Ohio HB 370: Incurious Insanity trumps facts. Ohio Right to Life's quick and cheap adoption bill passes House

Length was getting out of hand so I've divided this entry into two parts. This is Part 1:  

Wednesday, January 29, the Ohio House passed Sub HB 307, the make-adoption-cheap-and-fast bill brought by Ohio Right to Life. I was unable to attend the floor vote or the final hearing due to my work schedule, and have no idea why 307 is a substitute since there were only minor changes from the original. I wrote at length about the bill, Ohio Right to Life's Infant Adoption Reform Bill: Threatens Birthparent Rights; Doles Out Tax Credits in the  December 5, 2013 issue of the Columbus Free Press Weekly. By way of review, the bill:

• decreases the time an adoption after finalization can be challenged  in Ohio from one year to 60 days;
• increases the state tax credit to adopters from $1500 to $10,000  that can be spread over a  5-year period ;
• creates a mechanism for adoption agencies and lawyers to make direct  "birthparent living expense" payments  (rent, mortgage, utilities, medical)  to service providers rather than the current practice of distributing funds collected by paps to "birthparents" to make their own payments;
• authorizes potential Ohio adoptive parents who have passed a home study to advertise for newborns in the state.  Currently only out-of-state paps can advertise here.

and the most controversial change,  the creation of a two-tiered Putative Father Registry:

• post-birth--decreasing  the timeframe  from 30 days to 7 days after the birth of a baby in which a man can file with the already established Ohio Putative Registry  (PFR) to guarantee his right to notice if an adoption is filed
• pre-birth--authorizing adoption agencies and lawyers, but only with the  written consent of the mother, to inform putative father(s) that an adoption is pending, advising him to file with the PRF if he wants notice. In this case, the putative father has 30 days after receiving the letter to file with the PFR.

Although most of the changes were discussed at the hearing, I am focusing here on the testimony and discussion on putative father treatment. PDF's of testimony are linked at the end of this blog.  I am, however, quoting generously from them below. My emphasis is in bold.  

Proponents speak 
HB 307 proponents Nancy Burley, executive director of Adoption Circle and Indiana adoption lawyer bottom feeder, Steve Kirsch, according to their submitted  testimony, waxed orgasmic at the January 15 hearing over how these changes, especially the PFR alterations, "expand the rights of birthparents."  by creating an "incentive" for women  to "inform the putative father(s), early in the process "

 Burley, after using up the entire first page of her testimony crowing her qualifications to be heard,  threw potential putatives under the train, arguing that men already have more than enough time to register since under Ohio law, sexual intercourse with a woman "puts a man on notice" of potential fatherhood. HB 307 "is only making a 23 day change in the current law."

 While Burley merely trivialized the change, Steve Kirsh told the committee that Ohio putative fathers should just shut up and be grateful. they aren't in Indiana: '

Frankly...Ohio is setting the bar fairly low for a a putative father to protect his rights.   Under Indiana law, he has to actually file a paternity action and ask the court to make him legally and financially responsible for the child for the next twenty-one years in  order to preserve his parental rights.  Under House Bill 307, all he needs to do is register with the Ohio Putative Father Registry. In essence, what HB 307 is asking of him to take a tiny step to express a desire to be involved in the adoption process without any legal, financial or emotional commitment.

 Funny thing. Registration in the Putative Father Registry in both states is simply a mechanism by which a man can secure his right to  notice if an adoption of a child he believes he's fathered is filed. Registration does not challenge or stop an adoption. To do that, a man must  file in the PFR   and show in Probate Court that he did not abandon the mother or fail to support the child. (and prove, if challenged that he is the biological father.) To become the legal father, he must file a paternity action in Juvenile Court.  Kirsh failed to note that a man cannot realistically file a paternity action without knowing that a pregnancy has occurred.

Kirsh, Burley, Buchy, and ORTL can't have it both ways. If a man must register without knowing about a pregnancy, then he cannot be required to file a paternity action--a actual law suit-- without knowing about the pregnancy . A  potential child must be known of to sue in court.

 The "birthmother" remains the information gatekeeper.  If she doesn't want the man to know, there's a good chance he won't. And if he does know and files a pre-birth claim under HB 307, the filing puts the woman on notice that the father might seek to stop the adoption, consequently incentivizing her be secretly and consensually be shuffled off to Utah where she can dump her newborn into the L-d-S adoption maw.

