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New York’s Adoptee Rights Amended Bill Disaster TAKE TWO

When you tell man who wrote a bill that he doesn’t know how to write a bill, you issue a challenge. When you insult him and he obviously picked up on that, he comes back at you with the bill he wrote to prove the point. And so, due to that meeting held by UI, our formally beautiful CLEAN NY OBC Adoptee rights bill with a lovely and simple contact preference, has been amended to a version of the 2104 disaster. This is what happens when you throw down the gauntlet. So yeah, the HORRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD BILL has come back. A2901 is now A2901A


7 Things Search and Reunion Taught Me About My Adopted Mom

By Laura Marie Scoggins When I received my original birth certificate from Ohio, one of the first things I did was show it to my adopted mom. We ended up having one of the best conversations about my adoption that we’ve ever had in my entire life. It was a healing conversation. It was like the whole thing coming full circle. The conversation made me realize a few things. 1….


Adoptee Access to Birth Certificates Protects Their Parents’ Privacy

By Mirah Riben As the nation watches the Indiana battle between religious freedom and discrimination against same sex couples, there is another, little known civil rights battle playing out in the Hoosier state (and elsewhere in the U.S.): Adopted citizens are fighting for equality. Adoptees’ right to access their own original birth certificates is being pitted against the alleged rights of their mothers. However, granting adopted citizens equal access will,…


The Truth about Troy Dunn “The Locator”

The arrangement Search Quest America made as Troy’s third party search provider started in 2008 and ended in early 2014. According to Troy, he has not charged anyone for doing a search since 2002 however he did receive compensation from Search Quest America as his third party search provider. This arrangement ended after the website traffic leads were diverted to his “Troy Alert” app and the requests coming in through the TroyTheLocator.com website dwindled.


Kate Mulgrew Comes Out as a Birthmother

I have to say quite clearly; Birthmother and actress Kate Mulgrew’s new memoir “Born with Teeth” is NOT an adoption book. It’s really a memoir of an actress who is a birthmother. The adoption story part of it is very true to the experience and very real, very raw and one will find themselves totally “getting it”. There just isn’t nearly as much “adoption” as one might think based on the press coverage. Like she really goes into way more and, in some ways much deeper and better, with the interviews. Granted she does write about the relinquishment, but after that, until the VERY end, it’s more of an undercurrent of sorts that doesn’t really get addressed all that much, but referred to in passing. If you are looking for birthmother validation, then you might be disappointed.


An Adoption Reunion Update

I felt 100 time “lighter” immediately. I actually DO feel likeit’s over. We have managed to break through the hold and restrictions that adoption has tried to put on our mother son relationship and it can’t do any more damage, Adoption, as a real threat to me and my son, is done. It’s over. It cannot hurt us anymore. The adoption industry might have tried and maybe it’s not the way I wish it had been, but that just doesn’t matter anymore because we are OK. Our connection is still there and we value it and it works.


Bringing Camden Home Update- at One Year, On His Birthday

The three judges, two women, one man, sit behind what looks to be a cherry and oak huge bench. This bench crosses the whole length of the room, separating us and the lawyers, from the judges, from justice. I really just want to cross that divide and just be able to sit with these folks, who I see as just human beings, and tell them what has been going on in this little boy’s life. I want to plead with them to please do the right thing and make this family whole again. But the “process” means briefs and files and wait times and others who posture and dance, more hurry up to deadlines, and then wait wait wait, more wasted time, lost forever, wasted by this unethical adoption agency, in this baby’s life.


The Trauma of Mothers Who Have Lost Children to Adoption

By Mirah Riben In a public hearing before the Assembly Institutions, Health and Welfare Committee on Adoption, December 9, 1981, in Trenton, New Jersey, attorney Harold Cassidy made the following impassioned plea: There is a need for us in society to learn to know the women who have come to call themselves ‘birth-mothers.’ They are women who know that a child is part of his mother forever… They know the…


Ohio Opens Sealed Adoption Records

By Laura Marie Scoggins Today is Independence Day for Ohio adoptees. Today is the day that 400,000 Ohio adoptees from the closed records adoption era are finally allowed legal access to their original birth certificate. Records for adoptions before 1964 and after September 1996 were not sealed, but for those of us adopted during the years in between our records were. Today we finally have access to those records. I…


Sexism within the OBC Adoption Records Issue

When a man fathers a child and chooses, for whatever reason, to ignore the existence of that child, do we respect his wishes overall and grant him his right to his anonymity? No.. so why do mothers receive this “protection” ? Why are we ONLY concerned with the mothers? If this fear was legitimate, then wouldn’t it be fair and expected to extend that concerned to the father’s as well? Should not all people be protected, then, from long lost relatives that might infringe upon their lives and seek out relationships with them?


So You Have Had a Run in with Those Anti-Adoption People

The simple fact is that these “negative” feelings about adoption DO exist and are VERY REAL. And while I understand that society and the media and the adoption professionals have not prepared you for this, if you are choosing to enter into the world of adoption, you actually don’t get to pick and choose a version of reality that you like best. Again, you can choose not to listen and hear them, but it’s all still here. We are not making this stuff up.


Living With Adoption’s Dichotomies and Myths

By Mirah Riben “ “Adoption loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.” The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE Imagine sharing your feelings of missing your deceased father (or brother) and hearing: “Be glad you still have your mother (or sister)” as if your loved ones are interchangeable. Such a response would be off target, dismissive, and…


When the Adoption Experts are Wrong

So what I read is a educated therapist adoption professional who SHOULD have access to all the known research of birthmother grief and is seemingly choosing to ignore it instead repeating the propaganda laden ideals of how we WANT adoption to be. The studies clearly state that our grief intensifies over time. There is no peace. A birthmother’s grief is continuous, disenfranchised and complicated. An “article” like this only serves to lead both adoptive parents and any birthmothers up to fail. This supposed two year window sets a stage where people are going to expect that grief will lessen after two years which is a direct contradiction of the research. Now granted there is limited research on birthmother grief, but that gives even more reasoning to expect that Ms. Mantell should be familiar with the facts she speaks of.


My Not So Perfect Life

By Cassi Did you know my family is crazy? We’re dysfunctional. We make huge mistakes. We can be irritating and annoying. And we are so far from perfect or anything close to it. And yet, as one who was literally saved from becoming yet another “unplanned pregnancy” lost to adoption, I am so thankful for my family, all the good AND all the bad. We had another big family wedding…