U are a Gift: The commodification of the female body on a very bad webpage. Your value is your unplanned pregnancy

The other day, the ever eagle-eyed Claud D'Arcy found a website, U Are a Gift, that is truly beyond words.  If I didn't now better, I'd think that U Are a Gift, with its bizarre pictures of gift wrapped pregos, is a parody page. After one gets over the trauma of puerile aesthetics (Ad Busters take note!), one can only wonder who would take this site seriously.  The average 12-year old, with no prompting from any of us, should figure out quickly that U Are a Gift is somebody's fantasy in pink.

U Are a Gift is operated by a MILF  named Carol  (no last name) who wears jeans and suffers from grammar, punctuation, and capitalization impairment.  We think she thinks she's cool--a word she uses to describe open adoption (the film Juno is a great model for living-a-happily-ever-after life) ). Carol tells us that before God, or rather, "Jesus, CEO of the Universe," whispered in her pretty ear to set up her page (or mission, or business or whatever it is) she was:

....in the executive search business for 20 years. In my business I have always created opportunities for people and not allowed them to miss out on them because of fear.

U Are a Gift and its paravenu keeper are clearly about abortion and arguments to forgo it. Adoption isn't mandatory, but it's the "unselfish" and "responsible" choice elevating you from emotional trainwreck and poverty  to gift and gift giver.  If Steve Jobs hadn't been adopted, YOU wouldn't have an iPod or an iPad. Do you have the right to deny the world cool communication gizmos?

 The site contains sketchy information about abortion and  links to the anti-abortion "information"site,"  abortionfacts.com operated by  Heritage House, a  Christian fundamentalist promotional merchandiser  that sells  "teaching tools" such as the ever-popular pocket pal--life-size fetal models, in white or brown/Spanish, to use as awesome conversation starters in places like airplanes or supermarket lines where anti-abortion zealots can captivate a captive audience. Heritage House, of course, links to all sorts of "resource pages" owned by its small circle of friends, in this case Catholic anti-abortion enthusiasts.

U Are a Gift through abortionfacts.com, for instance links to the largely unknown -to-the -public but influential   "family-values"  Elliot Institute (or afterabortion.org   or abortion: the unchoice), which advertises itself as "supporting the natural family.." Don't get excited!  It's not what you think.  "Natural family," to the Elliot is the hetero married couple/bio or adopted-childed paradigm that needs legal protection from queers, sluts, their irresponsible paramours, and abortionists. Born again bastards  (that is, those re-imaged by adoption), are welcome.naturally as long as we're not too dodgy and don't demand the return of our stolen identities and birth certificates (aka destroy adoption, the Constitution, Christianity, and The Family.). 

abortionfacts.com  links to dubious adoption resources,  including the wit and wisdom of Ohio  fundamentalist Catholic crackpot and sealed records king of coolness, Dr. John Wlike (and his wife)  who tell us, among other "facts" that Roe v Wade has made it the "in thing" for unmarried women to keep their babies.

Hmm, OK, Jack!

It's also the "in thing" (though Willke doesn't use that  term since bastards should never be "in" anything but a happy yard surrounded by a high white picket fence) for adoptees  to let themselves be brainwashed into thinking they want their OBCs.  The truth according, to the Willkes, is that 'we're just  the pathetic dupes of abortion industry agitprop that's manipulating our ungrateful dysfunctions and spoiled feelings of entitlement, as a cat's paw to murder millions of baybees for fun an profit.  Here's what Willke and the Mrs, who for decades  have headed the opposition to adoptee rights in Ohio, have to say about OBC access and those who advocate it  (my emphasis)

What of open records?

This is different. Today there are groups aggressively seeking to pass laws to unilaterally and retroactively open previously sealed records. Increasingly, pro-life people regard such search groups as pro-abortion and anti-adoption and have opposed such efforts. A high percentage of young mothers, in years past, placed their babies in adoptive homes only because the law guaranteed a seal of confidentiality on that adoption. Today, many of these generous women are terrified that this confidentiality will be stripped away. The fair and compassionate answer is a mutual consent registry.

U Are a Gift's front page carries  a pink header-- "The Big Bang"-- we hope it grows a URL someday -- that refers profanus, to the moment of conception. This artful metaphor relates nicely to Dr. Willke's description, delivered before an Ohio House Health Committee hearing  in 2006,  which I covered for the Columbus Free Press, of conception as "an ant piercing a basketball."

U Are a Gift promotes the Option Line crisis pregnancy hotline, operated jointly by Heartbeat International and CareNet, two of the largest CPC (crisis pregnancy centers)  franchises  in the world. Care Net's former CEO, Rev. Curtis J Young, is the author of the notorious adoption marketing instructional,  The Missing Piece: Adoption Counseling in Pregnancy Resource Centers,  published by the Family Research Council.. When  Bill Pierce was alive the book was promoted by the National Council for Adoption, which seems now to have quietly  and rightly retired it.  The book, appears to inspire Carol's entrepreneurial spirit, (or whatever she is up to), and is available in hard copy for $3.00 on the FRC site and can be downloaded for free from Heartbeat International.

