Mother's Day Tinged with Sadness

Mother's Day tinged with sadness for birthmoms
By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press Writer
http://license. icopyright. net/user/ viewFreeUse. act?fuid= MzMxNDA3Ng= =>

At church each Mother's Day, Eileen McQuade used to watch forlornly as flowers were handed out to beaming women surrounded by their loving children. Though she was raising two daughters, her special day was filled with grief and shame.

In 1966, when she was an 18-year-old college freshman, she gave up her firstborn for adoption.

"I didn't feel like I should take the flower because I didn't feel I deserved it," said McQuade, who splits her time between Delray Beach, Fla., and South Windsor, Conn.

Like McQuade, many birthmothers can't shake their anguish and guilt when Mother's Day rolls around each May, so they've taken on the Saturday before the holiday as their own — Birth Mother's Day. The day was established by a group of Seattle birthmothers in 1990 and has grown over the years to include candle lightings, poetry readings and other events around the country.

"The old myth about adoption was that birthmothers would go and have their children and forget it ever happened and the adoptees wouldn't care where they came from," said the 62-year-old McQuade, who was reunited with her daughter 12 years ago. "We know that it doesn't really happen that way. We have a much better sense of it now. Birth Mother's Day is a healing for many."

In this photo taken on April 16, 2009, Eileen McQuade, president of the American Adoption Congress poses in her home in Delray Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

With an estimated 6 million adoptees in the United States alone and a trend toward more open adoptions, birthmothers have never been more out of the closet, forming support groups and sharing resources as they struggle with sadness and a sense that society has left them in the shadows.

Many birthmothers relinquished newborns in the '50s, '60s and '70s, when closed adoptions that sealed records and left them with little control seemed the only choice. Now, birthmothers looking to reconnect with their children are finding that state laws aren't making it easy.

Forty-two states require a court order to open original birth certificates that often list the names of birthmothers. Eight states allow adult adoptees to have copies of original birth certificates.


In this photo taken on April 21, 2009, Holly Spann poses for a photo in Nashville, Tenn., with her file of papers that deal with her search to find the daughter she gave up for adoption in 1971. She began her search in 1980 and located her daughter in 1995. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)


When Holly Spann, 55, of Nashville, Tenn., went looking for the daughter she gave birth to in 1971, she had no clues to point her in the right direction.

"I didn't have a piece of paper, a court document, anything to prove I had had a baby except stretch marks and the memories," she said.

Spann got pregnant at 17. She left her small town in Tennessee to live with relatives in Alabama while waiting to give birth, grieving for years over the closed adoption. Celebrating Birth Mother's Day is her way of acknowledging the past.

"Back then, birthmothers were basically told you'll go on with your lives just like it never happened," she said. "The fact that you gave a child up for adoption was really never to be spoken about again."

She eventually found her child. They spoke once on the phone but have never met.

"For me that was the closure I needed," Spann said. "She was so close to her parents that I could tell she didn't want them to think she needed anybody else."

The journey of "coming out" as a birthmother is a painful one, she said, but the Internet has done wonders to ease the way for both adoptees and birthmothers looking to access documents or just meet others for support.


In this photo taken on April 24, 2009, Nicole Strickland, birth mother, standing rear, Angee Nix, adoptive mother, and her adopted son Charlie Nix pose for a photo at Cleveland Park in Spartanburg, SC. (AP Photo/ Patrick Collard

Nicole "Coley" Strickland of Boiling Springs, S.C., found fellow birthmother Lani Dowling in Atlanta, Ga., that way after blindly searching for support soon after giving birth to a boy in 2001 and placing him with a couple she met at the restaurant where she was a waitress. Two years later, Strickland and Dowling founded Birthmombuds.com, which has 900 registered users around the country.

The two send out care packages to new birthmothers, pair up buddies living close to each other and host regular chats for birthmoms online. They also coordinate Birth Mother's Day events every year.

While details for this year's events are still firming up, gatherings are planned in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Nashville and areas of Oregon, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Ohio, among other states.

For birthmoms who don't live near one of the gatherings or don't feel comfortable in a group setting, Strickland, 32, suggests they make Mother's Day a little easier by writing something about — or for — their relinquished children, lighting a candle, planting a tree or donating a book to a library in their honor.

"It really does give us a time to bond with other birthmoms," said Strickland, who has regular visits with her now 7-year-old as part of an open adoption. "We feel a lot of the same things at the same time. We need to be there for each other."

THE ART STAR AND SUDANESE TWINS
REVIEW: Adoption and artist's ego filmed
Liz Braun
Sun Media
April 24, 2009

Angelina Jolie and Madonna have adopted African babies. Have they started a trend?

That's just one of the ideas investigated in The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, a terrific new documentary about performance artist Vanessa Beecroft and the African infants she wanted to call her own. As is so often the case with documentary films, The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins started off as one thing and evolved into quite another.

New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly has an ongoing interest in international adoption and has already made one film about the subject. When she met performance artist Vanessa Beecroft by chance in South Sudan a few years ago, the women talked about the local twins Beecroft was thinking about adopting. Brettkelly asked if she could film Beecroft's adoption journey, not realizing that she'd wind up with a documentary that's just as much about contemporary art, extreme culture clash, Western perceptions of Third World countries and notions of family. It's simultaneously biography, art history and political commentary, and it's entirely engaging.

Over 16 months, The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins follows Vanessa Beecroft in her strange, determined quest to adopt twins she has encountered in the Sudan. The film opens with a look at VB61, Vanessa Beecroft's performance piece at the 52nd Venice Biennale -- art involving 30 Sudanese women pretending to be dead, and some red paint. It's an art/politics combo.

The action then goes back to 15 months earlier, with Beecroft in Africa talking about the children she wants to adopt. Here she is breastfeeding the twins who interest her and being photographed doing so; Beecroft had arrived in Africa while still nursing one of her own children, so she could nourish the starving twins. And get her picture taken while she did. There's a juxtaposition of maternal interest and cold commerce throughout the film that is very unsettling.

The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins captures Beecroft as she encounters various obstacles in her adoption attempts -- for example, the children, Madit and Mongor Akot, turn out to still have a father. Beecroft's efforts involve various local dignitaries and religious leaders and international lawyers, but it's interesting that she doesn't tell her own husband about her plans.

In the course of showing her single-minded pursuit of the kids, the movie introduces interviews with Beecroft's mother and father, with art experts and with Beecroft's own husband, social anthropologist Greg Durkin. The picture of Beecroft that slowly comes together is one of ruthless ego and bizarre sentiment. There are a handful of moments in the movie that cut painfully close to the heart of Beecroft's character -- a chat about a childhood friend she tormented for being stupid and ugly, for example, the way she hisses at her assistant, or her seeming indifference to the people around her. In one memorable scene, Beecroft is interrupted during a photo shoot by women in the village who object, strenuously, to the babies being naked in the church. She barricades the door against the women -- in their village, in their church, with their orphans.

The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins is a worrisome document about the first world view of Third World countries, but what it says about contemporary art gives the movie a rich vein of humour. (Or as Damien Hirst said about 20 years ago, "I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it.") "My husband says, 'You're so superficial,'" Beecroft admits in the movie; tough not to agree with him.

Media Access to Family Courts

© Photographer: Noonie | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Media access to family courts will improve clarity, says judge

• Warning that new rules may delay hearings
• Lawyers say reporting will still be restricted

Afua Hirsch, legal affairs correspondent
The Guardian,
Monday 27 April 2009

Allowing the media to report legal cases involving adoption, care
proceedings and divorce will transform the long-established culture of
privacy in the family courts, according to the top family judge in
England and Wales.

There has been growing criticism that rules coming into force today
that allow the press access to family hearings are restrictive and
give judges too much power to decide what the media may publish.

But Sir Mark Potter, president of the family division of the high
court, said the changes would make the family courts more transparent.
"I would certainly expect [a tendency towards openness]," Potter said.
"I do not doubt that there will be more reports than there have been."

The press has been prevented from reporting proceedings in family
courts to protect the identity of those involved, often children. The
changes come amid unprecedented public interest in care proceedings,
after the case of Baby P last year prompted concern about the stage at
which children are being taken into care and the role of local
authorities.

But Potter warned that although the new rules end the blanket
prohibition on reporting family law cases in the county court and high
court, in many instances details would remain confidential.

"What can be reported as to the detail of such proceedings will vary
from case to case according to the facts and the relevant statutory
provisions," he said.

The continuing power of judges to impose reporting restrictions is
supported by many lawyers, who say openness must not compromise the
necessary anonymity of vulnerable children involved in sensitive
proceedings.

