The Ironies of Adoption

FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY: The Ironies of Adoption: "The Ironies of Adoption By Mirah Riben AAC Decree, Spring 2011, Vol. 28, No 1, p. 6-7 An estimated 10 percent of Americans experience diffi..."

FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY: Adoption agencies break rules, escape punishment

FAMILY PRESERVATION ADVOCACY: Adoption agencies break rules, escape punishment: "AJC investigation: Weak oversight on private adoption agencies [After the personal 'agony' of would-be adopters is moaned and groaned a..."

On Adoption & Belonging...

This post from Katydid on "The Anywhere But Here Girl" had me in tears...adoption not only touches immediate families, but generations.

“CHILDREN’S HUMAN RIGHTS"

Original identity is a basic human right. Falsifying and sealing birth certificates is unethical, yet adoption "law" has allowed this practice to continue. With reproductive issues taking on new horizons, it is time to take into consideration the long-term effects and the rights of adoptees and individuals created through these "family building" practices.

“CHILDREN’S HUMAN RIGHTS WITH RESPECT TO THEIR BIOLOGICAL ORIGINS AND FAMILY STRUCTURE” by Margaret Somerville

Let the "Sunshine" In

© Photographer: Jiaodan | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Every year, on the third week of March, advocates of open government celebrate Sunshine Week around the March 16th birthday of President James Madison. One of Congress' top lawmakers in the realm of the Freedom of Information Act says there is a lot of work to do in beefing up the most important open government laws. In 2009, Senator Patrick Leahy was a guest on "Federal News Radio" and said this:

"The right to know is a cornerstone of democracy. No democracy exists unless the people know what the government is doing in their name. If you're kept in the dark about key decisions that affect your lives, then that democracy fails.

Without access to public documents, officials can make decisions in the shadows, and often in collusion with special interests, they can escape accountability for their actions. And once eroded, the right to know is very hard to win back." (Senator Patrick Leahy)

* Original birth certificates and adoption records were not "sealed" in the United States until the 1930's and 40's. In her book, "The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, The Baby-Seller Who Corrupted Adoption", Barbara Raymond wrote about the chilling effect Georgia Tann had on influencing "sealed records" laws in adoption.

"How much power can one person have to make social change? In this fascinating account, author (and adoptive mother) Barbara Bisantz Raymond presents a compelling look at the social phenomenon of adoption in the United States, shaped as it is by Tann's crimes. Before the 1920s, few adoptions occurred...but Tann realized there could be a market...especially if she falsified and fabricated birth records and used her influence to close adoption records. Raymond recounts this astonishing and horrifying true story with tremendous self-awareness and intrepid research into Tann's ongoing legacy." - Tampa Tribune

The Child Welfare League of America supports legislation restoring the right of every American adoptee to obtain their original birth certificate. It is simply the right thing to do, to protect the rights & integrity of all Americans.

Jean Strauss: The Right To Know

"Truthful" Narratives?

© Photographer: Iqoncept | Agency: Dreamstime.com

In "I Think! I Act! Transforming the Thoughts of the Traumatized Adoptee is Essential!", Arleta James makes a valid point regarding the disenfranchised grief that many adoptees carry their entire lives.

However, telling a child that their adoption, "is not about them" because their mother "did not want to be a mother" is a good example of how adoptees must grieve not only their loss, but also the "narratives" told to them about their adoption, along with expectations they face from others of how to think and feel.

Many times (especially after search & reunion) adoptees find out the "facts" they have believed about their adoption from a young age weren't entirely true. This can happen even in supposedly "open" adoptions.

Adoption is rampant with “conflict of interest” issues, due to the fact the adoption industry is driven by the the same economic principles of supply & demand as any other "business". Falsifying and amending the very birth certificates of human-beings is just the beginning, forcing adoptees to live a very complicated reality.

The Declassified Adoptee: A Quote From What I'm Reading: Shared Fate

The Declassified Adoptee: A Quote From What I'm Reading: Shared Fate: "The book I read this week was 'Shared Fate: a Theory and Method of Adoptive Relationships' by Adoptive Father, H. David Kirk, Ph.D.  ..."

Open adoption 101: What’s the big deal about adoptees and birth certificates? - National open adoption | Examiner.com

Open adoption 101: What’s the big deal about adoptees and birth certificates? - National open adoption | Examiner.com

Falsified Original Birth Certificates

© Photographer: Katn1999 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Here are two articles on the same case in Florida which describes a very common practice in adoption ~ the falsification of the name of a natural mother on an original birth certificate. As in these cases, it was common for an adoption facilitator, agency, or attorney to encourage this practice.

In today's "open adoptions" the name of the potential adoptive parents are sometimes being listed on the child's original birth certificate, rather than waiting until the adoption is finalized and an amended birth certificate created.

This is a human rights violation and legislation should ensure that every American citizen has access to their own non-falsified original birth certificate, for identity, genealogical, and medical history.

Genealogists have concluded that because of archaic "sealed records" laws in adoption and fraudulant practices like this, a large percentage of all American's family genealogy will be inaccurate in another four generations. When we deny the human rights of one, it affects everyone.

Adoption in America will not be ethical and void of gross conflict of interest issues and civil rights violations until ALL adult adoptees are restored the unconditional right to obtain their obc; until legislation is passed to ensure unethical practices of falsifying birth certificates is stopped; and the almighty dollar is no longer the driving force in a supply/demand business of adoption.


MAN, 47, SUING TO ANNUL HIS OWN `BABY SALE' ADOPTION
http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/27405

Relates to: Winnie Faye Higginbotham Yarber (now Winnie Faye Whitaker)
Date: 1999-06-09
Miami Herald, The (FL)
Author: KAREN TESTA, Associated Press
Dateline: BOCA RATON

For nearly 20 years, Michael Chalek was tormented with unfulfilled questions of his birth, his adoption and his true parents.