Since  the Option Line phone number is listed on hundreds of CPC sites, it's doubtful that there is any direct connection between Option Line and U Are a Gift.  To be honest, if we were Option  Line we'd  be embarrassed by Gift and demand Carol remove our phone number. Or wonder if Carol were a stealth pro-abort seeking to undermine our anti-abortion mission through satire..We can imagine how the puritanical Dr .Willke would respond to the salacious photo shopped imagine of a gift-wrapped baby bump  (or rather basketball) posted on the U Are a Gift front page.

We still don't  understand the purpose of the U Are a Gift page. There are hundreds of similar pages that don't insult (exactly), and graphically  exploit their target audience-- (lower age) teen women,  the unsophisticated, and uninformed,--the kind who used to show up regularly on Maury Povich.  The site is clearly intended to persuade frightened young women that they are God's chosen vessel,  but "adoption," "resources" and "movement." (whatever that is) tabs are under construction, and so far devoid of information..  This brings up the question of why U Are a Gift  is live when mostly unfinished. We hope Carol  runs  her head  hunter company better than this.

******

After I wrote this log I looked a little deeper into Carol.  I learned that her full name is Carol Brymm and that she lives in Dallas, At least the Gift phone number is in the Dallas area.  She says she currently lives in Austin. . For what it's worth, I'm leaving off some personal information for privacy's sake.

According to Brymm's  public Linked-in profile, which includes the same picture of  her that appears on U Are a Gift,  she operates CB Legal Search, LCC. (no viable webpage, but lots  of aggregates) in Houston.  She describes herself as an "expert at locating unique hard to-find individuals that are at the top of their field for unique positions." According to Texas news outlets, in March 2011 Brymm walked away with (or at least was awarded)  a cool $350,000 and legal fees when a Los Angeles law firm rejected 10 lawyers she recruited for it, then turned around and hired them behind her back without signing her recruiting contract.

Brymm  posts her phone number headed with the awkwardly worded: "If you need to contact you are a gift about stories..."    The main purpose of U Are a Gift is probably to decrease abortion, but Byrmm's self-described skills posted on Linked-in as "an expert in locating unique hard-to-find individuals" for placement sounds perfect for another kind of headhunting and placement.. If you can recruit lawyers and law firms, you can recruit young women and "desperate" paps. Unless things have changed recently, Texas law prohibits adoption facilitation, but oddly, it is not illegal to use an adoption facilitator. I'll leave that one up to the legislature to suss out.

******

Writing this blog has been much ado about nothing, and I can't believe I spent as much time as I did on it.

And as I said at the top, I can't imagine anyone over the age of 12 taking U Are a Gift seriously. The page is silly, and insulting, but also disturbing. I can't remember any adoption related homepage that so commodifies women and girls and preps them for the commercial market. . The woman holding the be-ribboned baby bump, has no head. You =  the female body = pregnancy = child = value =  gift = You.. A false ourborhetorical conceit.  Gift exploits unplanned pregnancy, framing  it as an altruistic, self-fulfilling,  if not  "fun"  experience.  The Gladney Girls hanging out at the pool look downright dour next to Gift's Gift girls.

And where are the dads in all this?.

Just who or what is the gift?  The pregnant woman is told she's a gift, but clearly, she's a transient gift of value only in that she is the conduit for the child she will deliver.  If she surrenders, she is the gift giver and the gift, the sacrificer and the sacrifice, just as the child is in going to its God-intended parents. U Are a Gift, disconnects the pregnant woman seeking help and support, from her body, her intellect, her emotions--and in the case of adoption, her baby.. It pumps her up with false esteem and gratitude of service. And this is very dangerous for her and her child, whether kept or adopted.

Finally, U Are a Gift is a small, and probably unimportant  illustration of the incestuous world of abortion and adoption--formal and informal-- perpetuating the myth that adoption is a reproductive right, when, in fact, it is social policy by statute.

Roe Turns 39: Columbus Protests

This now appears in the Columbus Free Press in a slightly different form.

Monday marked the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade.  While most  local anti-abortion big shots were doing their annual March for Life in Washington with accompanying photo ops, Greater Columbus Right to Life held down the fort here with a 45 minute rally on the steps of the statehouse.with few photo ops.  Except for me, Channel l0 appeared to be the only local media covering the event, but there's nothing on the station's news site.With Occupy Columbus camped out on the corner of S. High and E State, I imagined interesting possibilities, but the occupiers, unlike the Occupy folks in Washington, DC who disruppted a "youth event" held by Brian Kemper, Patrick Mahoney, Lila Rose, and friends, decided to sit this one out.

I've attended several of these January outdoor events in the last few years.  Usually, within 10 minutes my fingers, even in two pairs of gloves are ready to call it off  This year, however, the temperature was in the lower 50s and the crowd knew it . About 175 adults and a couple dozen small children celebrated  as Grove City State Rep.and keynoter Cheryl Grossman (R H23) ran off a list of  abortion-curbing bills that either passed last year or are now in the hopper.  Ohio ProLife  Actoin's  Heartbeat Bill, (HB 125), which aims to ban virtually all abortion in the state, got special props. While Ohio Right to Life and Ohio ProLife Action  duke it out  over turf in the press and in the lobby,  GCRTL and Grossman, gave big hugs to the state organization and the Ohio ProLife Action break-offs. .No seams showing..

