On the Road

Spring Break, and we're heading to Washington, D.C.!  Made it as far as Bristol, Virginia today, and only have 6-7 hours yet to go.  We left after school on Friday, and got as far as Little Rock before I decided to bag it.

The girls are such great travelers.  We spent most of the day just getting across Tennessee, and Maya kept waxing poetic about the scenery.  My favorite quote from her:  "I love nature!  Nature is just so big!" The lovely scenery stimulated much patriotism from the girls, and they serenaded us with the Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, etc.  And of course, when we passed the sign for his birthplace, a rousing rendition of Davy Crockett!

We're excited to have my sister and brother-in-law join us in D.C. -- they're driving from Vermont. We plan to spend the week as tourists enjoying all that D.C. has to offer, and then, oh joy!, enjoying the 22-hour drive back home!

China: National Child Trafficking Arrests Include Guangxi Province

This China Daily article hits close to home -- Zoe and Maya are both from Guangxi Province, and the China expert quoted is from Xiamen University law school where I taught in 2007:

Several police vehicles set off from a police station in Tianlin, a county of Baise city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, late on Tuesday night.

More than 150 police officers from the city were divided into three groups and dispatched to Tianlin, Longlin and Xilin counties to capture human traffickers.

As of Thursday, 16 suspects had been arrested.

In fact, Guangxi was just one of 14 "battlefields" in the Ministry of Public Security's crackdown against human trafficking action this week. More than 7,000 police officers participated in the campaign in 14 provinces, including Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Yunnan and Guizhou.

As a result, 310 suspects were arrested and 77 kidnapped children were rescued.

The children were mostly kidnapped in Yunnan province in Southwest China and Guangxi in South China and sold to other regions, such as Shandong province in East China and Shanxi province in North China, according to the ministry.

* * *

A woman surnamed Yang, 37, one of the arrested suspects in Longlin county, Guangxi, confessed to the police that she had trafficked six infants for money since 2010.

Police said Yang bought infants younger than one month from other villages in the county and Guizhou province and sold them to people in Central China.

Each infant was sold for 3,000 ($475) to 4,000 yuan, police said, and she could get about 800 yuan per child.

According to police, she said all the infants were baby girls and she did it only for money.

* * *

Jiang Yue, a professor at Xiamen University's law school, said: "The main reason for human trafficking is the economic gap and some residents in poor areas even think such trafficking is a way to earn money"
.
Besides, cutting off demand market and enhancing awareness of this issue are also necessary, or the problem will not be solved, she added.

"Colorism" in African-American Adoption

At theGrio, a piece looking at how skin tone affects the adoption of black children -- and the conclusion might surprise you:

Could the skin tone of black children play a role in whether they are chosen -- especially if the family considering them is black? Mardie Caldwell, founder and CEO of the Lifetime Adoption agency, says this is true -- and that this bias is exclusive to African-Americans.

"We've found that many African-American families have definite preferences for the type of children they want, whether it's newborns [or older children], and also in terms of their physical appearance," Caldwell told theGrio. The author of seven books on the adoption process, including her latest, Called to Adoption, suggested that the finicky tastes of black families made private agencies reluctant to work with them.

"A lot of organizations and other adoption professionals have actually stopped doing African-American adoptions. We're one of the few centers, Lifetime Adoptions, that does African-American and biracial adoptions, and we're one of the largest in the United States," she explained. "When families come to us they will actually give us preferences and say 'we want to stick with a child that looks like us, and we're lighter-skinned or we're darker-skinned.' It does make it difficult at times."

By contrast, "if we have families that may be biracial -- one partner is Caucasian and the other is African-American -- we can come to them with any black child, and they're more open," Caldwell said. "The same is true with Caucasian families, which is why you're seeing more Caucasians adopting children of color, because they really don't care about the shade."

* * *

Private agencies also tend to be for-profit, meaning the child selection process can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Jacqueline D. Wilson, MSW/LSW, believes this could be one factor effecting the attitudes of the African-Americans Caldwell has encountered. The CEO of the Three Rivers Adoption Council in Pittsburgh told theGrio: "It took me by surprise to learn that she said that, because I have never encountered that at all. We go through a thorough investigation process before we approve families, and I don't know of one that has ever said that in 12 years."

Go read the whole thing.  The article offers three reasons for "colorism" by African-American parents when adopting: 1) when paying more with a private, for-profit adoption agency, parents want a child made-to-order, including skin tone; 2) parents are seeking matching skin tones so the adoption can remain a secret; and 3) preferences for lighter skin tones in the African-American community. Also, the article suggests that African-American birth mothers also take skin tone into account in selecting adoptive parents for their children.

What do you think? Comments, please!

Teens & Adoption

An article at GalTime about adoption issues in the teen years:

During these years when teens are figuring out their identities they take multiple factors into account. And they do all of this within the context of a developing brain, raging hormonal upheaval, and parents who are often befuddled and bewildered by their behavior and about what to do.