Opponents Speak
 A couple of sane heads prevailed at the hearing, though in the end were unsuccessful in stopping this cluster fuck.

Denise St.Clair, director of the Capital University Law School National Center for Adoption Law and Policy supported pre-birth notification, but did not agree with the shortened post-birth timeframe. She pointed out that under current law putative fathers already can file with the PFR anytime before the birth of the child and  up to 30 days after. She explained to the  the committee what PFR registration  in Ohio does and does not do.

 The right (parental rights) is not absolute; the putative father's consent is not required if the court finds that he has not the father of the minor. or that he has willfully abandoned or failed to care for and support the minor ,or that the putative father has willfully abandoned the mother of the minor during her pregnancy and up to the time of her surrender of the minor or the minor's placement in the home of the petitioner. With these limitations and safeguards in place the reduction of time during which a putative father may register appears to be unnecessary and could place a nearly insurmountable barrier to putative fathers who want to and are suitable to parent a child.

 Seeming to take aim at Ohio Right to Life's refusal to accept input from adoption reformers, those directly affected by adoption, and even Quad A (Nancy Burley aside) she testified,:

 We can conceive of no benefit for adoptive children through such a change.  The vast majority of stakeholders with whom we have discussed this issue do not support this process change.  In fact, Section (not listed) does not eliminate the potential that other men who do not receive notice may claim paternity or putative father status to the child and register as provided for notice is not received.  If the goal is to decrease the chance that a potential father may appear late in the game, we are not sure that this provision will have that effect.  Putative or legal fathers who are not so identified will still have the opportunity to take measures to protect their rights--as they should.

The Ohio Judicial Conference agreed, Speaking  for the conference's Probate Law and Procedure Committee, Kenneth J Spicer, Delaware County Probate/Juvenile Court Judge argued that  HB 307 threatened constitutional challenges in two areas: putative father classifications and the decrease in challenge time. Spicer argued that different treatment of similarly situated putative fathers could have "dangerous implications in certain very probable situations" that could give rise to equal protection action. He urged the committee to restore the 30-day registration timeframe for all to avoid legal complications.

Spicer then waved a very large red flag, Citing Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 60(B) which governs the timing for a motion for relief from a final judgement which specifies that a motion must be made within a reasonable time, including one year for specified circumstances. He argued HB 307 could cause confusion between attorneys and courts, and could create a constitutional challenge from a father affected adversely by

create{s} a conflict between the Rules and the {Ohio Revised} Code.  This provision of the bill attempts to modify court procedure... an area that the Ohio Constitution grants to Supreme Court which would be a more proper venue for this kind of change.

In other words,  under Ohio's separation of powers doctrine, the General Assembly has no authority to change court rules which are controlled, under the Ohio constitution, by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Kayla Smith, ORTL lobbyist, sidestepped when questioned about the constitutionally of the 2-tired system. She argued other states already have a  seven day registration-timeframe that has passed judicial scrutiny, but ignored the fact that  those states do not have a two-tiered system--the very constitutional problem Judge Spicer and Denise Sr Clair warned against.. But, hey! ORTL is AOK with the tiers because Ohio Legislative Service, the entity that vets bills, said it was constitutional. If LS were always correct, of course, then no law could ever be challenged successfully.

 Passage in House

Despite the factual testimony of Denise St Clair and Judge Spicer, HB 307 passed out of committee with only John Patrick Carney (D-Columbus--and a friend to bastards) opposing.  When the bill went to the House floor, Carney attempted to add an amendment that would remove all  the bill's changes to the current PRF law .  He was defeated   57-34. .  The final bill passed   77-14.

Although HB 307 has been moved to the Senate for consideration, no hearings are scheduled.  Sen. Shannon Jones (R-Springboro) the original sponsor of HB 307 who either dumped it or was dumped by ORTL after she  raised issues with it, has introduced an alternative bill , SB 250. I haven't read it, yet, but understand it's a milder version of ORTL's monstrosity,  It stresses foster care adoption which ORTL  has studiously ignored throughout HB 307's promotion.  SH 250 may have a better chance of passing.