Speaker Denise Salyers  a self-defined "victim of  the abortion industry," following the de riguer line of  "abortion harms women"" described with great detail and occasional tears how  her 1984 abortion ruined her life  with drugs, drinks, and suicidel until she was redeemed  by God 24 years later.

The rally, as usual, embodied ecumenical catharsis. The Protestant element of  Parsley-type exurbanites and parents with neatly turned-out daughters in Modest Apparel jumpers   were joined by three nuns  actually dressed like nuns, and a gaggle of deSales High School jocks and cheerleaders.  But this year, adults ran the show. Unlike past January Roe  events, billed as youth events, there was no throng of girls and boys from Fostoria and Marion comparing Planned Parenthood to Hitler and making  euphemistic prayer huddles;.and no middle school  adoptees  at the podium pimping adoption as a cure for abortion.  Strangely, adoption wasn't mentioned at all.

All photographs by the author

The Adoption Journey: Adoption is an Act of Obedience

To celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, Bethany Christian Services, Lifesong for Orphans  ("Bringing Joy and Purpose to Orphans"), and Lifeline Children's Services.have unselfishly launched a new webpage, The Adoption Journey Project. a resource for couples "starting to think about adoption" aka reeling in more fish.

The November 30, 2011 Adoption Journey Project press release informs us that most adoption agency websites don't post information about adoption  needed by new or thinking-about-it paps.  Who knew?  I've never seen an agency webpage that wasn't full of answers in search of questions.

From  the  Adoption Project press release:

"The vast majority of resources being published by adoption agencies and supporting organizations are for families that are either close to or have committed to the adoption process already," said Marc Andreas, Vice President of Marketing at Bethany Christian Services, the largest adoption agency in the country.


"We recognize that couples just starting to think about adoption have completely different perspectives and needs regarding the discernment process for adoption in their lives.  This project will provide tangible resources to help support them and the beginning of their own adoption journey."

Among these resources is a creepy video under the "For Pastors & Ministry Leaders tab,  featuring Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts (2007 Super Bowl champs ) and his wife Lauren, pimping the "orphan crisis"  generic or branded.  Also there, you'll find a download link for an Orphan Sunday  kit.  Since I doubt Bastard Nation would count as a ministry with these folks, I opted out.. Anyway,  I already know quite a bit about Orphan Sunday,  the "orphan crisis" ande the weepy orphan evangelizing projects operating out of churches and ministries. They hate UNICEF and Save the Children  for  trying to keep families and culture together and  holding children "hostage" in their home country; thus thwarting God's work and the Great Commission. Adoption is their stairway to heaven--a lifelong job of "gospel proclamation"--and without it  they may have to pass out blankets to the homeless or worst yet, mind their own business.

Among Dungy's comments:

...This picture is a vivid reminder of what God has done for us--adopting us into his family.


...God was calling us down this path so  adoption became an act of obedience.

...We won't rest until the orphan crisis has ended.


...We as the church ca be the solution.

...Lauren tells us:

Because our church talked about it, adoption felt natural to Tony and me.

I guess we should be happy their church doesn't talk about arson or abstract expressionism.







 Mr an Mrs. Dungy don't explain why if the orphan crisis is so out of control that Bethany and every other adoption agency in the country continue to create more "orphans" by strip mining perfectly good mothers of their  newborns. Isn't the point to decrease the orphan population, not increase it?

Maybe scarier is the page of adopter testimonials found toward the bottom of the front page. While a couple couples (and its always  het couples-no singles or queers need apply; bi-racial is OK unless you belong to the Gulmare Freewill Baptist Church in Pike County, Kentucky)  are as "normal" as the Bethany family can be, most range from disturbed to the bizarre. See, these people have no agency. God commands and they obey, whether they can afford a kid or have no desire to take a trip to AdoptionLand.. And those who have decided to take the journey, without  asking  God's approval first, are delighted when he high-fives them. Funny about that. God wants us all to adopt and be adopted. .

Meet the Hoffmans.  Reading their story forces the Dear Reader to imagine a team of doctors having a have-at- it with the Mrs: as they discuss "God's fingerprint: on her physical body:"

Our plan was to start our biological family in 2005. But after over a year of trying and failing, we decided to visit the Emory Reproductive Center. After a few tests, we discovered that Laura had a unique fingerprint of God on her physical body: she had one kidney and half a uterus. The doctors, undeterred, kept telling us that “We can still get you pregnant.”