"It is clearly important that the public have
greater information surrounding what goes on within the family justice
system. But that should not be at the expense of a child's right to
privacy."
* The whole "privacy" issue is to supposedly protect the vulnerable child, but many times that argument is used to protect the "sealed"
actions of adoption attorneys/agencies and their clients. The
more openness, transparency, and accountability THE BETTER. Who says the children
want privacy? They would rather have a strong checks & balance system that truly protects them and their "best interest."Potter said that the government had not gone far enough in changing
the rules. Leaving the law unreformed could prove confusing to the
media and the public. "The government has been unable to find
parliamentary time for the general statutory overhaul required.
Instead, it will fall to the judges to decide to what extent they
should exercise their discretion to relax disclosure or reporting
restrictions if sought by the media or one of the parties," he said.
"[This] will do little to alleviate the opportunities for further
confusion."

Satchwell warned that the decision to leave the law in place would
"nullify the entire purpose of the past several years' discussions and
the government's stated aim of openness and accountability".

Potter echoed sentiments of members of the legal profession in warning
that opening up the courts to the media will add to mounting pressures
on resources, and "heavily overworked" family law judges' time.

Questions have also been raised as to how debates about whether the
press should be allowed to attend individual cases could delay the
start of proceedings.

Lucy Theis, the chair of the Family Law Bar Association, said: "This
might impact on an already pressed system. Someone coming in on a
Monday morning to start a case about deeply personal things would then
have to enter into a debate about whether the press should be allowed
in."

Would-be Parents

Would-be parents turn to foster kids as adoption costs rise
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

The recession has pushed the high cost of private adoptions out of
reach for many prospective parents, prompting more of them to look
into adopting hard-to-place foster children.
At Adoption-Link in Oak Park, Ill., a lot of people call to inquire
about private adoptions, but when told the fees, they say, "Oh my
goodness, I can't afford that," says director Margaret Fleming. She
refers them to foster care.

Private adoptions can cost $20,000 or more because of agency, travel
and birth-mother expenses. Many parents want healthy newborns, so
demand typically exceeds supply. Foster-care adoptions can cost
nothing because states pick up the tab. Many of the 129,000 foster
kids available for adoption are older — median age is 8 — and are more
likely to have emotional or physical problems.

Applications for private adoptions are slowing, but those for foster
care are holding steady or increasing, according to interviews with
state officials and more than a dozen large adoption agencies.

"The pendulum is swinging," says Sharen Ford, of Colorado's Department
of Human Services. She sees two primary reasons: cost and the decline
in the number of foreign-born orphans available since several
governments changed their adoption policies. Guatemala and Vietnam
have stopped taking new U.S. applications; Russia and China have
tightened eligibility.

In November, Ford says, an adoption fair in Colorado Springs drew
1,300 people, and 260 decided to adopt foster children. Ford says many
were surprised to learn that the adoptions cost nothing and that most
of the kids get state health insurance and monthly subsidies. She says
Colorado's foster-child adoptions are on pace to increase 8% this
year.

In Michigan, the number of families given new licenses to become
foster parents, often the first step toward adoption, increased from
65 in November to 122 in January, says Edward Woods of the Michigan
Department of Human Services.

"Our adoption inquiry rate is as high as it's ever been," says Dixie
Davis, president of The Adoption Exchange, a national organization.
She says it got 3,284 inquiries in March, up 9% from a year ago.

There are no current national figures on adoption of foster children.
In 2007, the most recent year for which government figures are
available, there were 51,000 adoptions of foster children, a number
largely unchanged since 2002. There are about 80,000 private adoptions
each year, the National Council for Adoption says.

Agencies report increased interest in foster kids:

• Arizona Adoption & Foster Care, a private agency in Mason, Ariz.,
has 79 families approved and waiting to adopt from foster care, up
from 49 a year ago. Its number of such adoptions doubled last year to
30, and so far this year it has handled 19, director Marcia Reck says.

• Adoptions Together in Silver Spring, Md., is getting 50 inquiries a
month, up from 40 a month less than a year ago.

• At Bethany Christian Services in Grand Rapids, Mich., adoptions from
foster care rose from 402 in 2007 to 459 last year. Kinship Center, a
private agency in Salinas, Calif., has been getting 20% more inquiries
for foster care in the past six months, executive vice president Carol
Bishop says.

Parents who adopt foster kids say the subsidies, which can range from
$300 to $1,000, are helpful, but what motivates them is their desire
to give children a home.

"I knew there was a real need," says Shauna Brown, who adopted two
sisters, now 6 and 9, from foster care last year. In Texas, Terra
Coyle, 50, says she felt drawn to picture ads of needy foster kids.
Last year, she and her husband adopted two girls, each of whom gets a
$400 monthly subsidy. She views the money as "icing on the cake." She
says adoption is "the best thing I've ever done." Her 8-year-old told
her, "I just love being part of this family."

Clarifying Rules for Adoptions

Clarifying rules for adoptions

By: Emily Bregel
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2009/apr/27/clarifying-rules-adoptions/?local

At first, the idea of embryo adoption sounded more like science
fiction than reality to Wendi Parker.

“It kind of seemed like the Twilight Zone at the time, that someone
would put somebody else’s baby inside of me. That actually seemed too
bizarre for words,” said Mrs. Parker, 36, a Harrison resident who
first heard about embryo adoption in 2006.

But today Mrs. Parker is 25 weeks pregnant with another couple’s
embryo that was fertilized years ago in a laboratory dish then frozen
in cryopreservation storage.

That embryo was one of many donated to the Parkers by an Ohio couple
who had extras left over after completing their own in vitro
fertilization. The Parkers long had considered traditional adoption
after their first biological child was born and Mr. Parker’s
subsequent vasectomy. Embryo adoption gave her a second chance at
pregnancy while saving an embryo, she said.

“This child is going to get to live and have a life and would not
normally have had this opportunity,” she said. “I feel like the Lord
gave me a second chance to be a mom.”

The Parkers’ adoption was a simple agreement between two families and
a doctor, but Tennessee and Georgia lawmakers are proffering
legislation that would take embryo transfers out of the realm of
property law and into the realm of adoption law.

This month, the nation’s first embryo adoption bill passed the Georgia
Legislature and now is awaiting consideration by Gov. Sonny Perdue.
The bill, dubbed the “Option for Adoption Act,” would be the first to
offer residents the option of getting court approval for their embryo
adoption.

A bill in the Tennessee General Assembly would give added legal
adoption protection to adoptive parents of embryos, but it would not
require court approval to officially recognize the embryo exchange as
an adoption, said the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Diane Black, R-
Gallatin.

Many fertility experts, bioethicists, religious groups and adoptive
parents say connecting embryo donation to an adoption model raises
ethical and political issues, including the lightning-rod question of
whether embryos are children.

“The ideological point is if you talk about adopting an embryo, you
are playing to the notion that just like we adopt children, we adopt
embryos. It’s sort of a back door to the embryo-is-a-person argument,”
said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the
University of Pennsylvania.

VENTURING INTO EMBRYO ADOPTIONS

In the United States, about 4,000 embryo transfers have taken place
since the 1980s, according to estimates from the National Embryo
Donation Center in Knoxville. The estimate includes embryo donations
coordinated with little fanfare directly through fertility clinics as
well as “adoption model” exchanges carried out more recently through
adoption agencies that have extended their reach into the realm of
embryos, conducting home visits and counseling parents on their
decision, said researcher Dr. Reginald Finger with the National Embryo
Donation Center.

Though couples who have undergone in vitro fertilization have opted to
donate their embryos to other infertile couples since the 1980s, the
term “embryo adoption” became widely publicized in 1997 with the
launch of the Snowflakes program, which matches embryos with adoptive
parents.


Staff Photo by Tim Barber Matt Parker, left, Hannah Parker, 6, and
Wendi Parker sit at their kitchen table in Harrison, Tenn. The Parkers
are expecting a new baby, but this time is will come from a frozen
embryo.

Bethany Christian Services of Greater Chattanooga, an adoption and
family services agency, began connecting couples who wish to transfer
embryos in 2006, said Peggy Lowe, director.

The Tennessee Reproductive Medicine fertility clinic in Chattanooga
has partnered with Bethany to facilitate embryo transfers. Bethany
arranges home visits for the “adoptive” couple to ensure a good home
for the child.

The exchange of embryos is treated like a traditional adoption,
despite being handled technically under property law in the state of
Tennessee, said Dr. Rink Murray, reproductive endocrinologist with
TRM.

Donating embryos is “not an easy thing to do,” Dr. Murray said. “It is
giving up a potential child to a stranger. It’s nice to have adoption-
level protections” through Bethany.

Most embryo adoptions facilitated by fertility clinics don’t involve a
home study and may not involve as much communication between the
couples involved, he said.

IMPLICATIONS OF state BILLs

A contract required by the Tennessee bill would give the embryo
exchange the same legal protections as a traditional court-approved
adoption, Sen. Black said.

“We want to tie it into the adoption process so there’s consistency
all the way across the state,” she said, adding that the bill will not
be addressed in this legislative session to allow time to gather
feedback from a number of stakeholders this summer.