Now, at age 47, he's condemned to know the answers.

Chalek discovered he'd been sold for $200 by a baby broker after his young mother was coerced into giving him up under an assumed name, state records unsealed recently show. Chalek claims that was the beginning of a childhood marked by sexual and verbal abuse.

His adoptive parents and the baby broker cannot defend themselves - they are all dead. But Chalek hopes a lawsuit filed this week in Alachua County will right some of the wrongs: he's asking to annul his 1953 adoption and get a new birth certificate with his true mother's name.

``By me doing that, it's making a statement that ought to be made,'' said Chalek, who moved a few months ago from Boca Raton to Estes, Colo. ``I think the individuals involved in this ought to be exposed.''

That has been Chalek's lifelong quest. He has been aided by investigators, including Virginia Snyder.

Chalek was born Jan. 25, 1952, in Jacksonville to Winnie Faye Higginbotham Yarber, a barroom waitress who had separated from her husband and became pregnant by another man.

Eight days later, the child then known as Baby Barnwell went home with Alex and Adela Chalek, who had contacted baby broker Lenora Fielding when they were not successful at having their own child, records show.

Florida adoption laws were not as strict then, and adoptions could be arranged by doctors or lawyers, said Josette P. Marquess, coordinator of the Florida Adoption Reunion Record. Adoptions such as those arranged by Fielding were not really legal - but that was largely ignored.

About a year after his adoption, Michael Chalek said, the Chaleks had their own son. Michael claims he began to suffer sexual abuse by his mother as he grew up in Gainesville and later in Atlanta. There is no record of any abuse being reported.

At age 11, he found out he was adopted and he became obsessed with wanting to know about his birth family, he said.

``It burned in my lower gut all the time,'' he said Tuesday. ``I always wondered every single day who I really was.''

A vital document
In 1981, Chalek found a document that named the hospital where he was born.

Seven years later, a judge listened to one of Chalek's repeated petitions to unseal his confidential records - something rarely done in Florida without a compelling medical need, Marquess said.

Judge Robert P. Cates allowed Chalek access to 100 pages of his early life's history. The revelations were startling, Chalek said.

Notes from state case workers showed Fielding coerced his birth mother into using a false name. The record also showed his mother asked a state worker if she could get the baby back.

The mother - Winnie Faye Whitaker - welcomed the telephone call this past December when Chalek finally found her. His birth father died sometime in the 1970s.

``I didn't want to give him up - but I was so young,'' said Whitaker, now 70, who added she supports Chalek's court request. ``I asked if I could just get the baby back, and they told me no. I'd already signed the papers.''

Those are the papers Chalek hopes to have annulled by his petition.

Madelyn Freundlich, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York, said annulments of adoptions are extremely rare. And of those, most are sought by the parents, not the children. She's never heard of a new birth certificate being issued.

``This is really an unbelievable set of circumstances,'' said Freundlich, whose institute studies adoption issues.

Anger over payment
Attorney Mallory Horne, former Florida Senate president and House speaker who filed the petition on Chalek's behalf, said Chalek was angered by the fact his parents paid his birth mother for him.

``He took it more in the nature of a buying him, which really was an insult to him,'' Horne said.

Chalek hoped to sue the attorney who brought his adoption to the court and the judge who approved it - both now elderly men. Horne advised him he'd have no case.

Instead, Chalek has turned his efforts to mobilizing other adoptees in similar situations and has set up a website, www.adoption-fraud.com. He hopes if the annulment is successful it will pave the way for others to follow suit.

Marquess fears a chilling effect if he's successful.

``What happens then when adopted children are disgruntled for whatever reason? . . . I say disgruntled, certainly not abused as Michael said he was,'' she said. ``. . . We are a litigious society, and I think we are litigious about things we don't need to be litigious about.''

Chalek is beyond litigious. He's writing a book and is showing no signs of letting this chapter of his life rest easily.

``I have covered every inch in this,'' he said. ``I am going all out with this.''

Birth certificate access is civil rights issue | NewsOK.com

Birth certificate access is civil rights issue | NewsOK.com

The OK Legislative Adoption Review Task Force was comprised mainly of "professionals" who make their living in adoption. The meetings were open to the public and after sitting through two years of meetings, hearing argument after argument about what should be "acceptable" expenses and fees that can be charged in adoption, adult adoptees were given the last thirty minutes of the last meeting to speak about adoptee rights. It points out so well that adoption is a business, complete with supply/demand principles, with adoptees being prime commodity.

OK is far from an "open records" state, like our neighbor to the north, KS, but Judges are given latitude to grant adoptee access to their adoption record/obc with "good cause" shown. The language the legislators added to their current adoption bill, HB 1748, actually strips adoptee's right to obtain their obc even more than in current law. It mentions that Judges can grant access to adoptees only if they balance "adoptee rights with birth parent privacy". State after state is finding that birth parents were never promised, nor asked for, perpetual anonymity under the law.

Even more disconcerting, is the fact that we were made aware during these meetings that the OK Department of Health is finding that, in some cases, the targeted adoptive parents in an "open adoption" are being listed as the child's parents on the original birth certificate, even before an adoption is finalized and an amended birth certificate is created. This is a grave human rights violation, because when that adoptee becomes an adult, they will not even have a factual original birth certificate to request.

Adoption agencies are not being held accountable. Mothers they "counsel" will do whatever they are encouraged to do. They trust what they are told from the "professionals" will be in the best interest of their child.

Adoption is wrought with "conflict of interest" issues that fail the very individual it professes to be serving.