Then there's the Walters who stay overnight in a hospital suite and get prayed over by the hands of fussy staffers.  We're not sure where Baby Ernie's bios get to stay, if they stay at all, since he was born in the back of a van in the hospital parking lot.  Mr and Mrs. Ernie'sParents are too poor to keep him and trying to get the rest of their kids back from Children's Services:

We were shown to a spacious suite and invited to stay overnight. One by one, hospital staff members familiar with Ernie’s birth came by to introduce themselves. “I’m not working today,” a physician said. “I just wanted to meet you.” Each visitor spoke about his or her personal belief and rejoiced with us in God’s faithfulness. A nurse at the end of her shift knocked softly. “Could I pray with you before I leave?” She placed her hands in ours and uttered sweet words of thanksgiving.

There we were in a public hospital savoring the fellowship of believers. How could they know about our faith? It seemed that God was sending His servants to affirm His call upon our lives.

The  Griswalds--sorry, I mean the McCollums-- parade around Hanoi with their acquisition strapped to them: No mention of friendly Vietnamese greetings, though we're sure they got them, just like Clark and Ellen did.

Finally there's the Robinson family gettin' down with adoptitude.  Get thee behind me Satan!

Greg and I have found there is a spiritual war waging with adoptions. When you commit to adopt, just be prepared for battle because Satan does not want these kids in homes. There has always been a battle for the lives of little ones. From parents mindlessly sacrificing their children to Molech (god of the Ammonites) in the Old Testament to the New Testament, you can see the battle for children, and I think we are still battling for the lives of children. And I think the church has to stand up and fight for these little ones. It’s going to be painful, and it’s going to hurt. You’re going to come to the point where there’s nothing in your power that you can do. It’s total reliance on God.

I am sure that if both sets of my parents had been subjected to this crap (my natural mother adopted two kids 10 and 12 years after I was born and my natural father adopted his stepson), they'd  both have cheerfully gone childfree.


Of all the reasons to adopt that I can think of, salvation isn't one of them.  The idea, in fact,  is downright insulting.

Many years ago I knew an LDA who learned he was adopted only when he decided to go into broadcasting, not the family auto parts business.

Why do you think we adopted you?  Here's why.  To take over the business.

The spin from our new breed of evangelical adopters:

Why do you think we adopted you?  Here's why. To get into heaven. .

And how would you feel, if you were an ill-behaved ungrateful bastard who'd taken an axe to their stairway to heaven?

Adoption v Abortion: Pimping Adoptees for a "Higher Purpose"

I did not intend to write as much as I have about abortion in this month of National Adoption Awareness but the subject just keeps getting in the way.

Abortion is the wild card that pops up in even the best laid plans of reformists and activists. In some weird fit of cognitive dissonance, anti-aborts claim that the  fetus shares the same rights as the already born, but reject the notion that if this sacradotaled fetus is brought to term, born and adopted that it should be treated equal under law once it is secularized. In other words, once the word becomes flesh, it's on its own. 

Adoption and abortion, of course, have little in common, though the increasingly Gospelized adoption industry and the anti-abortion corpos make a seamless fit.  Together they present adoption as a  happy win-win-win solution for the principals involved, when they are actually  manipulating, propagandizing, redeeming and reconstructing these principals for the higher purpose of political pimping.

It's bad enough as is, but  during National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM), we get a booster shot of happy-dappy juice from the evil twins.

STUDENTS FOR LIFE
Just as NAAM was gearing up, I received a tweet from Students for Life which led me to the group's "Adoption, Another Option" webpage.

Students for Life has been around since the mid-1970s under different names, but became a centralized, brick and mortar organization in 2006 when it located in Arlington, Virginia, hired a professional staff, and started it's "historic Pro-Life Field Program."  According to its website:

Since 2006, Students for Life has helped start over 350 new student pro-life organizations and trained hundreds of previously existing student pro-life groups. Since 2006, the organization has trained over 7,000 pro-lifers at its national conference, weekend training seminars, and one-on-one campus training.

Students for Life is not a student organization, no matter what it says.The president of the Students for Life board is Leonard Leo, the Executive VP of the Federalist Society.  Executive Director Kristan Hawkins worked for the 2004 Bush/Cheney Re-election Campaign and served as a Bush appointee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Assistant Director,  Tina Whittingthom, came to Students for Life from Rock for Life (see below).  Her husband is Rock for Life director, Erik Whittington, Go to these links for more information on the board and staff.

Students for Life  posts glowing endorsements from numerous rightest and domionist organizations and individuals,  including some on record as opposing obc access for adoptees:   Phyllis Schafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Mary Cunningham Agee, founder of the Nurturing Network, former VP of the NCFA board, and almost (after Bill Pierce's first retirement from NCFA) CEO and president of the National Council for Adoption.

Students for Life, not surprisingly, argues with very little wiggle room that an unplanned college-aged pregnancy (their demographic target) can lead only two ways:  abortion or adoption. Keeping a kid gets little traction with these folks.  They  consider the adopted class, lucky indeed to have not been sucked  scrapped and drained down the sink.

Pro-lifers should rejoice with a person who has been adopted…that person’s very life may have been saved because of adoption!