The Georgia bill, too, changes little about the outcome or procedure
of embryo adoption, which now by contract requires embryo-donating
parents to relinquish any legal rights to them.

But the “extra safeguard” of court-approved adoption officially brings
the language and legal protections of adoption law.

To classify the exchange of embryos as an adoption has implications
for the debates on abortion and stem-cell research as well as the
morality of creating excess embryos through the in vitro fertilization
process, Dr. Murray said.

“Moving embryos out of property law into adoption law is a very subtle
way of getting people to regard these as more like children,” Dr.
Murray said.

That is the implication, admitted one of the Georgia bill’s sponsors,
though he emphasized the bill does not define an embryo as a human.

“I make no bones about the fact that I am pro-life, but this bill does
not get into the issue of pro-life or pro-choice. It’s pro-adoption,”
said State Rep. James Mills, R-Gainesville.

At the same time, he acknowledged that “the strong implication is, you
don’t adopt tables and chairs. You adopt a living human being.”

Dare to Forgive

Excerpt from Dare to Forgive
By Dr. Ned Hallowell
Chapter 3: Forgiveness Sets You Free

To understand forgiveness, you must first understand what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not running away. Forgiving someone does not mean that you condone what the person has done, nor does it mean that you invite them to do it again. It doesn't mean that you forget the offense, nor does it mean that by forgiving you tacitly invite bad things to happen again. It doesn't mean that you won't defend yourself.

So what does it mean? Forgiveness is one of those words that we assume we can define, but when asked we stumble. Before you read on, try it yourself. How would you define forgiveness?
The dictionary can help. My American Heritage College Dictionary defines "forgive" as, "To renounce anger or resentment against." It goes back to a Greek root word that means "to set free," as in freeing a slave. Ironically, when we forgive, the slave we free is ourselves. We free ourselves from being slaves to our own hatred.

According to the dictionary definition I just cited, in order to forgive we must renounce resentment or anger. We do not have to forget, ignore or condone anyone or anything. We just have to renounce our anger and resentment. Even doing that may seem impossible, especially if whom or what we are trying to forgive has hurt us deeply. How do you forgive murder, child abuse or any other horrible offense? How is anyone supposed to renounce anger and resentment in cases like those? How do you stop feeling what you are feeling, or at least how do you renounce what you are feeling?

This distinction is crucial, not just a nicety of language. One of the chief reasons that people don't try harder to forgive or be forgiven is because they think it is impossible. They think that forgiving means ceasing to feel anger, hurt or the desire for revenge. How can you forgive someone who has murdered your friend, ruined your career, taken away your spouse or hurt one of your children? If forgiveness means that you cease to feel any anger or resentment toward that person, then for most of us forgiveness is indeed impossible—if not immoral—when the injuries are severe.

Forgiveness has therefore taken on a daft quality for many people, or at least a quaintness, as if forgiveness were a sweet old lady—a sweet old idea, one to which we pay our respects but think of as fragile and weak, unable to help us do the heavy lifting of everyday life. For the heavy lifting we believe we need strong young men—ideas that pack a punch, like vengeance, retribution and that great masquerader, justice.

But that is wrong. Forgiveness is much stronger, not to mention much wiser, than vengeance or retribution, and it begets the best kind of justice. Forgiveness is not a sweet old lady but a strong, seasoned veteran of many wars. Forgiveness bears a greater burden than vengeance ever could. Vengeance lets hatred rule you. Forgiveness overrules hatred. Forgiveness is not only stronger; it is much more clever and wise than vengeance or retribution. Forgiveness takes intelligence, discipline, imagination and persistence, as well as a special psychological strength, something athletes call mental toughness and warriors call courage.

If you look back at the definition of forgiveness, you can see why so much more is required of a person to forgive than to take revenge. When you forgive, you renounce anger and resentment. You give up your claim to anger and resentment. Above all, you cease to live under their rule. You are consciously, deliberately renouncing your claim to what you probably want more than anything in the world: retribution, vengeance, a chance to get even. Doing this takes immense courage and strength.

But forgiveness does not require that you cease to feel the anger and resentment you so naturally experience. Not at all.

This crucial distinction is what makes forgiveness humanly possible, albeit still strange and difficult.

What does it mean to give up your title to anger and resentment or to refuse to live under their rule? It means that you set yourself free from those feelings. You no longer let those feelings own you; you disown them. When you feel the yoke of hatred start to take you in its grip, you step out. You lift it off. You renounce it. You put on the yoke of love, instead.

When you've been hurt, why on earth would you do this? In order to improve your own life. As Joanna North, a philosopher and renowned expert on forgiveness, put it: "What is annulled in the act of forgiveness is not the crime itself but the distorting effect that this wrong has upon one's relations with the wrongdoer and perhaps with others."

Throughout her writing, North emphasizes how forgiving (or accepting forgiveness) makes people healthier and happier. As she says, "Through forgiveness the pain and hurt caused by the original wrong are released, or at least they are not allowed to mar the whole of one's being for all time"

On the other hand, holding onto your title to anger and resentment, as if it were a precious deed of ownership, is like holding onto your title to a polluted pond.

Now, return to what I asked before: If you know why you want to forgive, then how do you do it? How do you stop feeling what you are feeling? It is often not enough just to want to. How do you stop your anger from ruling you?

The definitions point the way. You do not have to stop feeling what you are feeling. That's impossible. However, you can refuse to act on those feelings and you can refuse to welcome those feelings when they hungrily come to your door, hoping to feed on your fantasies of revenge.

When we forgive, we may continue to feel anger and resentment, just as we may continue to feel anger and resentment at the traffic cop who stopped us. But, if we are wise, we put those feelings aside. We do not let them rule our actions.

Furthermore, we try not to welcome the feelings when they skulk back, looking to be nursed. That means when we think of the person who hurt us, we do not give in for very long to the temptation to dream up scenes of revenge or revel in methods of torture. You can luxuriate in imagined scenes of revenge, you can cuddle and nurse your angry feelings, but after a while you risk nursing those feelings into a monster that ends up destroying you, not your enemy.

Try to think of feelings of anger and resentment as dangerous drugs—useful sometimes in small doses, but highly toxic as regular intake. Try to resist welcoming them into your imagination. They rarely do you good. They often do you serious harm.

When the vengeful feelings creep in, refuse to live under their rule, for your own sake.

Instead, be guided by the principle of love.

This is where forgiveness gets tricky. How can you love, or even like, someone who has hurt you? You naturally feel emotions quite different from love, be they fear, anger, resentment, dislike or even hatred. You cannot control what you feel, any more than you can control the weather.
But you can control what you do with what you feel. You can renounce the rule of anger, resentment and hatred, and subscribe instead to the rule of love. This much you can control. This much you can consciously and deliberately decide to do.

Gradually, as you resist the rule of anger, you can develop empathy for your enemy. There is no one you can't develop something like love for if you know their whole story. I know that sounds like an awful stretch when you are talking about people who have done terrible deeds. In those cases, simply begin by letting the principle of love rule your actions, the principle of love for all humankind, not just love for your friends. Then, gradually try to understand where the evil came from. Try to understand how your enemy, who was once an innocent and loving infant, turned into such a monster. As you understand, your hatred will gradually subside, and in its place something like love will start to grow.

Right alongside, you will grow as well.

*As an adult adoptee, I just wanted to comment on this article. Adoption is the great deceiver. Why? Because it requires the adoptee to disown his/her own reality. The reality of loss (of family, relationships, identity, connection, grief). We are legally transferred into a new identity and family, without regard to our loss of who we were born as. That is primal. And deceptive. Adoption is celebrated, when to the adoptee, we are denied our very core. It throws us immediately into the dysfunctional disowning of our very LIVES. That is why (in my opinion) it is extremely hard for an awakening adoptee to forgive. Because the love and truth we NEED to forgive was pulled up by the roots when we were asked to disown our own reality and fulfill the role we are adopted into.

We have to learn to embrace our whole, intertwined, paralyzed identity ~ breaking through societal expectations and shame-inducing sealed records of our very identities and core selves. Emotions locked in place to survive. Disowning is our way of life. Until we don't know up from down. No roots to hold on to what is real ~ real anything, including love and acceptance of ourselves. Just a facade. Until we have the courage to become real and face the disenfranchised grief that has held us as emotional puppets our entire lives. Not being real.

Forgiveness requires realness & truth. Then and only then can adoptees journey through to genuine forgiveness and love.

My Beautiful Mom

"If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings."
-- Brian Tracy

My Mom has done just that. She worked hard her entire life to give me opportunities she never had. She suffered through a lot in her life. I think she has held on to life (even through years of chronic pain, going through a bone marrow transplant, broken hips and more) to protect me from feeling like an orphan (again) before I could heal enough to better cope. She has taught me by example how to be strong. I love her so much and am so thankful for her love. Lord, please raise her up again and relieve her from distress and pain. Give her hope and peace, strength and mercy. Just like your mercy to us every day. Fill her with it. Thank you for healing. For our love that is understood and giving us second-chances, forgiveness, and time.

