Category: News

Action Alert, Legislation, News

Action Alert: Idaho SB 1320 – Do Not Pass!

March 9, 2022

If you are reading this, it’s time to contact the Idaho House to oppose discriminatory SB1320, which would fail to restore access to any of thehttps://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2022/legislation/S1320/ estimated 59,685 adult adoptees of Idaho! SB1320, like the failed HB59 last session, is prospective (only for future adoptions). It also allows unacceptable restrictions (such as birth parent redactions). Help us say no in Idaho to SB1320, and appeal for clean adoption reform!

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Legislation, News

Vermont Update: (1) Bastard Nation Joins New England Adoptee Rights Coalition; (2) Last House Judiciary hearing on HB 629

March 8, 2022

Bastard Nation is happy to announce that we have joined the New England Adoptee Rights Coalition (NEAR) as a core member. Other  core members  are  the  Vermont Adoptee Rights Working Group and Adoptee Rights Law Center…Tomorrow, (March 9, 2022) the Vermont House Judiciary Committee will hold probably its last hearing on HB629 and a vote should be taken.

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Vermont HB629: Bastard Nation Testimony in Opposition, February 16, 2022 REVISED

February 17, 2022

Bastard Nation and its members oppose HB629 as written due to its discriminatory treatment of Vermont-born adoptees. While the bill does away with its date-based “permission slip” (birthparent consent for release) it retrains the substance of that restriction by allowing birthparents to veto the release of the document. The bill, therefore, does not restore the right of Vermont adoptees to obtain their own birth certificates without restriction or condition. The bill, in fact, codifies favors for some over inclusive rights for all. It maintains the current sealed and secret adoption system established 75 years ago by the Vermont legislature at a time when adoption and adoptees were considered shameful—or at best, something to not be discussed in public.

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Action Alert, News

Vermont H629: Bastard Nation letter to House Judiciary. Let adoptees speak! #NoHearingsAboutUsWithoutUs

February 12, 2022

I urge the committee to re-think its hearing process and to hold at least one more hearing for the real experts to speak: adopted people.  Limiting adoptees to submitted testimony not only denies the objects of H629 critical face-to-face communication with the committee, but it also invalidates our lived experience. It trivializes our rights.  It silences adoptees and makes us invisible to the public and legislative eye. Mostly, it sends a bad message that the adopted people of Vermont don’t count.  Let us speak!

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Action Alert, News

Vermont H629: Emergency Action Alert and Bastard Nation testimony or #NoHearingsAboutUsWithoutUs

February 11, 2022

This week the Vermont House Judiciary Committee held two hearings on HB629.  These hearings, according to an email l received today from a  committee staffer, were not real hearings but information-gathering sessions featuring adoption  “experts.” These experts were limited to adoption attorneys and adoptacrats. (Adoption agency liability looms large in their imagination). The chair of the committee apparently does not view The Adopted as experts on our own lives and the abrogation of our own rights and barred all adoptees from giving oral testimony.  As one astute activist tweeted today:   If there are no adoptees speaking, there are no experts…Action Alert: NEED HELP ASAP with VT legislation. If you have the spoons and time today, would you please send a SHORT email to the VT House Judiciary Committee demanding they give a seat at the table to an actual adoptee (ME) to testify regarding proposed bill H629 (information follows)

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Legislation, News

Wisconsin: Bastard Nation Testimony in Support of AB502 in Assb. Committee on Children and Families, Jan 26, 2022

January 27, 2022

Current Wisconsin law permits a small number of adopted adults to obtain their OBCs upon request—subject to a restrictive process that forces them to navigate a cumbersome, difficult, infantalizing, and insulting gauntlet of conditions, arbitrary procedures, and naysayers, The state, thus, permits favor and privilege for the few, while it continues its Draconian discriminatory policy against the remaining vast majority.

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Legislation, News

Welcome to Legislation 2022 Hell!

January 17, 2022

The Bastard Nation Legislation 2022 page is now up. The political outlook hasn’t changed much from 2021. Granted, Connecticut did free up its OBCs and Massachusetts continued to move forward on its lumbering road to victory, but other than that, 2021 was a disappointing, frustrating, dreary year. Arizona went weird, Maryland zilched, and deformers continued to stumble their baby booties through their own muck. Safe Haven Baby Box bills and Baby Boxes continued to flare up like herpes under the banner of “women demand anonymity,” the feel-good alternative for politicians who cringe over “adoptees demand rights.” Even more dismal, legislatures, blaming Covid, made discovering how to submit written testimony or to present remote or in-person an endurance test.

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Adoptee Deportation: An American Injustice

November 12, 2021

Unfortunately, many adoptive parents did not research or verify citizenship status at the time of adoption or follow through on the citizenship process. Some say they were unaware of naturalization requirements and believed citizenship was automatic upon adoption finalization. Some claim to have been misled about citizenship procedures by their adoption agencies, courts, lawyers, or federal immigration authorities. Some believed that it was up to the adoptee, at the age of majority, to choose their citizenship status. In some cases, adoptive parents disrupted the adoption, and either “rehomed” the children they brought to the US or turned them over to the state foster care system where they lingered with no legal closure.

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We Lost Another One. In Memoriam: Addie Recoy (1965-2021)

November 7, 2021

Addie Recoy, longtime adoptee rights activist and Bastard National, passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer, She celebrated her 56th birthday two weeks ago. Addie didn’t like attention and didn’t want the seriousness of her illness made public. Only a handful of very close friends knew, about her condition, and her passing has been a shock to us all. I don’t know if an obituary will be published, (if it is, I will add it)  but friends and colleagues are posting memories and condolences throughout social media. You can read some of their tributes on her Facebook page.

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