It is no wonder why the teen years sometimes become a time of struggle for adopted teens. They have additional questions that they ask including:

1. What were my biological parents like?

2. Am I going to turn out like them?

3. Why did they give me up? They didn't even take the time to get to know me.

4. Will I be abandoned repeatedly since I was already abandoned by my biological parents? Imagine how hard it must be for the adolescent to experience and deal with the loss of an unknown person.

5. Do I have other siblings?

6. Will I get to meet my biological parents?

What's scary is the thought that a teen adoptee may not already have answers to these questions! Do I have other siblings? Really?! You haven't already talked about this with your kid?!

The author, a Ph.D. psychologist, offers some suggestions for helping teens deal with these questions. I find the advice pretty superficial, but at least it's a starting place, I suppose. With an 11-year-old, I'm already obsessing about the coming teenage years!

Shame

Shame: A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.

I was a fat kid.  Not chubby, not pleasingly plump, but fat.  That meant a lot of teasing at school.  One incident I still remember to this day:  I was in 5th or 6th grade, and the class was practicing some square dance routine where the girl was supposed to fall back into the boy's arms.  No one wanted to partner me, so the teacher forced one boy to do it.  Yep, I bet you can see where this is going. . . . I fell back as the dance step required, and the boy dropped me.  He declared loudly that he didn't do it on purpose, I was too heavy for him to hold.  I didn't believe him, I knew he didn't even try to catch me, but I still lay there, humiliated, silent, while everyone else laughed.

I've never told anyone that story.  No one.  Not at the time, and never since.  I was too ashamed. If anyone found out how flawed I was -- and I was certainly flawed if I could be treated that way -- no one would love me anymore.  So I never told.

I've been thinking a lot about shame in the past few days, ever since Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute (and continued to rant on the subject for 3 days) for testifying before Congress about the importance of birth control to women's health.  As an adult, I recognize this slut-shaming for what it is -- an attempt to silence Susan Fluke and all women who witness and fear the same shaming treatment for speaking out.  Attacking women for their sexuality is a long-utilized and familiar tactic to silence them.  It might be calling her a dyke or saying she's frigid, or it might be calling her a slut and a prostitute, but the intent is the same -- if you attack her sexuality, you'll shut her up.  Shame silences.

The only thing different this time is that the centuries-old tactic didn't work!  It didn't silence Fluke, nor did it silence other women, who have spearheaded a protest effort that's led to 34 advertisers pulling their support for Limbaugh's program.

There's a lot of shame in adoption.  Like shaming teen/unwed mothers for having sex and getting pregnant:

After they called me away from homeroom into the assembly, the school department head made me stand up in front of my entire middle school and announced to everyone that I was pregnant. Until that moment, the only other student at school who knew was my sister. I was embarrassed, hurt and angry.

After they finished humiliating me in front of everyone at school, they had me sit back down in the bleachers. Some boys sitting behind me started kicking the back of my seat and harassing me. Soon all the other kids in school were teasing me, calling me names like "mama bear" and asking to touch my stomach.

I feel betrayed by my school. It's true that I was pregnant, but that doesn't mean I deserved to be harassed and publicly shamed in front of everyone.

Like shaming birth mothers who relinquish a child, like the comment received by Cassi at Adoption Truth:  "I know your story and I am saddest most about the fact that your son didn't even get a good enough birthmother to save him from abuse." Wow, how's that for an attempt to shame and silence? You're such a lousy birth mother that you gave your child to a child abuser.  Shame on you.

So you get shamed as a teen mom if you don't relinquish your child, and shamed as an uncaring birth mother if you do.

Is there shame associated with being an adoptive parent?  Consider this:

For adoptive parents, the trauma of not being able to give birth and raise a birth child, has been minimized and denied by focusing on the “solution” of adoption. Little has been said, except in adoption reform circles, about the traumas of not having the dreamed-for child; the loss of privacy of medical attempts at producing a child by various means; the invasiveness of having to disclose their financial, social, medical, and sexual histories to adoption agencies; and the on-going void of raising a child in a closed adoption system where they know little or nothing of their child’s heritage or needs.

Does that ring true to you? For adoptive parents who experienced infertility, there are feelings of shame, aren't there?  Especially for women, whose identity is often wrapped up in ideas of "true womanhood" that require her to be fertile, there is shame in infertility. And then there's the feelings of shame and guilt for ripping a child from her family, her culture, and for experiencing the joy of adoption when others have experienced such loss because of adoption (we've talked about those feelings here and here and here).

And adoptees and shame?  There's tons of shaming there, both internal and external.  Adoptees feel shame arising from feelings of being rejected by birth parents.  After all, one must be unworthy of love if one's own parents couldn't manage it.  Jean MacLeod explains:

Guilt and shame are by-products of rejection. They are a child’s paralyzing, toxic reaction to the belief that something must be intrinsically wrong with them, or that they must have done something really bad, to have caused their own abandonment. Shame is secret and silent. Adults understand that birthparents have grown-up reasons to relinquish a child, but children view the act personally as a reflection of themselves, and are deeply ashamed of not being ‘good enough’ for a mother to keep.