Health: Science: ETHICS

Will advances in stem-cell research mean the birth of the biological
single parent?

ANNE MCILROY
April 21, 2009
SCIENCE REPORTER

The latest advances in stem-cell research mean someone could some day
become a biological single parent, the source of both the egg and the
sperm needed to make a baby.

"In theory, a single individual could be both mother and father to a
child. The individual does not even have to be living if there is a
stored sample of their cells," the University of Alberta's Tim
Caulfield and his colleagues write in a paper in the journal Cell Stem
Cell.

Their paper, The Challenge of Regulating Rapidly Changing Science:
Stem Cell Legislation in Canada, documents how the speed and
unpredictability of scientific advances in the stem-cell field pose a
challenge to policy makers.

For example, scientists in a number of countries are now able to turn
adult skin cells into stem cells. Once they have been reprogrammed,
these cells regain the superhero-like powers of embryonic stem cells
and can be turned into many of the specialized cells that make up the
human body, including blood, brain or muscle cells.

But what if some of the reprogrammed stem cells originally taken from
an individual were coaxed into becoming sperm, while others were
transformed into eggs?

It hasn't happened yet, but research suggests it is possible, Dr.
Caulfield says.

Egg and sperm created from stem cells from one person could be used to
create an embryo, which could then be transferred to the womb of the
mom-pop, or in the case of a pop-mom, a surrogate mother.

The result could be something "very strange and dangerous," warns
Shinya Yamanaka, the Japanese stem-cell pioneer who discovered how to
reprogram adult skin cells to stem cells. His breakthrough made
headlines around the world in 2007.

Dr. Yamanaka's work, recognized this year with a prestigious Gairdner
award, offered an alternative to research involving stem cells from
aborted fetuses, which some people find repugnant on moral or
religious grounds.

But it also raised other troubling possibilities about where stem-cell
science could be heading, questions that both scientists and ethicists
are now considering. Should biological single parenthood be allowed if
it proves possible? What are the risks to a child created in this way?
Could skin cells from one child be used to create another son or
daughter? Could someone steal a skin cell from someone famous and have
their baby?

It is a hot topic, Dr. Caulfield says, and an example of how it is
difficult to design legislation that keeps up with the unpredictable
advances in fields such as stem-cell research.

It is unclear, he and his colleagues say, if Canadian legislation
governing reproductive technologies and embryonic stem-cell research
would prohibit making sperm and egg from skin cells.

Canada's legislation bans the genetic altering of sperm or eggs.

Until last month, researchers reprogramming adult cells into stem
cells did so by inserting a number of key genes that orchestrated the
transformation to an embryonic-like state. That's a genetic
alteration.

But now, Canadian scientists have found ways to get rid of any trace
of those genes - which can cause cancer - once they have done their
work. Is that a genetic alteration? Would it be covered by legislation
if a stem cell derived from an adult skin cell was turned into sperm
or egg? It might circumvent the ban, Dr. Caulfield and his colleagues
say.

"It really shows how the approach of rigid rules and rigid legislation
inevitably isn't going to work," Dr. Caulfield says.

Canada has one of the most restrictive laws governing stem cell-
research of any pluralistic society with a wide mix of religious
beliefs - and non-beliefs.

He argues that it is better to have a clearly articulated set of
principles that a regulatory body could interpret as research moves in
new directions.

A child created with egg and sperm derived from one person wouldn't be
a clone - or genetically identical to the parent - because of the
mixing and matching in the chromosomes that takes place when egg and
sperm are formed.

Researchers have made substantial progress in coaxing stem cells to
become sperm or eggs, work that could provide new treatment for
infertility but that also opens the door to biological single
parenthood.

In mammals, the primordial cells that become egg and sperm appear to
be the same. But some researchers argue it would be easier to make an
egg from a man's skin cell then to make sperm from a female skin cell.
That's because cells from a female wouldn't have a Y chromosome, which
may carry genes involved in the production of sperm.

In 2006, researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in
Britain reported that they had transformed human stem cells into what
are called primordial germ cells, which give rise to sperm or eggs. In
mice, sperm derived from stem cells produced live pups.

In China, researchers recently reported that they had generated eggs
from stem cells taken from the ovaries of mice.

always "explaining"...

Even though my blog may sound like it to some, I am not completely "anti-adoption". But I am "anti-business of adoption". I feel like adoption should be reserved for foster children and true orphans who need homes, and not marketed for by agencies whose goal it is to separate mothers/children so they can have available infants for adoption. It should be illegal to advertise for potential "birthmothers". And for money to be exchanged in the process of adoption. It brings corruption. Any time a baby loses it's mother is a life-long trauma for that person. And visa versa. Therefore, adoption should not be a tool to build families. It should be a tool to find homes ONLY for those children who, as a last resort, not a first, needs a home.

Donated Generation

Embryo adoption becoming the rage
By Natalie Lester | Sunday, April 19, 2009

Even though warm spring weather is here, the snowflakes on the
necklace Cara Vest wears will not melt.
"Especially in the summer, people come up to me all the time and say,
'Why are you wearing snowflakes?'" Mrs. Vest said.
She happily explains the silver snowflakes represent her two children,
who were adopted as frozen embryos from another couple who had
"extras" after having children via in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Embryo adoption recently celebrated its 11th birthday. The Vests' 6-
year-old son, Jonah, was the 13th "snowflake baby" to be born.
In just three years — 2004 to 2006 — 988 babies have been born by this
process, says one medical researcher, citing federal data. The total
number born since Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption Program was
founded in November 1997 might conservatively be closer to 3,000, says
Ron Stoddart, executive director of Nightlight Christian Adoptions,
the agency that pioneered the process.
With an estimated 500,000 cyropreserved embryos in storage, there soon
could be a blizzard of babies born through embryo adoption.
Whether it takes off will depend on public awareness and acceptance,
especially among couples who have "extra" embryos, observers say. The
issue of embryonic stem-cell research is also a factor, as most people
currently think "excess" embryos are best donated to laboratories.
In addition, questions remain over whether the transfer of frozen
embryos should be termed an "adoption" or a "donation."
And while some adoption agencies, such as Bethany Christian Services,
embrace embryo adoption, others, including Catholic Charities, do not.
Despite the obstacles, embryo adoption is emerging just as domestic
infant adoption is vanishing and international adoption is becoming
more difficult. Embryo adoption may not be the right choice for
everyone, but it has been a dream come true for hundreds of families.

'I wanted to carry'
As infertility patients in the 1990s, Mrs. Vest and her husband,
Gregg, found themselves frustrated and childless after three IVF
treatments. They reluctantly began exploring traditional adoption, but
still were not satisfied.
"I wanted to carry [a child]," Mrs. Vest said. "I wanted to be
pregnant. I couldn't understand why something like [embryo adoption]
didn't exist."
She heard about embryo adoption when Hannah Strege, the world's first
snowflake baby, was featured on James Dobson's Focus on the Family
radio show. Mrs. Vest ran to the phone
"I dove right in and asked them to send me anything they had," she
said.
The Vests received an application to adopt an embryo, but Mrs. Vest
ended up putting it aside.
"It just wasn't time and, for some reason, I knew that," she said. "I
just kept saying, 'It's just not time.' Then, we moved into our house
and one day I knew I had to get it in the mail. So we dropped it in."
It wasn't long before the Loudoun County couple were notified they
were the perfect match for a donor family in Atlanta. The connection
was made, and the families met in Atlanta.
"We hit it off immediately," Mrs. Vest said. "It was quite an
experience, to be standing there, staring at these four kids who would
look like my kids one day."
The Atlanta couple donated their 23 excess embryos to the Vests. The
first embryos transferred to Mrs. Vest's uterus produced a pregnancy,
but the baby's heart stopped beating after nine weeks. The devastation
was so great that Mrs. Vest's family and friends urged her to stop the
process.
She decided to continue.
"I just knew — with every ounce of my being — I knew that I was
supposed to be doing this process, and whether or not I ended up with
a child in my arms at the end, was not why I was doing it," Mrs. Vest
said. "I just felt it was something God had given me and I was doing
it."
Jonah, the Vests' first child, was born in 2002 after three more
embryos were transferred.
"When they handed him to me, I just said 'I am so thankful you are
here,'" Mrs. Vest said.
A few years later, the Vests tried again. This time, 11 embryos did
not survive the thawing process, but three were transferred. Gabrielle
was born in 2005.
Jonah and Gabrielle are a joy, but there are three embryos left —
which leaves the Vests with a tough decision.
"All my friends keep saying, 'Give them up, you are happy with your
family,'" Mrs. Vest said. "But I don't know if I'm done. My kids would
love another sibling.
"The Lord obviously gave me kids at a later age, and I still don't
know the reason."