Students for Life also portrays us as emotional hard asses: (my bold)

Adoptees are some of the strongest people in the world. They not only have to push through the emotional struggle of not knowing their birth parents, but they sometimes look so different from their family that they must overcome the idea that complete strangers know that they came into their family through adoption.

But wait a minute!  Adoptees are forced "to push through the emotional struggle of not knowing their birth parents" because some of Students for Life's  biggest supporters don't think we have a right to know those birth parents and will stop at nothing, including calling adopted people "baby killers" and "homewreckers" to keep our records impounded and sealed. Please explain yourself, Students for Life!

Students for Life also commiserates with adopters who fall under the scrutiny of nosy strangers:

Looks of confusion when the skin of their child is a bit darker than their own, a blondie found among a family of red heads, or a nose that doesn’t quite look like Mom or Dad’s. 
 
To celebrate NAAM, Students for Life suggests several soft tactics to use on college girls who get themselves in trouble. These fun activities include sidewalk chalking, promoting adoption songs (Mary Gauthier need not apply), and showing adoption movies such as ( hold on!)  NCFA favorites Bella, Juno and the classic Penny Serenade.

Adoptee Nina shortly before losing her bedroom

Longtime readers of Bastardette may remember my assessment of the latter film--one of the scariest adoption movies ever made, and nary a head chopped off by a bitter bastard.  After Dear Viewers invest themselves emotionally  in 8 years of adoption drama with Irene Dunn, Cary Grant (in a stellar performance) and  the wonderful Edgar Buchanan as Applejack (an old adoptee),  and a happy ending is finally on the horizon,  Adoptee Nina is struck down by that  mysterious illness of which movie children are prone. Six weeks later, after considering divorce, we find Mom and Dad painting over Nina's room, stripped of all her belongings, to make room for a replacement an older boy--what they really wanted all along anyway. (Newborn adoption wasn't so popular back then). This film would have really messed with my mind if I'd see it when I was Nina's age. No doubt the same people who gripe and whine about Anne of Green Gables love this film.


You can also flyer your campus with  incorrect information about "celebrity adoptees." downloaded from the Students for Life site.   For instance, What do Willie Nelson and Eleanor Roosevelt have in common?"  (Love the High Times graphic!)  Maybe Willie and Eleanor smoked it up at Val-Kill?    No, that's not what they have in common! The "correct" answer is supposed to be  "they're adopted"  But they're not. adopted.  Both were reared by grandparents.  BTW, Eleanor had a kept bastard half brother.

You can see the flyer catalogue here. . If you're going to pimp, do it right.  I'll probably write more about  purposeful celebrity adoptee mis- disinformation later this month..

FEMINISTS FOR LIFE
Feminist for Life, dusts off an old issue of its American Feminist: (Fall-Winter, 2003-2004)-- its Rewarding Motherhood  "family album" issue-- on the joys of motherhood.
.
Relinquished moms discuss satisfaction with open adoption;  married moms, some with large families, write of the rewards of rearing 9 children; adopters speak of their struggle and good fortune in acquiring some courageous woman's child; and adoptees thank their heroic mothers for giving them life.  The curious thing about this is that with the exception or one woman, seeking an abortion or actually having one, never seriously crossed the minds of the writers.  The exception:  an abortion due to pregnancy complications.

Celebrity Feminists for Life front woman, actress Patty Heaton tells us "women who experience an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy." She challenges her readers to "take up the challenge of sacrificing for these women, too."

I didn't find any mention of sacrificing something to keep women and newborns out of the adoption system, though at least one teenage writer actually manged to do it.

ROCK FOR LIFE
Rock for Life is a "project" of the American Life League, an amicus in Doe v Sundquist. I have written about ALL and its founder Judie Brown here , here.,  here, and here with  a couple  more marginal mentions elsewhere.  Judie is one of those Grundys  haunting the American landscape, that can't stand the thought that somebody somewhere is having sex for non-procreative purposes. D W Griffith would have had fun with her. Brown was particularly aggrieved when Planned Parenthood International sent a shipment of condoms to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

Rock for Life's mission, according to its webpage, is "promoting human rights for all people, born and preborn, by engaging the culture through music, education and action." Their page includes an endless list of "pro-life bands" that, with the exception of Skillet,  no one has ever heard of unless they listen to Radio U. Maybe.

The folks at Rock for Life are so convinced that adoption saves lives, though no one says how they know this, that it offers this attractive lime green Adoption Saves Lives hoodie  for only  $35.00.

Rock for Life, in fact, has a busy t-shirt ministry.

Gloming on Steve Jobs death, Rock for Life director Erik Whittington profers his opinion:

What if Steve Jobs was conceived today?  Since his parents weren’t married and both attending college there is a much higher chance he would have been aborted.  Could his mother of withstood the pressure from her friends, her classmates and her family members to abort?  Would she of withstood the pressure of a Planned Parenthood abortion salesperson telling her pregnancy is just a blob of tissue & abortion is harmless?  Many college mothers these days choose abortion over life for their child.  The abortion rate for college aged mothers is astronomical.  I would easily bet my iPhone4 that if Steve Jobs would have been conceived today he most likely would have been aborted...