Shame is recognized as one of the seven core issues adoptees face. But shame isn't just internal -- it becomes imposed on adoptees by others as well:

Adoptees are often told that their reactions to their adoption are wrong. These reactions can include confusion and questioning (“Why did she give me away?”), anger at birth or adoptive parents, or a desire to address the loss by obtaining information about the adoptee’s origins. For example, adoptees who are searching for information or contact with their birth families are often told that they are being “selfish”, are maladjusted or are hurting their adoptive parents. (“You wouldn’t be searching if you really loved your adoptive parents”.) When adoptees ask questions, even well-intended explanations can confusion or shame. (“Your birth mother placed you for adoption because she loved you”, equating love and abandonment, or “You should be grateful you were lucky enough to be adopted by such a caring family”, equating a need for information with ingratitude.) . . . . All forms of shame isolate the adoptee by discouraging her from expressing needs and feelings.

Real Daughter equates the imposed shame of adoption to the imposed shame of rape:

It disgusts me that only recently has it been “somewhat” acceptable for women to speak their truth about rape. But it is still not acceptable for adoptees to speak their truth about adoption, unless it is the truth that makes other people happy- meaning adopters and the adoption industry. There is this undercurrent of shame involved with being raped and also with being adopted. Adoptees are told to shut up and be grateful. Their voice is stifled by those who only want to hear the good parts of adoption. Many rape victims were (and are still in some cases) told that they had it coming because their skirt was too short, or because they had been drinking, wore too much makeup, etc. We are dismissed. Rape victims are raped emotionally by people who are clueless about the subject of rape. It was not my fault someone raped me, just as it wasn’t my fault I am adopted. It is normal to talk about the pain and the experiences associated with both ordeals.

As adoptive parents we can unwittingly infect our children with shame. Our silence and secrecy about adoption can make our children ashamed to be adopted.  After all, other things we keep secrets about are shameful things, right?  Aunt Frieda's drinking, Cousin Bob's cross-dressing, Cousin Sylvie's 5 prior marriages, Grandpa Joe's moon-shining.  So if adoption is a secret, it must be shameful. 

We might think that we shouldn't talk about adoption with our kids -- beyond a mere mention once that they are adopted -- because we don't want to make a big deal of it, we don't want to plant ideas in their heads. We want to treat them the "same as" biological kids, so we ignore adoption.  And in doing so, we make adoption "the-thing-that-must-not-be-named," because it must be shameful. That's why we have to talk openly with our kids about adoption, it's the only way we can innoculate them against shame.

When it comes to guilt and shame for our children, Jean MacLeod gives great advice:

The prescription for shame is to blast it out in the open and help children understand that their ‘rejection’ and abandonment was not about them:
"Detect it, Expose it, Dump it!”
Shame and guilt can only exist in dark, untouched secret places. Bringing the reasons for a child’s self-incriminating feelings out into the light and exposing self-held secrets to the truth will begin to eliminate shame, rejection and guilt’s internalized triple grip.

A good message about shame, whether in the adoption triad or elsewhere: "Detect it, Expose it, Dump it!” 

I'm not equating my childhood shame to the pain in adoption, but I'm trying to live the "Detect it, Expose it, Dump it" message. I've exposed it to you, and I shared the story with my kids at dinner tonight.  They were really sweet, providing lots of hugs, which sure helps with that last step -- dumping the shame and moving on!

Artyom's Mom Must Pay Child Support

So reports the Miami Herald:

A judge in Tennessee has ruled that an American woman must pay child support for the adopted son she sent back to Russia.

Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell approved a motion on Wednesday for default judgment against Torry Hansen, who has repeatedly failed to appear in court and at depositions.

Hansen was living in Shelbyville in April 2010 when she sent the boy, then 7, to his native Russia on a plane.

A lawsuit filed by the adoption agency seeks child support and other damages that will be held in a trust for the child, who is now living in a group home in Russia.

The judge will hear arguments in May on how much money Hansen should pay.

So the judge didn't rule on the merits; a default judgment essentially takes as true everything in the plaintiff's petition.  I think a ruling on the merits would have reached the same conclusion, since a legal parent has a legal duty to support her child financially and sending Artyom back to Russia would not have terminated her parental rights and obligations.  Still, by her conduct that led to the default judgment, Hansen forfeited the opportunity to offer any legal defense.  Not that she had much to go on -- her conduct was indefensible.

Putin: International Adoption Should Be "Rare Exception"

Vladimir Putin weighs in on international adoption of Russian children:

The adoption of Russian children by foreign families should become a “rare exception,” prime minister and president-elect Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

“We should try to ensure that most [Russian] children find their families here in Russia,” Putin told a government meeting in Moscow. “Foreign adoptions should become a rare exception, a last resort.”

* * *

During the Wednesday meeting, Putin criticized foreign child adoption firms for what he described as a “lack of cooperation” with Russian authorities in monitoring the situation with adopted children.

Relevant government bodies should promptly react to any cases of mistreatment of such children, he said, adding that children whose rights have been seriously violated should be given to other families or returned to Russia.

Adoptees & Drug Abuse Risk

A while back I posted a study that showed both environment and genetics played a role in adoptees' risk of suicide.  So I was really interested when I saw this headline at CNN,  Adopted kids' drug abuse risk affected by biological family, especially since it suggested that genetics was a sole factor. But if you get past the headline and the first paragraph, you learn that there's also an environmental influence:

Adopted children are twice as likely to abuse drugs if their biological parents did too, suggesting that genetics do indeed play a role in the development of substance abuse problems.