A donor story
In 2005, Michelle and Chris Casteel's struggle with infertility
finally ended. Thanks to their first IVF treatment, they had two
beautiful children — and two extra embryos.
The Yakima, Wash., couple already had decided to donate any remaining
embryos to another couple — giving them to a laboratory for research
was not a consideration, Mrs. Casteel said.
"In two weeks, you could see the hearts in these babies. So I knew
right away, they are not going for research," she said.
The couple was forced into action on their decision when they got a
$600 bill for another year's cryopreservation. The Casteels contacted
the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tenn. The
NEDC carefully explained their options.
"People can choose to take part in the selection of the adoptive
parents of their embryo, or choose not to know anything," said
Michelle Dicken, public relations manager at NEDC.
Donating couples can choose to have an open relationship, where they
can be a part of the embryo's life, or have an anonymous one, where
they will never meet.
"Some donors are very open — where they vacation with their kids — but
others are not and prefer not to have any contact with them," Ms.
Dicken said.
The NEDC sent the Casteels the profile of Joel and Holly Davis, a
Nebraska couple who had twin boys but wanted to have another child.
The couples clicked, and soon the NEDC was paying to ship the
Casteels' embryos to Tennessee, where the Davises would have the
embryos transferred into Mrs. Davis' uterus. One of the embryos
resulted in a successful pregnancy and the Davises joyfully welcomed
their daughter, Karissa, in 2007.
Today, the two families have "a wonderful friendship," Mrs. Casteel
said. The children have met each other, and while the Casteel children
may not yet fully understand how they came to have another biological
sister, "we will again tell them when they are much older," she said.

Unfamiliar term
The path to embryo adoption began in England, with the 1978 creation
of "test-tube" babies using IVF. A woman's eggs were successfully
fertilized with sperm in a petri dish and the resulting embryos were
transferred into the woman's uterus. The cryopreservation of embryos
began in 1984.
In the beginning, doctors focused on perfecting the IVF procedure and
didn't worry too much about the rising number of embryos in storage.
When faced with couples who didn't have any luck doing IVF with their
own eggs and sperm, doctors began cautiously experimenting with IVF
treatments with unrelated embryos.
In December 1998, Marlene and John Strege became the first couple in
the world to have a baby using an adopted frozen embryo.
Their historic journey started in late 1997 when they asked Mr.
Stoddart of Nightlight Christian Adoptions if they could adopt an
embryo. While Mr. Stoddart explored the novel idea, the Streges took
their moral questions to their pastors and Mr. Dobson, the Focus on
the Family founder.
"Ultimately, everyone with whom we made contact confirmed what we
already knew: that embryos are human lives and they need to be adopted
in the event that families responsible for their creation are unable
to use them," Mrs. Strege wrote in 2008 in Clearly Caring magazine.
The Streges and Mr. Stoddart came up with the "snowflake" concept
after attending a Christmas play in which an actress said, "In the
intricate design of each flake of snow, we find the Creator reflecting
the individual human heart," Mrs. Strege wrote in the magazine
article. These embryos are like snowflakes, they decided — "frozen,
unique, never again to be re-created."
Hannah, the Strege's daughter, paid a visit to Congress at the age of
2. She also attended a 2006 White House event when President Bush
announced the first veto of his presidency — there would be no further
federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
The federal government began funding embryo adoption awareness in
fiscal 2002, and more than $10 million has been spent so far.
Mr. Stoddart says his organization can document 1,200 babies who have
been born via embryo adoption, but he estimates that the true number
of births is closer to 3,000, thanks to myriad fertility clinics that
have done embryo transfers on their own.
According to federal data, there were 2,224 donated-embryo transfer
cycles between 2004 and 2006, resulting in 988 live births, said Dr.
Reginald Finger, who conducts research for the NEDC and published his
findings in an abstract in Fertility and Sterility.
Even so, Americans remain unfamiliar with the process, the NEDC found.
About 49 percent of 966 adults surveyed in 2007 by Harris Interactive
said they had ever heard of the term "embryo donation."
Once Americans understand it, though, they seem to approve of it:
Seventy percent agreed with the statement, "Embryo donation is a good
way to use frozen embryos."

Stem-cell research
With embryo adoption a relatively new concept and embryonic stem-cell
research so well publicized, it's not surprising that many people
choose research as the destination for any excess embryos.
A Duke University Medical Center survey of 1,020 fertility patients,
published in 2008, found that of people who were sure they had extra
embryos, 41 percent said it was very likely they would donate them to
science, while 16 percent favored embryo donation and 12 percent said
they would let their embryos be discarded.
Infertility experts said there is a scrupulous effort not to make
people's decisions for them.
"We don't tell people what to do," says Barbara Collura, executive
director of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, which has
received around $700,000 in federal embryo-adoption awareness funds.
"We don't persuade them. Some people come away saying, 'I feel more
informed and I can do this,' and others come away saying, 'I feel more
informed and I do not think I can go forward.' We are never up there
saying, 'You should do this, this is great' and we're never up there
saying, 'This is terrible.' We are just presenting the information as
best as we can," Ms. Collura said.
In fact, Mrs. Vest said, the issue of stem-cell research comes up all
the time when she explains embryo adoption.
"I understand the hope that [embryonic stem-cell research] gives
people," she said. "I don't want to take that hope from people, but I
think there are better options. … I can't see taking the lives of
these potential children for just a hope — and not a reality — at the
moment."

Adopt or donate
Another debate is whether the process of transferring embryos between
couples is an adoption or a donation. Generally, embryos are not
classified as people. Therefore, when couples transfer their embryos,
the process is a legal transfer of property, not an adoption. Some
specialists cater their vocabulary to the family they are talking to.
"I use the terms [adoption and donation] interchangeably in most
contexts," Mr. Stoddart said. "The donor family typically prefers to
use 'embryo donation,' whereas the receiving family prefers
'adoption.'"
However, others are specific about the words and argue that using
"adoption" adds legal work to the process.
"I think people that use the term 'embryo adoption' are doing a
disservice to those families," said Sean Tipton, public affairs
director for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).
"This is not an adoption process; an adoption is a legal procedure
that transfers one child traditionally from one family to the other,"
Mr. Tipton said. "All they do by using this term is create more
hurdles for those that are considering this choice. It is clear that
those that are using the term are doing so for political purposes and
not for the benefit of the child."

(*Some states are actually passinglaws which would circumvent the adoption process and allow the receiving couple to put their names on the child's original birth certificate as if they were the genetic parents of the child. This blatantly strips the child of his/her civil right to KNOW his genetic/biological/genealogical
heritage. It is just a continuation of falsifying identity and birth
records for thousands of Americans. Genealogists predict that within four
more generations NO American's genealogy will be accurate, because of
sealed records, amended birth certificates, and practices such as this.)
Fuzzy future
"We haven't even touched the potential" of embryo adoption, said Maria
Lancaster, who has a 5-year-old "snowflake" daughter and became so
inspired about the process that last year she founded Embryo Adoption
Services of Cedar Park in Bothell, Wash.
There isn't a shortage of infertile couples, and with nearly 500,000
embryos in cyropreservation, "all they need is a womb," she said.
Embryo adoption is also affordable, proponents said.
The average expense of embryo adoptions — including home studies,
embryo shipping and transfer to the prospective mother — is between
$7,000 and $10,000, said Mr. Stoddart. This is relatively low compared
to the $12,000-a-session cost for IVF treatments, and traditional
adoption, which can run between $10,000 and $20,000 domestically, and
between $30,000 and $40,000 for international adoptions. "Adopting
through the foster care system is the only less-expensive option,"said Mr. Stoddart.
However, many specialists believe that embryo adoption, though it does
create another choice for families, will never truly replace
traditional adoption.
"As far as the future, we don't believe it will replace traditional
domestic adoption," said the NEDC's Ms. Dicken. "There are all pros
and cons to embryo adoption and all sorts of people for all different
reasons choose to do something else."
The ASRM supports embryo adoption as a personal choice for couples,
but doesn't see it as a primary goal for most couples.
"We think embryo donation for family-building is a terrific option for
some donors and adopters," Mr. Tipton said. But it has been offered
for a long time, and "it does not look like it is going to become a
real choice for families."
"It is all a matter of what people want," he said. "If they want to
adopt, they go adopt a child, and if they want to have a genetic
child, they go to infertility clinics."
Even Mr. Stoddart sees embryo adoption phasing out as IVF regulations
limit the number of embryos produced and IVF treatments become more
successful.
"Although the number of embryos in frozen storage is likely to
continue to grow for a while," he said, "I believe it will grow at a
slower rate as the techniques for creating embryos improve. … I would
like to see freezing of embryos become the exception rather than the
rule."
People who have participated in the process, however, see this as the
best option for these embryos.
Mrs. Vest knows that their story affected an old school friend who
went through IVF and ended up with extra embryos.
"She said to me, 'Because of you, my husband and I decided to put them
up for adoption,'" Mrs. Vest said as her eyes filled with tears. "I
just lost it. You get out there and you try to promote this, and you
so hope that somebody is listening, and that somebody will see how it
has touched our lives, and we are a normal happy family and we love
our kids.
"To actually have it affect somebody, and see that they would put
their embryos up for adoption and it would be OK. … This was
unbelievable."