...Adoption is powerful!  Without the willingness of his mother to place her son in an adoptive home AND for Steve’s adoptive parents to take him as one of their own who knows how the world would be today.  Would we have Apple, Inc.?  What would we do without our Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, iTunes, etc., etc.?

A Rock for Life video features Chris, 15,  who breaks my heart with the bill of BS he's been sold by his adoptive parents who claim his adoption was finalized two weeks before he was scheduled to be aborted! This may be the saddest adoption video I've ever seen.We're here for you Chris!

   
For some reason, many adoption reformists show little interest in getting to know the enemy. .I was surprised no long ago when someone tried to tell me that the abortion v adoption issue was dead.  I can't remember who said it, but she must have been a liberal.  Abortion v adoption is very much alive, and any adoptee rights activist--no matter what his/her beliefs are about abortion (some oppose it) had better know the territory in to which they are walking. God may not make mistakes, but it's up to people like Students for life, Patty Heaton, and Rock for Life to make sure the babies from the wrong tummies end up in the right families.  If you think any different, then you're just a whiner...or worse.

It is absurd, of course, that in the second decade of the 21st century Class Bastard has to spend valuable time debunking adoption myths and defending our right to our own birth records.  Tonight, for instance, I'm engaged in a "discussion" on the Conservative News Network cite regarding records access  I've been told off. but good!   hrumpf!  The restoration of adoptee rights is a "justification for killing babies."

I remember when Pat Robertson pulled that one 15 years ago when Sundquist was running in Tennessee.  It didn't get him very far.

This is from a paper I presented at the American Adoption Congress annual meeting in 1997 and again at the Bastard Nation conference in 2002.  I thought about paraphrasing it, but I think it needs to be quoted in full:

  In the July 2, 1996 edition of The 700 Club, Jay Sekulow, playing to Robertson's bumpkin straight man, contended that the abortion rate would rise in relation to the rate of adoption records made available to adoptees. He even espoused a modified version of the American Life League's abortion conspiracy theory--that, is pro-abortion organizations were going stealth or setting up front groups to push their agendas. Thus, adoptee rights activists and organizations were simply ungrateful bastards with no legitimate beefs and were either knowing agents of abortion or dupes.

The following conversation is taken from the official transcript of that show published at the time on the 700 Club's home page, since erased. Sekulow certainly knew the difference between open records and open adoption, but I have no idea if he made a slip of the tongue, intended to smear openness in adoption in general--or if, in fact if he was implying weirdly that open adoption causes abortion. There is no doubt, though that he was referring to records access.

Jay Sekulow

SEKULOW: ...The significance is that we expect that those who are in favor of abortion, those in the legislature that are pro-abortion, those that are trying to get this whole abortion agenda through, were looking at the Tennessee case and say "Gee, we should do this everywhere because they picked a great name, open adoption, but...

ROBERTSON: Do you really think that they had in view more abortions and less adoption Do you really feel that?

SEKULOW: Pat, they have had to. Can I give you tangible evidence? No, but I can give you the legal evidence. We looked at cases in the Untied States where judges from a Court of Appeals all over the country said, "this type of legislation opening up these records like this is pro-abortion." Those were the words a court said. There's a North Carolina Court of Appeals, Louisiana Court of Appeals, Texas Court of Appeals. These same types of bills were being put forward and the courts said, "The legislation is not pro-life. They said the opposite. They said, "This is pro-abortion This will encourage abortions and discourage adoptions." So they had to know that

Yet nine months later on April 2, 1997 edition of MSNBC's The Site (no longer online), ACLJ's Chief lawyer Larry Crane conceded that the ACLJ did not intend to use evidence they had gathered from a New South Wales study which showed that although abortion rates went up the first year open records were in effect, they declined steady after.

We're not relying on statistical evidence for our case, and we are not required to do to.

That's because there is none. Not that it makes any difference to the "for Life"(trademark) crowd who simply consider adopteess, ponceout of the womb, as another  step to tramp on as they ascend their stairway to heaven.

National Adoption Awareness Month: Shilling for Adoptacrats

NOTE:  Because this entry, originally posted on my main blog,  The Daily Bastardette, covers in part "christian adoption,"  I am cross-posting it here.  The Daily Bastardette is commentary by on identity and adoptee rights, and the atrocities the adoption industry and "friendly" deformers concoct to maintain The Adoption Culture of Shame and Acquiesce.

Today the adoption industry  launches the 2011 edition of  National Adoption Awareness Month. (NAAM) Bastardette knows you've been looking forward to this great event as much as she has.

Coincidentally,  today also marks the first day of November NaBloPoMo . No, that's not an unspeakable sex act.  It's the November edition of National Blog  Posting Month, a blog ritual for over-zealous bloggers  who promise to blog every day on a designated  topic each month.  Topics that only the most abstract students of 19th century British literature can appreciate fully, such as "return" and "between,"  November, however is  the open month, which means we can choose our own bloviation.  My subject, naturally is adoption.