However, trouble or substance abuse in the adoptive family is also a risk factor, according to a study of more than 18,000 adopted children in Sweden.

This suggests that both environment and biological family history can influence a child's likelihood of future drug use.

They managed to bury the actual results there, huh?  Still, the article notes that this is "good news" for adoptive parents, since it suggests that tainted genes can be "cured" by a good environment.  Sheesh.

There's more detail about the study at the MedicalNews website, but there are really two versions -- one headlined Dysfunctional family environment increases genetic risk for drug abuse and one headlined Study evaluates link between genetic and environmental factors and risk of drug abuse. 

Looks like CNN used the second version, which blames biology in the first paragraph:

In a national Swedish adoption study, the risk for drug abuse appears to be increased among adopted children whose biological parents had a history of drug abuse, according to a report published Online First by Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

 rather than the first version, headlining dysfunctional families, which blames environment:

The risk of abusing drugs is greater - even for adopted children - if the family environment in which they are raised is dysfunctional, according to a new study conducted by a collaborative team from Virginia Commonwealth University and Lund University in Sweden.

So, take your pick -- blame the birth parents or blame the adoptive parents! Or recognize that biology and environment are both influential. . . .

An adoption "joke" in The Lorax

We saw The Lorax this weekend, and my kids really liked it.  No, no one in the story is actually adopted, which is a relief given the prevalence of adoption in children's movies.  Yes, adoption was mentioned. Yes, it was just a kind of throw-away line, but I hated that the producers/directors decided to go there. I don't think Dr. Seuss would be proud.

I can't quote it exactly, but it went something like this: the richest (and most evil) man in town visits the home of our young hero.  Mom introduces hero to evil-doer, who says something complimentary.  Mom replies with a giggle, "You want to adopt him? Just kidding!"  Hilarity ensues.

But maybe not so funny if you're a child who feels her birth mother gave her away, or a child whose past experience of being given away leaves behind that anxiety that it will happen again. . . .

Based on the trailer, I was prepared for the sexist "THAT'S a woman?!" line (yes, women are still women when they are old and fat and ugly, not just when they are swimsuit models on the cover of Sports Illustrated).  Didn't see the adoption "joke" coming.

The "golden age" of international adoption

The Globe & Mail (Canada) offers an editorial in support of international adoption:

The golden era of international adoptions has come to a close. And that is a shame for the hundreds of millions of children in orphanages around the world.

Bureaucracy, escalating costs and more stringent regulations have caused a number of Canadian adoption agencies to close, and made it much harder for parents to adopt overseas.

Nepal, Guatemala, Cambodia and Liberia are on Canada’s adoption blacklist, and in most provinces, so is Haiti. Popular source countries such as China and Ethiopia have reduced the number of children sent abroad for adoption.

The international adoption industry has been fraught with concerns about child trafficking and corruption. Because Canada is a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children, the provinces must take these concerns seriously, and ensure Canadians are not inadvertently taking part in the abduction or sale of children.

However, instead of shutting down a country’s entire international adoption program, wouldn’t it be better to investigate specific allegations of abuse, enforce existing laws and penalize those who violate them? Canadian adoption agencies could continue to work with their overseas counterparts that follow regulations, and do not commit adoption fraud. This would allow the thousands of orphans in Guatemala, Haiti, Nepal and Ethiopia to be adopted out, in the event that they cannnot be placed in homes in their own countries.

Go read the whole thing, including the obligatory quote from Elizabeth Bartholet: “Even if adoption law violations occur, the harm they cause children and birth parents is minimal compared to the harm caused by shutting down or severely restricting international adoptions." Sigh.

Lots to say about the editorial, but I'll limit myself to one issue (hard to believe, I know!). Let's see first if we can find some common ground -- I will start from the proposition that international adoption should exist in some form (we aren't all likely to agree on what form, and some won't accept that starting premise at all), and that we are all interested in eliminating corruption in international adoption and all interested in facilitating international adoption for truly needy children.  We might disagree on what corruption is (I, for example, use a broad definition that goes beyond kidnapping or buying children) or which children are truly needy (I, for example, firmly believe that domestic adoption options HAVE to be explored before a child is truly needy of international placement, which is not something everyone agrees with). But I hope we can agree on these fundamentals -- end corruption, help needy children.  Okay? So how do we do that?

The idea that we can end corruption and avoid shutting down entire countries by simply investigating and punishing individual cases of corruption ignores the fact that we are outsourcing adoption to countries without the regulations and infrastructure to police corruption in adoption. Think of a country like China (I'm using China as an example because some people seem to think I give China a "pass" because my kids were adopted from China (yes, to believe that, you can't really be reading everything I post about problems with adoption from China, but, whatever)). With all the overwhelming stories of general corruption in China, corruption it can't keep up with -- why would we think China is suddenly able to police corruption in adoption?

