Bastard Nation Reading Room

The Bastard Chronicles: 20 Years of Adoptee Equality Activism in the US and the Birth of Bastard Nation

Compiled and edited by Marla L. Paul

Bastard Nation is proud to announce the publication of The Bastard Chronicles: 20 Years of Adoptee Equality Activism in the U.S.and the Birth of a Bastard Nation. Compiled and edited by Marla Paul, it is a primer for adoptee equality. It features a diverse collection of Bastard theory, and practice, Bastard and Bastard Nation history, legislative and political action, personal stories, art, and literature. It is the public face of Class Bastard written by Bastard Nationals and those we have influenced. Available in print at the Bastard Boutique and Amazon and on Kindle.

Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58

By E. Wayne Carp

The passage of Measure 58 in Oregon in 1998 was a milestone in adoption reform. For the first time in U.S. history, a grassroots initiative restored the legal right of adopted adults to request and receive their original birth certificates. Within a day after the law went into effect, nearly 2,400 adoptees had applied for these previously sealed records, elevating their right to know over a birth mother’s right to privacy.

E. Wayne Carp, a nationally respected authority on adoption history, now reveals the efforts of the radical adoptee rights organization Bastard Nation to pass this milestone initiative. He has written an intimate history of a passionately proposed and opposed initiative that has the potential to revolutionize the adoption reform movement nationwide.

Carp follows the campaign from its inception through the hard-fought signature drives of proponents Helen Hill and Shea Grimm to the electoral campaign and ensuing court battles. The opposition was formidable: government officials, adoption agencies, news media, the ACLU, religious organizations, and ad-hoc citizen political groups. Using correspondence and his own candid interviews with all the key players, Carp shows how both sides mobilized their constituencies and formed their strategies. In describing challenges to Measure 58’s constitutionality, Carp reveals legal arguments that were never publicized by the Oregon media and remained unknown to the American public until now—issues centering on privacy rights that are crucial to understanding both sides of the controversy and the hazards of initiative politics.

As Carp shows, Measure 58 was important because it framed the issue of adoption reform in terms of civil rights and equal protection of the law rather than in terms of psychological needs or medical necessity. The resulting law now gives adult adoptees access to birth certificates but it also allows birth mothers to indicate whether or not they wish to be contacted. Carp not only chronicles a milestone initiative and a model piece of legislation for other states to emulate, he also proposes a sensible way to cut the Gordian Knot that bedevils adoption reform today.

 

Vintage Bastardy

This is an archive of the original Bastard Nation website created in 1996. It includes archives of BN materials up until 2007, much of which is no longer available on the new BN website. You never know what you will find there.

 

Books for the Well-Read Bastard

Activism

Autobiography, Biography, Memoir

Non-Fiction

Fiction

* Classics found in many editions

Updated March 8, 2022

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Comments 4

  • Please see the book on Kindle, “Be Longing” by S J Wimmer

    https://www.amazon.de/SJ-Wimmer/e/B01MXR94TO?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

    The founder of AdoptedLife

  • The Non-Fiction section lists the author of “The Way We Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap” as Stephanie Koonz. The correct spelling of the author’s surname is Coontz.

    https://www.stephaniecoontz.com/books

    • Fixed! Thanks. My bad, especially since I know better!

      • Great resource. Thank you. Also, The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Verrier.

        I wish there were more books, memoirs, et cetera about the general issue of military presence in other countries and its negative historical consequences (like my place of birth in the Philippines), that contribute to many impregnated young females and abandoned children. I see plenty more media with regard to this from Korea.

        Why this isn’t discussed or why there is so little literature & media reporting on this is a mystery to me; what with all the unsafe abortions, orphans, child & sex trafficking, sex tourism, et cetera that’s tied up in such wanton licentiousness. There doesn’t seem to be any accountability, be it ethically or economically, on the parts of occupying countries whose presence have left thousands upon thousands of distraught lives in their wake.

        Go figure…

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