I'll write about it later. Part 2 will deal with what I see as Ohio Right to Life's agenda and strategy to position itself as an adoption player in the state. I'll also talk some more about  how sponsor Jim Buchy and ORTL has "handled" complaints (even from supporters) that HB 307 does little or nothing  to actually increase adoption of newborns

Links to Testimony

Adoption Circle HB307 Testimony-NBurley001
SKirsh HB307 Testimony001 (1)
ORTL HB307 Testimony-KSmith001
NCALP HB307 Testimony001 OH 
Jud Conf HB307 Testimony-KSpicer001

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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

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.

Informed Consent v Informed Consent: Redux

Hypocrisy boiled to the top yesterday as Ohio Right to Life client-in-chief,  governor John Kasich, signed HB 63. The bill, sloganeered to "protect parental rights and save lives" was designed to "tighten" Ohio's parental consent loophole that allows  unmarried underage  women to get the juvenile court's permission, rather than, their parents, to undergo an abortion.

Hypocritical because the same politicians who cry foul over the judicial bypass for abortion, claiming it interferes with family communication and the ability of parents to oversee their daughters' medical needs, also support Ohio's "safe haven" law, which encourages teen women to carry a secret pregnancy to term with no parental knowledge or  medical monitoring, give secret birth alone under dangerous conditions, and then anonymously abandon the secret baby at an ER or fire station with no questions asked.

Nobody will ever have to know you had this baby.

ORTL director Mike Gonidakis celebrating its latest victory told the Columbus Dispatch:

Ohio is witnessing the blessings of having the most pro-life governor and general Assembly in our state's history working together to save lives.

Ya mean like this  (from my earlier Daily Bastardette and Theoconia blogs) Mike:

In the bizarro world of Ohio Right to Life, parental involvement  in teen pregnancies when "saving fetuses" is involved, is essential to the maintenance of “traditional family values” Involvement is eliminated in the name of “traditional family values” when it comes to the safety and welfare of young pregnant women, just delivered mothers, and just born babies as long as the babies are scheduled to be dumped on an ER counter.


Under the banner of informed consent, Ohio Right to Life insists on scaring -warning pregnant women with  a laundry list of what it claims are the harmful affects of abortion,   At the same time it  ignores the harmful affects of  secret pregnancy on the fetus,  the harmful affects of unattended secret birth on baby and mother, and the harmful affects of child abandonment. on both. Moreover, it does not address the legal ramifications of "safe haven." which are beyond the scope of this piece, but include protracted legal proceedings including  closed court hearings, the the filing of a deserted child complaint, and expensive DNA testing if reunification is desired.

HB 63 was signed with much fanfare that included a bevy of ORTL politicians, supporters and the inevitable troop of babies that appear at all ORTL functions.  (There was even a baby at the Glenn Beck installation.)

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. 

Vote Pro Life: A short conversation with Sister Mary Clement and Francis

When l I was downtown today (see below)  I spotted two people standing quietly on either side of the High Street entrance of the Statehouse with banners reading: Vote Pro Life: One Nation Under God!

They identified themselves as Francis and Sister Mary Clement from Holy Family Church.  Francis told me that they were not affiliated with any organization.  He doesn't even own a computer.  He assured me he'd never heard of Dave Daubenmire, Mark Harrington,  Patrick Johnston, and the rest of our local obstreperous  theocrats.  I can't imagine they would have much to talk about anyway.  Sister Mary Clement and Francis were just out there urging people to "vote for honest politicians." (A pretty big order!) not threatening the general population with hellfire.

Francis told me although only two people were present, there were really five:  Sister Mary Clement, Francis, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Ohio Right to Life: Informed Consent v Informed Consent--It's All Situational

On September 27, the Ohio Senate passed HB 63, an Ohio Right Right to Life  (ORTL)  bill to "tighten" up the procedures by which unmarried women in Ohio under the age of 18 can get an abortion without parental notification and consent. The passage of HB 63 is another tool to hack away at abortion access in the state. The bill, however, gives us the opportunity to expose the duplicitous  nature of ORTL's fraudulent concerns about  "informed consent" "parental involvement" and "best interests" of teen women.. Dubious at best, these bytes  spewed out to the public are nullified by ORTL's  sponsorship, support, and promotion of Ohio's "safe haven law,"  which encourages women-- and targets teens especially-- to hide pregnancies, give birth unattended, and to turn over their newborns  anonymously to the state with no counseling, no parental involvement, and no health care, all under their "pro-life" banner.