And can the receiving country do the investigating?  Given issues of national sovereignty (why would China allow foreign operatives to investigate in China?!), language and culture differences, lack of cooperation generally, and there's little possibility of Canada or the U.S. investigating claims of corruption within a sending country.  We've seen how that has worked in the past with China -- when cases of corruption go public, the U.S. and/or Canada asks China about it, and China reports they've handled it, and that's the end of that.   This article by E.J. Graff illustrates the limitations on the U.S. ability to investigate individual cases in Vietnam:

[T]he State Department was confident it had discovered systemic nationwide corruption in Vietnam -- a network of adoption agency representatives, village officials, orphanage directors, nurses, hospital administrators, police officers, and government officials who were profiting by paying for, defrauding, coercing, or even simply stealing Vietnamese children from their families to sell them to unsuspecting Americans. And yet, as these documents reveal, U.S. officials in Hanoi did not have the right tools to shut down the infant peddlers while allowing the truly needed adoptions to continue.

We're merely pretending that sending countries actually have the resources to police adoption, and that receiving countries can do the necessary case-by-case investigations, aren't we? The reality is very different from that pretence.

So, how about offering a real solution to the problem of corruption in international adoption? If shutting down a country's program isn't the solution, then offer a realistic one.  Calling for sending countries to investigate individual cases, enforce existing laws and punish individual wrong-doers is NOT realistic. We need to stop pretending that sending countries can police themselves or that receiving countries can police the sending countries.

How about this as a solution -- we only allow adoption from sending countries who have the necessary infrastructure to investigate individual cases of corruption or who agree to allow for meaningful internal investigation by the receiving country? I can hear many objections: it would increase costs of international adoption, it would limit countries parents could adopt from even more than current practice does. Maybe so.  So what's your proposed solution? It certainly can't be to go back to the "golden age" of unregulated international adoption, what this editorial yearns for -- not if we want to end corruption and help needy children.

Deporting International Adoptees

"As the U.S. leads the world in terms of the numbers of children adopted from other countries, it should also lead the world in the humanitarian treatment of them."

That's the gist of this Korean Times editorial about the U.S. deporting international adoptees whose parents dropped the ball and failed to secure their U.S. citizenship:

Until 2001, when Korean children were sent to the U.S. for overseas adoption, it was their adoptive parents’ responsibility to naturalize them as U.S. citizens.

In addition, adoption agencies both in Korea and the U.S. were responsible for post-adoption services that should monitor adoptees and their adoptive parents until the children are fully integrated into U.S. society. This is a key principle of overseas adoption.

However, the reality is not the same as the principle. The U.S. deports foreign adoptees aged 29 and older who haven’t been naturalized when they commit certain crimes. Washington must stop this practice immediately.

Unlike European governments, the U.S. government did not automatically grant citizenship to overseas adoptees until 2001. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 came into force on Feb. 27, 2001, allowing all internationally adopted children under 18 on that date, and all those adopted in the future, to become U.S. citizens automatically. However, adoptees 18 or older on that date could not be covered by the act.

Many adoptees discovered, usually when applying for federal student loans or a passport, that they had never been naturalized by their foster parents. I know three Korean adoptees ― Monte, Tim, and Matthew ― who could not benefit from the act.

* * *

I urge the U.S. government to correct defects in the U.S. legal system by quickly passing an amendment that would allow all overseas adoptees ― even adults like Tim, Matthew, and Monte ― to rightfully receive their U.S. citizenship. This would stop the deportations and also give the benefits and protection of citizenship to all law-abiding international adoptees.

I've posted many times on this issue -- click here to find a link to a petition you can sign asking Congress to change the law, and links to previous posts about past deportations of individual adoptees.

OBC: More Than a Piece of Paper

In the wake of Illinois' new law allowing adoptees to access their original birth certificates, the Courier-News (Chicago) has two interesting pieces -- first, More Than a Piece of Paper, explores a bit of the history of secrecy and the new legislation:

A birth certificate — a proclamation of who you are and where you came from — is something most people take for granted.

But for the more than 200,000 estimated adult adoptees in Illinois, it’s a fundamental right they has been denied — until now.

An Illinois law signed into effect in May 2010 allows adult adoptees to obtain a copy of their original birth certificates without receiving written consent from birth parents. Birth parents who oppose the new law can file a request to have their names redacted from the document.

For state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, the bill’s sponsor, it wasn’t only about changing public policy; it was personal. Adopted in 1956, she championed the effort for nearly 15 years.

* * *

“Think about the evolution of adoption and how much better this institution is now,” she said. “Files used to be stamped ‘illegitimate,’ and there was a significant need to protect a pregnant, unmarried woman and the child she gave up. The fault in the law — as I see it — was that those two parties never needed protection from each other. They needed protection from society.

“We are trying our best to remedy that particular issue: permit, yet continue to protect those that want it. It’s a very emotional issue, and I can attest to that because I have been working on it for many, many years.”

Since the new law took effect, more than 6,600 Illinois-born adult adoptees have requested a copy of their original birth certificate, according to the Illinois Department of Public Aid. Less than 1 percent of birth parents have requested anonymity.

Second, a piece written by the journalist for the first story, From the Storyteller,  revealing her personal interest in the topic:

“Are you adopted?”