• Cheryl Wetzstein contributed to this report.

Adoption success a reality
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Cheryl Wetzstein

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/14/adoption-success-a-reality/

I recently wrote about how domestic infant adoption is “vanishing” in America. The April 12 story was based on federal data (kindly chased down for me by Jo Jones, a researcher at National Center for Health Statistics) that found that fewer than 7,000 newborns are placed for adoption each year.

Compared with the truly stunning number of unwed pregnancies - almost 3 million in 2004 - adoption is clearly becoming an option that few women are choosing for their babies.

In my reporting, though, I heard about some successful adoption programs. In Erie, Pa., for instance, counselors affiliated with the Women's Care Center of Erie County help birth mothers “design” adoption plans for the children they have decided not to raise.

This means the birth mothers are involved in everything from deciding how much contact they want with the family to knowing what kind of activities will be provided by the adoptive parents, said Brenda Newport, executive director of the center.

“We've done hundreds of newborn placements,” she said. “It's a win-win situation, and nobody's hurt.”

Birth fathers are involved as much as possible, Mrs. Newport added, and adoptive families are chosen with care. Closed adoption - in which there's little or no contact between birthparent and adoptive family - is rare.

There is still a bittersweet aspect to adoption, said Mrs. Newport. But the young mothers find comfort in their decisions to choose life for their child and then let their child “be a blessing in someone else's life.”

An example is a young women who came to the Erie center when she was 28 weeks pregnant, said Mrs. Newport.

When she learned how advanced her pregnancy was, abortion was ruled out, but she also knew parenting wasn't a good choice, either. So, when counselors with the Adoption By Choice agency showed her how to plan an adoption for her baby that she could “live with well,” she said, “I can do that,” said Mrs. Newport.

I have reported on adoption since the 1970s, when I met Florence Fisher, an adoptee who searched for her birthparents and founded the Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association in New York. I have heard adoption stories from hundreds of people.

My conclusion is that when handled correctly, adoption is an honorable, even noble, choice. Adoptive parents are parents by choice, and adoption is the best outcome for children whose parents (and birth families) cannot, will not or should not care for them.

Adoption reform, however, is essential, especially as we learn more about attachment, love, genetics and parenting. Having delved into the “search” issues, I think it's clear that adult adoptees who want their original birth certificates (with their identifying information) should have them. Lawmakers should pass open-records laws, as those in New Jersey seem to be doing.

Mutual-reunion registries and other search sites, like the International Soundex Reunion Registry in Las Vegas, should be talked about more.

“All I want to know is what everyone else knows and takes for granted - my roots,” Ms. Fisher wrote in her 1973 book, “The Search for Anna Fisher.” I think her poignant request still resonates, and since we now know adoption can entwine families - not divide them - it's time to end the secrecy.

c Cheryl Wetzstein can be reached at cwetzstein@washingtontimes.com.

* As an adult adoptee, it discourages me to hear how society misrepresents adoption as a "win-win" proposition. Adoption is based on loss. How can that be win-win? There are profound losses involved for everyone involved in adoption (except the ones whose business it is to broker them). A poster on an adoption site wrote this in response to this article, and I don't think anyone could have said it better:
"There is no way to do an adoption where no one gets hurt. In some cases it may be a grim necessity but saying that no one gets hurt is delusional and perpetuates lies. Adoption is based on lies. An amended birth certificate is a lie."

NO COMPROMISE

Why can one group of adults withhold another group of adult's personal histories and identities from
them? Adoptees are unjustly viewed & held captive as perpetual children in the eyes of the
law. Even the Child Welfare League of America strongly supports legislation which restores the right of adult adoptees to their original birth certificates. When will America wake up?

To: CARE and Cal-Open

From: Assemblywoman Fiona Ma

RE: AB 372

I want to start by thanking all of you for the hard work and time spent to
help craft AB 372. After many weeks of meetings with stakeholders,
committee staff and members of the Legislature, we have come to a pivotal point
in
the legislative process. I understand the issues which adoptees face in their
pursuit to obtain their identity, as well as the concerns which will be
raised in committee. After hearing from all of the stakeholders, it is clear
that
in order to provide adoptees with greater access than what is already allowed
by law, compromises will have to be made.

In order to keep the bill moving and do as much as possible to provide
greater openness, I have decided to draft the following amendments:
> >
Amend the Health and Safety Code section 102705 to require the courts to
> > release the original birth certificate contingent upon the finding of a
> > serious medical condition requiring familiar information.
> >
> > -Starting Jan 1, 2010 and going backward, the state shall open the original
> > unamended birth certificate in an ³Informational Only Copy² form to an
> > adult
> > adoptee age 25 or older if all of the following conditions are met:
> >
> > 1 -A certified, return receipt letter is sent to the best-match address of
> > the biological parent notifying them of the change in law and allowing
> > them to keep their record confidential by signing an enclosed form and
> > returning to the Department of Health.
> >
> > 2 -A period of six-months from the time of the biological mother
> > receiving notice is given for them to respond with the opt-out notice.
> > -Should the Department not receive a return receipt, the record shall
> > remain
> > confidential/sealed (per status quo).
> >
> > -If both biological parents are listed on the certificate and one, but not
> > both
> > choose to remain confidential, the certificate shall released with the name
> > of
> > the bio parent who wishes to remain confidential redacted.
> >
> > -Prospectively, starting Jan 1, 2010, all adoptions completed shall have
> > notification to the biological parents that the child who is being adopted
> > shall
> > have unrestricted access to their original un-amended birth certificate in
> > the
> > form of an ³Information Only Copy² upon their 25th birthday. This
> > notification shall require signature from both biological parents that they
> > understand this and agree to the provisions stated, so long as both are
> > listed
> > on the birth certificate.
> >
> > -This notification shall include an opt-out form, allowing either of the
> > biological parents to keep the birth certificate confidential and sealed
> > and
> > shall state: For reasons including but not limited to rape, incest,
> > religious
> > or personal reasons, I decline to allow the record of birth to be released
> >
> > -If both biological parents are listed on the certificate and one, but not
> > both choose to remain confidential, the certificate shall released with the
> > name of the bio parent who wishes to remain confidential redacted.
> > The Assembly Judiciary Committee has noted that this bill will be heard on
> > April 28, 2009. These amendments do not guarantee approval in committee,
> > but provide AB 372 with a better chance to succeed. Should the bill not
> > pass,
> > it will not be eligible to be heard again this year.

> > I fully understand the concerns of those directly affected by this
> > legislation.
> > I have stated in previous meetings that I believe that adoptees do have
> > claim to
> > this information. Knowing that, understand that this legislation, if
> > amended,
> > has the best chance of moving further through the process. We hope your
> > organizations will continue to support our effort to allow as many adoptees
> > to
> > access their original birth certificate. My Office is attempting to do the
> > most
> > we can to assist adoptees using all the tools at our disposal.

> > Thank you for working with me and my Office. Your input and stories have
> > painted a fuller picture of the landscape we are embarking upon and
> > provided
> > for legislation that will greatly improve adoptees¹ access to their
> > original
> > birth certificate.

> > In Peace and Friendship,

> > Fiona Ma

Reprinted for educational purposes only.

I liked what Mirah had to say on her blog about this issue:
"The issue is EQUAL RIGHTS. It is NOT about search and reunion. Not about
emotional need to know. Not about heritage or any other feel-good issue.

IT IS ABOUT EQUALITY. EQUAL RIGHTS. It is about ending discriminatory
restriction that applies only to adoption separated persons, and RESTORING
rights that were abrogated against all the best advise of adoption experts.

Focusing on search and reunion and medical need makes it an issue that pits one
person's needs against another's because it effects more than one person. Equal
rights is about the rights of each individual to be equal to that of every other
individual."

Resurrection!