JUDICIAL BYPASS
Under Ohio law, an unmarried woman under the age of 18 cannot get an abortion without parental consent.  She can, however, loophole out by utilizing the judicial bypass procedure which permits her to go to juvenile court and request the state's consent  for her abortion outside of the family structure. This legal procedure requires judges to inquire about the minor's understanding of the "possible physical and emotional complications of abortion and how she would respond to such complications."  That is, judges are forced to consider, for the most part, a laundry list of  ORTL and Friends myths about abortion. The teen's responses determine her mental and emotional "maturity" to undergo the procedure.  Oddly, a young woman  ruled  too "emotionally  immature" to have an abortion  is considered  mature enough to carry a pregnancy to term, give birth, and presumably rear a child--unless she decides to place it for adoption, or dump the newborn anonymously at a no-questions-asked state-facilitated "safe haven" drop-off point--neither of which requires consent of the teen's parents or a judicial bypass to accomplish.

There are no good figures on how many judicial bypass requests have been made in Ohio since the law went into effect in 1985. In 2003, however,  the Akron Beacon Journal, under a public information request  to selected county juvenile courts, was able to identify 515 requests made between 2000 and late 2003. Out of those, 73 were denied. Unfortunately, the Beacon Journal article is no longer online so I'm forced to use the biased secondary source Life.com. for these figures and other information regarding the survey..

Since the survey was reported, the  number of successful loopholes has been a bug up the nose of our local anti-aborts, and over the last few months ORTL has been working on passage of HB 63 to tighten them up. (Earlier bills were unsuccessful.)  HB 63 passed the House in March, and last week, a slightly different version passed the Senate. After the concurrence hearing, it's all over but the signing.


HB  63 was sponsored and supported by Speaker of the House William Batchelder and a gaggle of House and Senate Republicans. Many of them oppose the right of adopted adults to access their original birth certificates..  Two of them are Rep.Matt Hoffman and Bob Mecklenborg who rolled their eyes and cracked jokes to each other during, and walked out during 2008 testimony  (and here and here) before the House Health Committee in support of the original HB 7 records access/adoption and foster care reform bill. Mecklenborg was recently forced to resign from his House seat after he was arrested in Indiana drunk and pumped up with Viagra in the company of a stripper (who he described as "an old family friend").

 The Senate analysis of the bill indicates that HB 63 does the following: (my bold)

• Requires the court, in a hearing to permit a pregnant minor to consent to an abortion or by which a court may give judicial consent to an abortion, to specifically inquire about the minor's understanding of the possible physical and emotional complications of abortion and how the minor would respond if the minor experienced those complications after the abortion. 

•  Requires the court, in a hearing of the type described in the previous dot point, to specifically inquire about the extent to which anyone has instructed the minor on how to answer questions and on what testimony to give at the hearing.

•  Requires the court, in a hearing of the type described in the second preceding dot point, to make its findings regarding whether or not the minor is sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion and whether or not the abortion is in the best interests of the minor by clear and convincing evidence

“Rubber stamping” and an alleged lack of "informed consent” is ORTL’s putative complaint. Last February, ORTL lobbyist Stephanie Krider, testifying before the House Health and Aging Committee claimed that the current judicial bypass procedure is nothing but blatant government contempt for parental involvement in a teenager's decision to seek an abortion. To underscore her point, Krider claimed, presenting no evidence,  that underage women going to court are being over-prepped by lawyers, Planned Parenthood, and even "older men" (aka seducer adult males fearful of statuary rape or rape charges) ) on how to respond to judges' queries and manipulate the decision to the petitioner’s favor.  (Krider forgot to mention that communication between client and attorney are confidential, thus suggesting at a broader long-term objective to the bill than just "informed consent.") Since bypass hearings are closed to the public, she complained. parents are denied the right to legal representation and  to cross examine the teen or present opposing testimony.  She says that judges tend  to ask routine scripted questions, but then hints of an organized high school underground that informs teenagers of "new" questions a specific judge has asked recently.


IN THEIR OWN WORDS
 Here are some quotes direct from the keyboard of ORTL and its legislative cronies bemoaning the deficiency of parental input and informed consent in the judicial bypass procedure:.  (My bold):

•  The fact that so many judges automatically  conclude that it is in the minor's "best interest" to have an abortion without notifying her parents shows that they have no concept of how physically and emotionally harmful an abortion can be to a young woman...Parents kept in the dark about their daughter's abortion may underestimate the importance of signs of physical and emotional problems until it’s too late.  Mark Lally, ORTL legislative counsel, LifeNews.com, November 11, 2003. 