That was the first question state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz asked me when I called her about this story. An adoptee and champion of the new law that allows adults to request a copy of their original birth certificate, Feigenholtz said it’s a question she typically asks when being interviewed about the topic. She wanted to know “if I had skin in the game.”

I am not adopted. My husband is, and for that reason, I followed the birth certificate debate and ultimate change to the law with great interest. In fact, once I learned it had passed, I printed off the application to request a copy of his original birth certificate, filled it out, and left it for him to sign.

He didn’t sign it.

* * *

I have learned while working on this story that each person’s adoption journey is as individual as their DNA. But thanks to the change in Illinois law, adoptees have the option to get that information if and when they are ready for it.

The application no longer sits on my husband’s desk in our den. After more than two months, he decided to sign it and mail it to Springfield with his $15 check. He doesn’t have plans to do anything with it, except file it along with mine and those of our three kids. But at least he will have an original birth certificate — unique — but just like everyone else.

New Comment Settings

It's taken me awhile to decide to do this, but I've now disabled anonymous commenting on the blog.

I am a huge proponent of free speech, and have long understood that anonymous commenting allowed some the freedom to share unpopular opinions.  Anonymous comments haven't really bothered me, nor has it ever bothered me when others disagree with my opinions.  The cure for bad speech is not censorship, but MORE speech, I've always believed.

That's why I don't moderate comments (screen them before publishing them), nor do I delete comments (censor them after they've been published).  I intend to stick with those policies. Disallowing anonymous comments seems to me a middle ground, less stifling of free speech than moderating or deleting comments.

I have been disturbed by the NUMBER of anonymous comments lately.  I did a spot check of the almost-9,000 comments here, and have discovered an enormous growth in the percentage of anonymous comments.  In the first 500 comments on the blog, only 6.4% were anonymous.  In the middle 500 comments, 20.1% were anonymous.  In the last 500 comments, 48.4% were anonymous. That last number was startling to me -- almost half of commenters aren't willing to identify themselves.  Wow. Not only do these figures show a growth in anonymous comments, but even more disturbing to me, that's an enormous decline in the number of folks willing to identify themselves.

The anonymous comments have also declined in quality as they have increased in quantity.  Commenting anonymously has permitted folks to issue personal insults, not just of me, but also of other commenters.  Instead of offering reasoned disagreement, anonymous comments have become simply disagreeable. I believe the nature of the anonymous comments has chilled more speech than it has promoted -- many readers are declining to comment at all for fear of being attacked.

I'm pretty thick-skinned, but I have to tell you, the tenor of discussion in the comments has been depressing lately.  I know many would be delighted if I decided blogging wasn't fun anymore and quit. In fact, I believe that is actually the reason for the anonymous nastiness -- trying to stifle speech, not promote it. To make blogging more enjoyable for me, I need a better quality of disagreement (after all, there's little I like better than a good argument!). I'm hoping that by requiring commenters to identify themselves the quantity and quality of comments will improve.

Of course, I know this is an imperfect process.  Anyone is free to create a false identity on the internet (for all you know, I'm an 18-year-old Botswanan man with a great imagination!).  But I figure this step, of requiring one to establish an identity before commenting here, might deter the kind of drive-by nastiness the comment section has become prone to.

I hope to hear from many more of you, where I can agree or disagree with you by name!

Ohio Adoption Agency Investigated After Adoptive Father Accused of Raping Children

Interesting, I'm not sure I've seen this scenario before, where the adoption agency is investigated after adoptive parents are accused of child abuse:

Ohio officials are investigating a private adoption agency that helped place children with a man now accused of raping three boys in his care.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services tell the Associated Press on Friday that it's opened an investigation into ACTION Inc.

The investigation follows the arrest last week of a 39-year-old Troy man charged with three counts of rape and one count of compelling prostitution in Miami County. He also faces child rape charges in Montgomery County. Police accuse him of hiring out a 10-year-old boy for sex with other men.

* * *

Texas authorities didn't release any other details on the children but said the adoption was handled through ACTION Inc. adoptions agency of Dayton. A Texas spokesman said Thursday that it appeared that proper procedures had been followed, including background checks on the adoptive father. Troy police say they don't know of any past criminal activity by him.

Chinese Twins Adopted by Different Families Stay Connected

As reported from Canada, a fascinating tale of twins separated by adoption and their adoptive families' efforts to keep them connected:

The girls were born in China, separated by circumstance and parceled out to two different families.

Whether by fortune or design -- no one will ever know -- the couples who adopted them were both from Ontario. And they figured it out.

Kirk and Allyson MacLeod adopted their daughter, Lily, 12 years ago and brought her home to Keswick, north of Toronto. Mike and Lynette Shaw adopted their daughter, Gillian, 12 years ago and brought her home to Amherstburg, just outside Windsor. When the parents discovered the connection, they vowed to raise them as sisters.

The situation is as rare as it is fascinating: Lily and Gillian are one of only a handful of twin pairs in the world known to be growing up in this way — apart, yet together. They are an accidental experiment, giving researchers a new window into human behaviour by allowing them to study the effects of nature and nurture in real-time. For science, Lily and Gillian are a treasure.