Adoptee's 35-year search for roots spurs 'resurrection'
By Carol Ann Alaimo
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/288301.php

Tucson lawyer Ann Haralambie refers to herself as "a 57-year-old bombshell."
And not in a flattering way.
Since birth, she's been part of a secret that stood to shatter a family she'd never met.
An adoption and family-law expert who's adopted herself, Haralambie has spent decades helping other Tucsonans find their birth parents, even as she couldn't find her own.
Now, after 35 years of searching, her persistence has paid off.
"Today there has been a healing of the hole in my heart," Haralambie recently wrote in an e-mail diary, shortly after meeting her first blood relations — an experience both bitter and sweet.
Bitter because success came too late for Haralambie to meet her biological mother, who died in 2007 — half a century after placing her for adoption under a fake name.
Sweet because Haralambie has discovered dozens of new relatives, and answers to questions that have haunted her for as long as she can recall.
In this season of rebirth and renewal, "I am experiencing a resurrection of my deepest self," Haralambie said.
"I spent my whole life thinking that I was the biggest skeleton in my family's closet."
The thought drove her to become a high achiever, to prove to the world that she was worthy.
"I've always felt an obligation to justify my existence, to give back to the world, to atone for the fact that I wasn't aborted."
Not all adoptees feel so compelled to probe their pasts, said Haralambie, who has handled scores of adoption cases in her legal practice, written books on adoption and family law and speaks at local and national events.
The adoptive brother Haralambie grew up with, for example, has no wish to search for his roots, she said.
In her case, it wasn't that her adoptive parents, a New York pediatrician and his nurse wife, weren't loving, she said.
"I couldn't have asked to have been adopted by better people," she said of James and Cecilia Haralambie, who are deceased. "But I needed to make sense of my situation. I wanted to know who I am, who my people are."
Ann Haralambie came to Tucson as a teen in 1969 to attend the University of Arizona and never left.
Over the years, she amassed a stack of search data as tall as two phone books. She crisscrossed the country checking leads that went nowhere.
At one point, she thought a nun in New Jersey might be her birth mom and sent an envelope from one of the nun's letters to be DNA-tested for saliva. Another search led her to a New Orleans newspaper family, but that also fizzled.
So she kept looking.
In January, she turned to Pamela Slaton, a New Jersey-based adoption searcher with a reputation for cracking tough cases.
Within days, Slaton concluded that Haralambie's biological mom must have recorded the birth under a false name. So she left out the name and searched with other information.
The findings led Haralambie to her birth mother's family in Ohio, and eventually to her birth father, a West Virginia attorney she doesn't want to name because he hasn't told his family about her yet.
Haralambie learned her biological parents were college sweethearts who broke up shortly after she was conceived.
Her birth mother, then a coed named Ann Cottle, chose to have the baby and place her for adoption without telling him, Haralambie said.
Eventually, Cottle married someone else and had four other kids, never mentioning her first pregnancy. But an elderly aunt, Cottle's sister, confirmed details of the secret birth after Slaton made contact.
A few weeks ago, Haralambie traveled to Ohio to meet her newfound siblings — three brothers and a sister — and a clan of cousins, nieces and nephews.
"This is something you hear about on TV. You never think it will happen in your family," said Mark Kibble of Powell, Ohio, who is relishing his new role as Haralambie's brother.
"Initially, it was quite a shock," said Kibble, 48, a technology director at a non-profit agency. "The first night I heard, I was numb. I couldn't sleep. I sat up on the couch all night.
"I'm just amazed at Ann, that she worked so hard, for so long, to find us," Kibble said. "She must have carried a heavy load all those years. I wish I could have known her 35 years ago, but I'm so happy to know her now."
Delving into an unknown past can be dicey, though.
Some of Haralambie's discoveries have been welcome. Others, not so much.
She has learned, for example, that she talks, laughs — even coughs — like the mother she never met.
But she also discovered her father's forebears were slave owners. An old will unearthed online in a public-records search shows them bequeathing "negroes" to their heirs.
"That turned my stomach," she said. "I'm such a civil-rights person."
Haralambie expects more ups and downs ahead as she pieces the past together. Divorced with a grown daughter, she is eager to know more about the medical history of her ancestors for her offspring's sake and her own.
No matter what happens next, she said, she's content knowing where she came from.
"There is a peace now," she said, "a physical peace I can feel in my body, that I have never felt in my life."
Contact reporter Carol Ann Alaimo at 573-4138 or at calaimo@azstarnet.com.

Butterfinger Heaven!

Just have to share this little story...

We were recently at a local pizzeria celebrating with my first Dad for his Birthday. It is always "bitter-sweet" when spending time with my first family. Like cherished times, of which I can't get enough. Yet not able to truly feel fully a part of the family, simply because they have a whole life of history together that is like a gaping black hole for me.

Nevertheless, I DO cherish every minute spent with my family ~ both of birth and adoption. It has really only been in the past few years I can say this, due to the enormous grief and confusion I walked through during those first "waking up" years. After all, adoptees aren't SUPPOSED to care, search, or reunite with their true selves and/or families, are they? No, we are supposed to be grateful and never question. It is just too dangerous.

Well, not I. Anyway, here we were all sitting around the table, finished with pizza, and cutting my Dad's birthday cake. Because I was freaking running around like a crazy woman trying to contain my sensory-overloaded child, I didn't notice that it was a Butterfinger (yes, the candy bar) cake. Mind you, my son has never eaten a candy bar in his short four years of existence. He has feeding issues and won't put most foods even near his mouth. (I've convinced myself that is why I've gained so much weight ~ I'm eating for two. Every bite I beg him to take and he refuses, goes straight into my mouth ~ STRESS). Sorry, I digress again.

So my son thinks that every cake is his personal sensory experiment, to use as finger paint (thanks to creative therapists), and because he can't quite understand why I am holding him back (with great effort), he starts to have a royal tantrum. When his aunt finally figured out what he wanted, she gladly scraped off one of the many mini-butterfinger bars off the cake and gave it to him. And much to my surprise ~ he immediately stuck the thing in his mouth and started nibbling on it! Amazing!

What is even more amazing (and was the purpose of this whole story) is that Butterfingers are my Dad's favorite candy, and low-and-behold, it was the catalyst to convince my son to actually TRY candy for the first time! I just quietly pondered this in my heart, sitting there wondering if I should have shared how surprised I was at my Dad's preference, because Butterfingers are also MY favorite candy bar! I can't count the number of Butterfinger mini-sundaes I've had from Sonic's new dollar menu.

All this is trivial, EXCEPT to an adoptee. It is just FREAKY to find out these little (and yet amazingly significant) similarities with your family of birth. And believe me, this IS just one of the little things. Most of the similarities are HUGE ~ in likes, dislikes, personality traits, voice inflection and tone, non-verbal communication gestures ~ so much is alike. They were inside me. Part of me. Without my knowing. All the while battling low self-esteem from NOT knowing and not being able to see my reflection in anyone else. Wondering and wandering, instead of embracing who I was and where I can from. All because it would hurt too much to deal with it. It still hurts. But it also brings understanding, identity, empathy, and joy ~ just to see myself in them. My whole clan. Each relative reflects a little different part of myself back to me. In my son. My Mother, Father, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Brothers. Grandparents, and Great-Grandparents. I am so blessed to be reunited with them, and love them so much.

And I can't emphasize enough that it wasn't until I crossed the threshold of search, reunion (just the beginning of the journey) into the grieving and healing, that I could look in the mirror and feel real, and learn to love real.

Here's to more Butterfingers!

* I can't wait for the day adoptees are ejected from the "angry" adoptee club for simply wanting the same civil right as every other citizen ~ to obtain their original birth certificate as an adult!

Angry Women's Club ejects Michelle Obama

by: SUSAN CAMPBELL
Friday, April 10, 2009
4/10/2009 3:42:46 AM

All right, settle down, ladies. Please.

Ready? Let's call to order The Angry Women's Club. Bev?

Bev?

Oh. I'm told that Bev's in the bathroom, ripping doors off stalls. Fine. I'll just borrow her hammer — so much more fun to swing than a gavel — and call to order ... there!

Now. First order of business is to say goodbye to one of our newest members — now ex-member — Michelle Obama.

Early on, some people in America thought Michelle Obama looked "too angry" to be first lady. We know that because The Washington Post said so last week, in an article that was supposed to serve as a send-off as the Obamas headed overseas together.

We all know what it means when you call a woman angry, right?

Lord, if I had a dime for every time someone called me angry, I'd not be wasting my time typing this. I'd have someone type it for me. I'd have a fat retirement account impervious to the vagaries of the market. And I'd have a driver who would take me to the nearest Dairy Queen whenever I asked.

Despite the gains of the last few decades, we still mostly like our women soft, sweet and not angry. Like my mother used to say, you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

Only, what on Earth would I do with a bunch of flies?

Let a man exhibit anger, and he's taking charge. Let a woman show anger, and she's, well, scary. Let Michelle Obama say she's proud of her country because the people are embracing hope, and suddenly she's called angry. Her forthrightness, her jokes about her husband's socks and her sleeveless dresses were enough to send some male commentators into a cowering crouch.

Why would a woman be angry, do you think? Just off the top of my head: The whole wage-disparity thing, the speaking up in meetings and being ignored thing, the lack of female clergy thing, the lack of female CEOs thing, the notion that you can and should have it all thing.

You try bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan day in and day out, and suddenly that pan might start to look pretty good as a weapon — even to you, gentle reader.

Already, we miss Michelle Obama at the Angry Women's Club. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll put her job approval rating at 76 percent. Unless society has started to embrace its angry women — and that's doubtful — we have to presume that, in the eyes of the American public, Michelle Obama is officially over being mad.