I successfully completed the 2009 November NaBloPoMo none the worse for wear but full of wonderment that I succeeded. . You'd be surprised, though,  at the topics that  land in your brain when you are desperate to cross the finish line. 2010  November NaBloPoMo was more difficult.. I finished exhausted, but finished. This year, due to my summer hiatus I feel up to it--so far. There is so much to write about that surely I can fill up 30 days as easily as filling up water balloon and dropping it on the head of an adoptacrat below.  I've got several topics lined up so far.  It's just a matter of time and articulation.


Today I had planned to comment on suggested NAAM activities listed on the web, but decided commentary would be anti-climatic, so I'll post some links  for your enjoyment instead..  adoption.com furnishes us with a calendar of daily celebratory events:  a dinner table discussion of the history of NAAM; cooking  with child (adoptees beware!); helping your library set up an adoption book display,  surprising your child with a few Chinese or Russian words; creating an adoption family tradition ( GOTCHA?)!;  and adoption stories. (aren't they all?)  My favorite is the activity for November 28:  spend some time at a maternity home. Is that an order? My mother been there done that.  Look what she got out of it.  Or didn't.

Self proclaimed adoption expert and gadfly Mardie Cardwell suggests we

• donate money to adoption foundations; especially Mardie Cardwell's  Lifetime Adoption Foundation. 

• suggest  adoption books to your local library; especially books by Mardie Cardwell

• learn more about Positive Adoption Language, a pet project of  Mardie Cardwell

•  order adoption prayer bracelets designed and sold by Mardie Cardwell. 

Here's a suggestion . Let's change the name of National Adoption Awareness Month to National Mardie Cardwell Awareness Month.

Then  there's Holly Erritt, proprietress of Little Blessing Adoptions, running a  Facebook sale on your Dear Birthparent; Letter; Lifebook. Adoption Resume and webpage design needs.

***NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH SPECIAL FOR NEW LBAS CLIENTS****

Take 10% OFF Adoption Profile Design, 10% OFF Adoption Website Design OR 10% OFF Printing of Adoption Profile Books, Adoption Pass Along Cards, or Adoption Brochures. *New Clients Only - Contract must be received by November 11, 2011

Of course. this doesn't' even begin to cover the hundreds of puffy national and local news stories on the blessings of adoption;  hardluck tales of paps, adopters, and orphans; interviews with adoptacrats (special emphasis on Christocrat adoptacrats); sappy  reunion accounts that not once mention that states continue to refuse to restore  the right of all adoptees to access their birth certificates  without exception, a right these same states once upheld without exception.

NAAM is also a good time for the professional adoption class:  the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, The National Council for Adoption, JCICS, and local agencies to beg poor so they can continue to provide "services" to their clients..  No adoptees need apply.

NAAM also brings lifers out en force  pounding their hammers on the heads of adoptees who exhibit insufficient gratitude for all the work the fetus savers have done in  "our" sacred name. Right to Life,  Students for Life, Feminists for Life, Democrats for Life, Priests for Life,  Life Issues, Institute, the American Life League, Human Life International.will howl incessantly on how adoption saves fetuses baybees for adoption-the-loving-option  (which it doesn't)--and btw, send us money.   By publicly celebrating the spurious"life saving" elements  of adoption, lifers and their ilk can hide their aggressive hatred of Class Bastard and pantless parents who fail to appreciate their efforts and would like more than anything for them  than to go back to their pews and mind their own business.


So welcome to National Adoption Awareness Month and November NaBloPoMo.  Bastardette won't shut up.  We hope you won't either. 

BLOG ALERT: LIVING PRO-LIFE CHOICE FOR WOMEN

A great blog appeared yesterday on Shakesville: Breaking the Silence on Living Pro-Lifer's Choice for Women posted by first mom "Shaker Anonymous." It really tears the lid off the anti-abortion pro-adoptionist arguments.

It speaks for itself, so I won't comment on it here.

Here's a snip:

They're [anti-aborts] always blatting on about how concerned they are for us, apparently because women aren't capable of making decisions without the gently guiding hand of all-knowing patriarchy, lest we irreparably damage our emotions and drown in a whirlpool of remorseful tears. They care ever so deeply about the long-term psychological effects of not having at least 10 months to consider whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, but no mention is ever made about women who actually do give up the baby. Seems to me that anyone who actually does so is lauded far and wide for Doing the Right Thing, but is simultaneously despised for being an unnatural uterus-bearing mechanism which has horribly malfunctioned. Where the fuck did that narrative come from, and why does everyone buy into it at some level?

Thanks to Maryanne for the heads up!

NOT LETTING OBAMA OFF THE HOOK

NOTE: This is cross-posted from my main blog, The Daily Bastardette.

Though, I've been writing about John McCain's adoption problem, (see previous entry) I did not intend to leave Barack Obama off the hook.

Obama, too, warmed to Rick Warren's suggestion of a PEPFAR plan to "rescue" by adoption 148 million so-called orphans 'round the world. His comments below, in conjunction with his earlier stated belief in Jesus as his redeemer,is code for his willingness to open up adoption (more than it already is!) to a globalist evangelical-government partnership.