And for the people raising them — strangers thrown together by extraordinary circumstances — the unusual arrangement has made them pioneers of a whole new kind of blended family. They are making up the rules as they go.

The families noticed that their referral pictures seemed to be of the same child and contacted their agency:

The two families contacted the adoption agency and asked coordinators to look into the matter. At first, the parents were concerned the orphanage may have inadvertently assigned one baby to two different families. Adoption documents even gave the girls the same birthday. If there were two of them, could they be twins?

Word came back from the orphanage a few days later: there were indeed two babies. Workers said the girls were found in different locations, brought in separately. They were not twins, just look-alikes.

And so the MacLeods and Shaws found themselves, two months later, at a hotel in China’s Hunan province, waiting outside an elevator with three other couples. When the doors opened, five nannies stepped out with five little girls in their arms, babies bundled into so many layers of clothing they could hardly move. Only their heads peeked out of the hooded zip-up suits they wore.

It was immediately clear to all that two of the babies were identical.

Officially, the orphanage still insisted the girls, then 8 months old, were unrelated and could not be adopted together. If the parents didn’t take the baby assigned to them, they would go back into the adoption pool. And there was no guarantee they would end up together next time.

Maybe workers at the orphanage really didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t care. Or maybe, as the girls’ parents like to think, they couldn’t afford a DNA test and did what they thought was the next best thing: place the twins with families near each other.

These aren't the only twins raised apart that are known to researchers, of course:

Over the past decade, Segal, now a psychology professor at California State University, has found about 15 more sets of adopted twin children being raised by different families, most of them Chinese girls.

Researchers attribute this phenomenon to China’s one-child policy, which led to the abandonment of thousands of female babies. Though China’s official adoption rules state that twins should be placed together, pairs like Lily and Gillian prove things don’t always happen that way.

Twelve pairs are part of Segal’s ongoing research on reared-apart twin children, a project that promises to open a new window into human behaviour. Every few years, for as long as they are willing, the twins and their parents will complete a giant questionnaire packet that tracks their behaviour, attitudes and health as they age.

The article has lots of stories about separated twins, and about commonalities between Lily and Gillian as well as between other separated twins.

China Daily: Man Arrested After Abandoning Baby

China Daily reports:

A 3-month-old baby boy was found abandoned at Wuhan Tianhe Airport on Tuesday and a suspect was later arrested, local police said on Thursday.

A cleaner who works at the airport heard the baby making sounds and when she went to investigate, found him on a chair in the arrivals lounge.

When no one claimed the baby after two hours, the local civil affairs bureau took over.

Chen Xiaokui, director of the shelter station under the civil affairs authority in Huangpi district, told China Daily that he sent the baby to hospital because he appeared to be ill.

"He was suffering from congenital heart disease and pneumonia," Chen said, adding that they had spent some 1,200 yuan ($190) on his medical treatment.

Chen said that he and his colleagues arrived at Tianhe Airport around 9 pm after hearing the report. They felt anger toward the person who abandoned the baby, he said.

"We find seven or eight abandoned babies each year," Chen said.

* * *

Mei Zhigang, a professor who studies social problems at Central China Normal University, said abandoned babies were a disgrace to society.

"It should not happen in a civilized society," Mei said, adding that there were two main reasons for this phenomenon.

A sick baby is more readily abandoned, she said, and there are parents who cannot afford to treat and raise sick children.

Mei said that parents must live up to their responsibilities and the government should be prepared to help families in difficulty.

"There needs to be more concern at national level and polices to curb such wrong behavior," Mei said.

A sad story, which gives me the opportunity to once again tout Love Without Boundaries' Unity Fund, which is designed to help children in China NOT become orphans at all, by providing medical care to children at risk of being abandoned by desperate parents who do so in order to secure medical care for their children.  Please consider donating. Adoption will not solve the world-wide orphan crisis; only preventing kids from becoming orphans in the first place will solve the orphan crisis.

Adopted Twins Returned to Russian Agency's Doorstep

And wouldn't you know it would involve Americans:

A pair of 15-month-old twins was returned to a St. Petersburg adoption authorities by an unidentified man, the city’s child ombudsman said on Tuesday.

“The twins were left on the doorstep of the Moskovskaya Zastava adoption authority. An unidentified man brought them in a baby carriage and left quickly,” St. Petersburg child ombudsman Svetlana Agapitova said.

The babies were adopted by a St. Petersburg resident last October. The adoptive mother, however, faced legal problems after a probe revealed that she failed to notify authorities about her dual Russian-U.S. citizenship as well as having an American husband.

The woman was originally advised to get a letter of consent from her husband before the adoption. It was unclear how she was able to document the adoption without her husband's involvement.

“However, she decided… to abandon the twins. Moreover, she decided not to do this in person,” the ombudsman said.

A probe has been launched and the woman was put on a wanted list. The babies are currently under medical supervision in a children's hospital.

It may well be that the current anti-American adoption sentiment in Russia is merely manufactured for domestic political consumption, as this article argues, but boy, American adoptive parents are sure making it easy for them. . . .

