.
Bastard Nation members are fighting to change the laws for adopted ADULTS so
that they will be treating equally.
That is our mission and we proudly stand by our words.
BASTARDS DO NOT LIE!
Anita Walker Field
Executive Committee
Bastard Nation: The Ådoptee Rights Organization
Saturday, January 06, 2007
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4 comments:
Wow, you've done it again, Anita! Great blog.
Hope that Mirah can grasp what you've stated so eloquently. It does sound to me like she is the one who wants to have all of the control, while at the same time, taking more away from adoptees. Under Mirah's plan, the aparents could still refuse to tell the child that he/she is adopted. How is it going to help the adoptee to have it listed on the OBC when they cannot get a copy of it until they reach the age of majority? So, what ends up happening is that the bparents end up having some power through their ability to access the OBC. At the end of the day, the only people who have any power are the aparents and bparents and, once again, the adoptee is powerless. I personally wish that Mirah would stop pretending her argument is supporting adoptees and just admit that she wants bparents to have a power that they have not before enjoyed outside of open adoptions.
This argument is not about adoptees. This argument is about bparents.
Janet
Someone emailed me trying to explain that when BN says they support the rights of ALL adoptees, this is because all adoptees all adoptees will SOMEDAY be adults! Talk about POPPYCOCK!
That is as blatantly untrue as birthmoms being told they'll have other kids. Some may and some may not!
What about all the children (adopted or not) and adolescents who do NOT live to be adults? What about those who die in need of an organ transplant or bone marrow? What about the suicides (twice as many among adoptees)?
And of the survivors, what about the more than average number of them suffering from emotional disorders, psychosis (inherited or not), alcoholism, drug dependence, etc., etc., etc...
The bottom line is that every adoption professional knows that it is unhealthy to grow up with lies. Today, the vast majority of adoptees are told sometime during their youth that they are adopted, as they are told to do. Many adoptees know all of their lives. What a torturous act of dangling an apple to tel someone "We are NOT the mother and father who created and carried in our womb, but you can't know who is until you are an adult. So, now, you can spend the rest of your life wondering..."
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? You advocate this nonsense? You think this is healthy? This is less DANGEROUS for mental health than the TRUTH?!!
Yes, the fact is that if BCs were never changed to begin with, I guess b-mothers could find their kids. But they would have no power to do anything. They still revoked parental rights. If you don't think that as a mother, my true concern is for the CHILDREN this impacts on, then you don't know me at all! I think it is cruel and immoral to ask people to spend their entire life knowing that a lie has been told and not being allowed access to the truth if they want to know it.
I think it is absolute laughable folly to ask for a "civil right" only for persons of a certain age. It is comparable to abolitionists having allowed slavery to continue as long as each slave, when he or she reached adulthood, was allowed to go free. Give me a break! How about adult Blacks are allowed to sit anywhere on buses and drink from any water fountain, but their kids have to remain segregated in school and everywhere else?! Makes a lot of sense, huh?
Adoptalk's comments have much sound and fury but little sense.Access to birth certificates has nothing to do with suicides, organ transplants, or children who die before reaching majority. Those are all search and reunion issues, a whole other problem. The small amount of information on an OBC, parents names and place of birth, is often in the hands of adopted parents anyhow should grave need arise before the child is an adult. In any event, contact to minors is and should be up to the adoptive parents. Children do not go and get their birth certificates, adopted or not. I fail to see how not having an amended certificate, but instead some kind of certificate of adoption would do anything to prevent suicides, facilitate organ donation, or prevent lies within adoptive families where the parents did not want to disclose further information. It seems like a whole lot of unrelated information has been thrown out here with little regard for common sense.
If birth certificates are not falsified, and if names are not changed, then the legal records will contain the original birth name of the child. This will show up in school records, for example, even if the child is a minor.
This does not stop adoptive parents, or other relatives, friends, etc. from lying if they so choose. But it makes it harder to support and continue the lies.
Parents, both adoptive and biological, can lie. But a birth certificate is a state certified document and should not be falsely issued in the first place.The issuance of such false documents "recording" so-called 'vital information'does not serve minor children anymore than it does adults.It is still their history and identity that is being falsified.(and I was told by a lawyer that it is illegal for anyone to falsify a birth certificate...except when issuing a new one in an adoption..or the secret witness program)
I am a non-adopted bastard who grew up in my biological family.although I did not know all of the details of my family history, I grew up knowing that some aspects of my family were 'different.'And my knowledge increased as I grew older.I did see my birth certificate when I applied for a drivers permit.(age 16)There was no sudden point(age 18) at which I suddenly had the right to 'know".My identity didn't change, although my family knowledge increased with time.
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