From the CNN transcript:

WARREN: OK. This one is dear to my heart. Most people don't know that there are 148 million orphans in the world. 148 million kids growing up without mommies and dads. They don't need to be in an orphanage. They need to be in families. But a lot of families can't afford to take these kids in. Would you be willing to consider and even commit to doing some kind of emergency plan for orphans, like President Bush did with AIDS, almost a president's emergency plan for orphans, to deal with this issue?

OBAMA: I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea. I think it's something that we should sit down and figure out, working between non-governmental organizations, you know, national institutions, the U.S. government and try to figure out what can we do. I think that part of our plan, though, has to be, how do we prevent more orphans in the first place, and that means that we're helping to build a public health infrastructure around the world, that we are, you know, building on the great work that you, and by the way, this president has done when it comes to AIDS funding around the world. I think it helps. I'm often a critic of President Bush, but I think the PETFAR [sic] program has saved lives and has done very good work and he deserves enormous credit for that.

Obama has no personal adoption baggage or scandal--that we know of--but like McCain, he has no problem pandering to the christo-socialist adoption agenda and its money-grubbing child redistribution agencies. The US government has no business funding mis-named "faith based" programs of any type, and certainly not those that seek movement and church growth through adopta-evangelization.

Adoption "reformers" need to put both these jokers on notice.

JOHN MCCAIN; "WE HAVE TO MAKE ADOPTION EASIER"

NOTE 1: This is cross-posted from my main blog The Daily Bastardette, where I have been discussing Biblical American connections to adoption.

NOTE: This entry was originally much longer. Due to commitments this Labor Day Weekend, I am unable to finish up, so I am publishing only Part 1. Part 2 will go up next week.

The other day I posted Another Reason to Hate John McCain: He Lies About Adoption. I'd now like to point you to Pound Pup's Legacy's The Black Sheep (please read it all!) for a further view of The John & Cindy Show. Niels lays out a disturbing idea that should send up red flags for anyone with even a passing interest in adoption ethics:

It is a weird story and though it never raised much suspicion, it doesn't make much sense to me, unless it is to cover up the fact John McCain used his political influence to circumvent normal procedures. What couple wouldn't discuss such an important decision without at least consulting one another? Was there no contact between the two, while Cindy McCain was in Bangladesh?

******

During his Saddleback Forum interview with Rick Warren, McCain made the Piercian claim, that USians rush to adopt internationally because adoption in the US is too difficult.

Though non-committal, McCain seemed open to Warren's suggestion that the federal government create an "emergency program" similar to PEPFAR (The President's Plan for AIDS Relief), the 10-year $48 billion abstinence until marriage, condom-free (except for high risk cases), abortion gag, AIDS prevention and treatment program pimped by the Bush administration to poor countries. Recent re-authorization of the program seems to have lightened a few of the more onerous mandates much to the dismay of moral scolds (and here). Liberal critics say that the program has done more to promote the sexual rectitude and ideology of the Catholic Church and Protestant fundamentalists than to prevent the HIV transmission. (See here and here and here for some of their criticism.)

Imagine, now, what mischief "faith-based" adoption wackadoodles--in control of much of the US adoption trade already-- with the imprimatur of the president, could do here and in the Third World, with PEPFAR-type money under the guise of "saving children.

Here is the CNN transcript of the adoption discussion in the McCain-Warren interview (emphasis mine):

WARREN: John, most people don’t know that there are 148 million orphans in the world growing up without parents.

What should we do about this, and would you be willing to consider or even commit to something similar to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS — which he said AIDS is an emergency — a PEPFAR. Could we do a PEPFAR for the emergency plan for 148 million orphans?

Most of these - they don’t need to grow up in orphanages. They need to be in families, and many of those families could take them in if they had some kind of assistance.

MCCAIN: Well, I think we have to make adoption a lot easier in this country. That’s why so many people go to other countries to get - to be able to adopt children.

(APPLAUSE) My great hero and role model Teddy Roosevelt was the first modern American president to talk about adoption and how important it was, and I promise you this is my last story.

Seventeen years ago Cindy was in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She went to Mother Teresa’s orphanage. The nuns brought her two little babies who were not going to live. Cindy came home. I met her at the airplane. She showed me this 5-week-old baby and said, “Meet your new daughter.” She’s 17, and our life is blessed - and that’s what adoption is all about.

(APPLAUSE)

******

It it is extremely important for us to listen to what McCain says about adoption, The McCains alleged skirting of adoption ethics and law, if true, (including Cindy McCain's documented and confessed dope binge in the middle of the procurement-adoption process) and alleged string-pulling in another adoption, indicate the type of entitlement and affect the McCains will have on US adoption policy and reform--especially the movement of domestic and international product--if the presumptive GOP nominee is elected.

We cannot dismiss this as election year blather. If McCain gathers in evangelicals and is elected and Cindy McCain is serious about being the First Lady of Adoption as she said she was in 2000, we could end up with an Adoption Czar in the White House...and adoptees in the dog house.

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