Mexico-Ireland Adoption Scammer Involved in U.S. Adoptions, Too

I posted before about the child-trafficking scandal involving Mexican adoptions to Ireland.  This Huffington Post article by investigative journalist Erin Seigal, author of a book about adoption corruption in Guatemala, reveals that the scandal may be broader and deeper than first thought, and involve adoptions to the U.S. as well:

Guadalajara-based attorney Carlos López Valenzuela is one of the people allegedly at the center of the operation. His law firm, López & López Associates, was operated by both López and his son, reported by the Mexican press to be a former state prosecutor. The firm, according to posts signed by Lopez on internet adoption websites and message boards, was "exclusively devoted" to private Mexican adoptions and boasted of "an outstanding track record in delivering healthy children." One of his posts, dated August 2001, claims he "handled over 260 adoptions for Couples of New York area during the past 21 years [sic]," or since 1981.

* * *

This is not the first time López has been involved in an adoption scandal. In 2003, Lesley Stahl and the CBS TV news magazine 48 Hours produced a story called "Twist of Fate," which followed two Mexican sisters who had been adopted to different American families. The adoption had been arranged by Carlos López. The girls' birth mother claimed she had been "forced to give them up for adoption," alleging that López had refused to return her daughters after she changed her mind. Additionally, she said, records for her daughters had been manufactured. López said he'd done nothing wrong.

In 1990, Belen Zapata of CNN Mexico recently reported, López and three other women were detained on charges of human trafficking stemming from attempts to purchase as-yet unborn children from pregnant women at the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara. At the time, López told authorities he was a representative of the Association of Adoptive Parents of New York.

Indeed, the affiliation between López and American adoptive parents has a long history. As a founding member of the Yahoo email list "Friends and Families of Mexico," a list with a publicly accessible archives dating back to 1999, López posted to a group of almost 200 people with adoption advice, poems about orphans, and business solicitations. His firm was sometimes also referred to as "López Castellanos Asociados." After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, an associate of Lopez posted to the list, asking adoptive parents to email photos to him so that fifty worried Mexican birth mothers would know that their children were all right. The post said that López has been working adoptions for "25 years," which would mean since the mid-1970's.

Apology Recommended

A Senate committee in Australia has recommended the country apologize for forced adoptions during that country's Baby Scoop Era:

A Senate committee in Australia is asking the country to apologize for its past policy of forced adoptions.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, thousands of unwed mothers were coerced into giving up their children. The committee talked to hundreds of mothers since its inquiy started in 2010.

The AP reports that about 100 mothers who gave up babies sat in the Senate public gallery as the committee presented its report today.

"If it wasn't illegal, it was unethical," committee chairwoman Sen. Rachel Siewert said, according to the AP. "The evidence ... tells the accounts of mothers and fathers who were pressured into giving up their babies by their families, by institutions — both state and territory and private institutions — by social workers, doctors, nurses and those who they rightly expected to have helped them."

The BBC reports that many of organizations that took part in the forced adoptions have apologized, but the victims want the government to issue a formal apology of the kind it issued in 2008 to indigenous people, over the systematic suffering they had undergone.

You can read the Senate committee's report here. What strikes me most vividly is the parallels between the Australian stories of force, coercion and stigma in this report and the American stories of force, coercion and stigma in Anne Fessler's powerful book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade.

And who's holding their breath for an American government apology for the Baby Scoop Era?

"I'm Not What's Best for My Baby"

At Elle Magazine, an article, entitled "I'm Not What's Best for My Baby," about a birth mother's relinquishment of her son for adoption:

On a bright, hot afternoon in July 2010, Julia Barnes* gave birth in a Chicago hospital to a slightly premature but healthy five-pound boy after a short labor. When he emerged, black hair plastered to his head, she looked away and did not ask to hold her child—or, as she kept reminding herself, “the” child.

This was far from the blissful scenario she’d imagined when she and her husband, her college sweetheart Bill, learned she was pregnant the previous fall. But as her stomach had grown and she’d begun picturing her future as a mother, Julia discovered a secret that upended her life.

Lying in the hospital bed, now finding herself unable to take her eyes off her newborn as he was cleaned and swathed by nurses, she focused on what she’d trained herself to think during her pregnancy whenever she felt the jab of a small foot or glanced down to see her abdomen rippling: He doesn’t belong to me, he doesn’t belong to me. Julia had chosen a couple to adopt the baby, and the wife was there—she cut the cord. Watching the adoptive mother trail out of the room behind the nurse and the baby in his crib, Julia silently repeated another mantra: I’m not what’s best for him, I’m not what’s best for him.

Julia was not physically or mentally ill, nor was she poor or very young, unable to make a living, or alone in the world. At the time she gave birth, she was, in fact, a 30-year-old lawyer who’d been thrilled when she conceived the first time she and her husband tried. Yet eight months later, she was intoning to herself, The baby doesn’t belong to me; I’m not what’s best for him.

Read the whole thing.  Not exactly a feel-good piece, and the adoption doesn't seem like a happy ending in the circumstances. I came away from reading it more than a little depressed, which probably wasn't the author's intent.  What about you?