Ah, but our membership is fluid. The next time Michelle Obama speaks directly, asserts herself or perhaps has the temerity to go sleeveless, America may vote her back into our club, where we stand ready with open arms, and snarls aplenty.

Meeting adjourned.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Campbell is a Hartford Courant columnist.

Copyright © 2009, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved

Easter: New Beginnings

© Photographer: Rofa | Agency: Dreamstime.com

(Originally published 4/12/09)

I was blessed to be able to eat lunch recently with my Uncle ~ my First Mother's brother. From the very beginning of our reunion, he has been such a wonderful encourager and strength to me. He was one of the first relatives to write me a long letter telling me all about my Mother and how she would have been so relieved to find me. It gave me chills to hear him describe her ~ kind of like reading about myself. For the first time in my life, I found where I "got" my personality and passions from.

I told my husband after lunch that the best word I can think of to describe how I feel when I spend time with my family of birth is "giddy". Like a young school-girl who feels pure joy deep inside over the littlest things. It seems to just bubble up and I ride this joyful fulfillment. Just connecting at a deep level with my flesh and blood ~ who knew how healing that would be. Amazing.

I know my place in a family tree now. And have had to unfreeze my cold, dead heart to who I am as a whole person ~ a slow process. Refusing to keep the wall of protection against further perceived rejection, and feeling the saddness and loss of my "relinquished" self, to unlock the myriad of feelings that make me who I am.

It wasn't until I walked through the valley of grief that felt as though it would swallow me alive, could I then truly connect with anyone. Myself, my adoptive family, and certainly my family of birth.

This Easter was such a joy to spend time with my A-Mom and appreciate her so much ~ the love she has for me, and for her grandson and my husband. I am so thankful for her and for the love that has weathered this reunion and has grown in both of us.

I shared the beautiful Guatamalen Easter Eggs that my Uncle and his friend painted and gave me, with her. My Uncle shared with us the tradition of painting the hollow eggs and then using colorful crepe paper to cover the ends, after filling them with shiny confetti and surprises. He said in Guatamala they crack the eggs over each others heads to celebrate Easter and the festival of life. What a great tradition!

It reminded me of how painful and joyful my whole "adoption" experience has been ~ just as the egg is broken, so my life was broken, but by going through the pain of "cracking" the secrets, the hiddenness, search and reunion reveals the beauty and and celebration of the truth hidden inside. Kind of like how the Roman soldiers tried to "seal" Jesus in the tomb, but it couldn't hold him. Sealed records will not hold adoptees either. Life always prevails in Truth.

Happy Easter!

The sleepy colors of winter
Fade fast in the dawn of
Spring.
The joy of Easter's promise,
Delivers sweet reason to
Sing
Refreshed from her snowy
Slumber,
Mother Earth exalts her
Worth.
In a colorful burst of glory,
She blazons her wondrous
Rebirth

Renew your spirit, refresh
Your soul,
Rejoice with all humankind.
Celebrate life everlasting.
Peace and wonder are
Yours to find.

The blessing of the Lord
be upon you...
Psalms 129:8

May the glory
and the promise
of this joyous time of year
Bring peace
and happiness to you
and those you hold most dear,

And may Christ,
Our Risen Saviour,
always be there by your side
To bless you
most abundantly
and be your loving guide.

Go Teen Moms!

Not so cheap: Teen mom rejects the stereotype
Elizabeth Tuttle

Several years ago, advertising behemoth Ogilvy & Mather launched an
edgy campaign in conjunction with the National Campaign to Prevent
Teen Pregnancy. Youth magazines like Teen People and CosmoGirl
volunteered to include the ads in their issues for free, deeming the
strategy as effective at getting through to teens. The series of six
photo ads aimed to confront, in bold terms, the so-called realities of
young pregnancy.

In one ad, a young Latina girl dons a revealing belly shirt, her
heavily made-up eyes glaring moodily at the camera. Bold, capitalized
letters, spelling out "CHEAP," are superimposed across the girl's
purportedly pregnant torso. In tiny lettering that runs down the
length of the page, an explanation: "Condoms are CHEAP. If we'd used
one, I wouldn't have to tell my parents I'm pregnant."

Charlie Rose 'AC has chosen another set of labels for her choices. In
a Facebook album entitled "Pro Girl Mom," 20-year-old Rose
superimposes bold text across photos of herself and her four-year-old
son, Cae. "The way I parent makes me a great ROLE MODEL," is splayed
across a black-and-white image of the Rose family, Cae wrapped snugly
around his mother. Another photo says, "My son and I make a BEAUTIFUL
family," and another: "Breastfeeding through high school made me feel
STRONG."

When she decided to have a child at 15 years old, Rose says that her
biggest obstacle was not the physical pregnancy itself, which she
describes as "easy," "wonderful" and "delightful," nor was it the
financial burden - all of Cae's clothes and cloth diapers were handed
down, and Rose made her own baby food. Instead, the hardships came
from the labels and stigma attached to her decision.

"For some reason," she says, "people have very visceral responses to
teen pregnancy. It's sort of the unifying issue, because everyone
thinks that teen moms are awful. It challenges the idea of adulthood
that we've established, the idea that teenagers are always
irresponsible. From a patriarchal state, teen mothers are threatening
because women are supposed to belong to their fathers until they
belong to their husbands."

Unable to identify with this construct surrounding adolescence, and
sensing an innate maternal instinct, Rose made the conscious decision
to conceive when she was 15 years old. "Humans are pretty hard-wired
to want to continue the species and procreate," Rose says, recalling
her strong maternal urges and desires to become a parent.
"Biologically, the best time to have a child is during the late
teens... I knew it would work out."

During her pregnancy, high school teachers advised her to drop out,
telling her that she would be lucky just to get into a community
college. After telling her to drink 32 ounces of water in preparation
for an ultrasound, a gynecological office turned Rose away due to her
age. She was not allowed to sign herself out of school for her
mandatory prenatal care appointments, despite the fact that her
parents lived in another city. "I was disenfranchised in a lot of
ways, and I didn't have any legal rights because I was a minor."

In Texas, a married woman assumes the status of a legal adult if her
spouse is of legal age. In order to be able to sign into her own
doctor's appointments and to open her own bank accounts, she decided
to marry Cae's father, who was 18 years old at the time. "When I was
deciding to leave Cae's dad, people were really shocked and rude,"
Rose said, recalling the comments and assumptions that took away her
"agency and pride in leaving an unhealthy relationship." According to
Rose, "If someone's not being a good parent, then I don't need to
parent with that person."

After Cae's birth, she received a letter from the school's principal,
scolding her for breastfeeding her son in public when in situations
associated with the school. "When you start eating all of your meals
on the toilet," she retorts, "then you can tell me to feed my son that
way."

"It's really sad that when someone knows that you're a pregnant
teenager, they automatically write you off," Rose states. "You feel a
lot of pressure to prove yourself to people. People see me when my
son's having a hard time, and instead of seeing a mother with a two-
year-old, they see 'that teen mother' - a bad parent who doesn't know
what she's doing."

Aside from these externally imposed obstacles and criticisms, however,
Rose has few negative thoughts about her experience as a teen mom, and
no regrets about her decision to have Cae. She insists that she has
not missed out in choosing motherhood over what she sees as a packaged
idea of "wild, carefree days."

In fact, she says, "Cae is totally involved in everything that I'm
passionate about… I really love showing him the things I care about,
like activism or science. He's starting to love math a lot and loves
hanging out in the math forum."

Rose serves as president of Conway House and as site producer to
GirlMom.com, a resource for teenage mothers with over 100,000 posts to date. As the Web site's home page states,
"The only true epidemic associated with teen pregnancy is the
overwhelming and universal lack of support available to young
mothers... We love our children fiercely. We protect and care for them
like any mother, of any age, would."

Her activist, open-minded role has translated to her parenting
philosophy. "I feel like childhood is so over-commercialized and over-
gendered and over-restricted... If I see something that's really
awesome in the girl's section then I buy it, and if I see something
that's really awesome in the boy's section then I buy that, too. I
don't want to be in the business of stifling my son's interest because
he's born of male sex."

As diners in Gillett House can attest, Cae often traipses in for
dinner decked in pink and purple tights with cowboy boots, a beloved
doll in tow. "Cae loves playing with baby dolls," Rose says. "People
wonder why there are so many shitty dads in the world. Maybe if you
said that parenting is for everyone, and that not just women take care
of babies, that wouldn't happen."

"There are a lot of women now who, for whatever reason, delay their
childbirth and then they don't get to meet their grandkids," Rose
says. "The older you get, the harder it is to sustain that really
active level of involvement. It's really important to me to meet my
grandchildren, and to meet my great-grandchildren. I want Cae to be
able to have me as a resource and a friend and a support through the
majority of his life.