•  Ohioans know that parental consent laws save lives...We are trying very hard to preserve parents' ability to help their daughters when they are confronted with the challenges of teenage pregnancy.  A recent study proved that responsible parental consent laws reduce the minor abortion rate by 18.7 percent.  Mike Gondiakis, Executive Director of ORTL, Ohio Right to Life Press Release,  March 16, 2011. 

• A minor's decision to terminate a pregnancy can have immeasurable consequences.  It is critical that we do everything possible to allow for meaningful parental input.  HB 63 sponsor Ron Young, Life News.com, March 16, 2011.

•  The pro-life legislation will protect minors and their unborn children by strengthening parental involvement and consent laws. Mike Gondiakis, Executive Director, ORTL Press Release, June 22, 2011. 

•  This pro-life legislation will protect minors and their unborn children by closing loopholes and raising the bar to protect parents' ability to care for their children."... "HB 63 strengthens parents; ability to care for their children and prevents lawyers and others from taking mom and dad's place when the child needs them most."   Mike Gondiakis, Executive Director, ORTL Press Release, September 27, 2011. 

All of this rhetoric about informed consent and strengthening, family communication, parental involvement and rights (real or otherwise) in the untimely pregnancies of teen daughters would normally be talk I'd not be writing about here. It's all old ho-hum.  Everybody knows that ORTL’s real problem is that somebody somewhere is having an abortion.

Ohio Right to Life and its friends in the General Assembly, however,  are on legislative record  as opposing informed consent, family communication, and parental involvement in  the unplanned pregnancies of their teen daughters when it fits the organization's political agenda.

With its support and promotion of the state's "Desertion of Child Under 72 Hours Old Act" (DCA), popularly known as the "safe haven" law" that lets women of any age legally abandon their newborn children anonymously with no questions asked, ORTL  guts its demand for informed consent and parental involvement in critical child-bearing decisions that can effect their daughters’ and their grandchildren's physical and mental health permanently, and in the process, collapses on its self-defined moral high ground.

THE OHIO RIGHT TO LIFE EXCEPTION
 Ohio's "safe haven" law, is the ultimate loophole. It doesn't require a lawyer.  It doesn't require parental notification or consent. It doesn't require a judicial bypass hearing. It doesn't require counseling, "informed consent". or  even a  flyer listing alternatives to legalized dumping. It doesn't require  surrender documents and other tedious paperwork.  It doesn't even require that the "parent" be identified  by name, show an ID, or prove legal custody. It only requires the desire of someone to get rid of a baby after it's born.with no fuss, muss, and untidy questions .

Ohio law permits any  woman (or man) of any age to anonymously "relinquish" a newborn at designated state-approved drop-off points such as ERs, fire stations and police stations.  (Despite the hype, "safe haven" infants aren't being "relinquished" for adoption, though adoption may be the outcome. Infants are, instead, being thrown into the juvenile court and CPS to founder for at least a year. until their legal status is clarified.)  Some states' laws are broader and  include drop-offs at  staffed churches, dentist offices, health departments--and "any responsible person" (no definition of "responsible person” given). In  a few states such as Florida, "safe haven" agents are barred legally from asking newly delivered mothers if they need medical assistance. Legally complicated and sometimes expensive  mechanisms are in place for parents or kin to retrieve the child.

 Passed in late 1999, HB 660,  Ohio's original "safe haven" law, was enacted during a wave of moral panic in response to a falsely perceived  nationwide epidemic of newborn discard and neonaticide fueled by mainstream media that focused on rare and sensational incidents. such as the infamous  1998 "Prom Mom" case. Initially, the law legalized  the anonymous dumping of babies up to three days of age. In  2008, under SB 304, the General Assembly expanded the age frame to children up to 30 days old, though  as in 1999,  there was no evidence that infant discard was  a problem in Ohio.

 HB 660 was a creature of the legislature with some support from public child welfare agencies. Law enforcement, also supported the measure even though hearing witnesses admitted they had no memory of discard incidents in their jurisdictions. .The bill received  no support from child welfare and adoption ethicists, adoptee rights/adoption reform groups or for the most part,  private adoption agencies,.

Opponents  raised serious ethical and legal questions, pointing out that legalized baby dumping is irreconcilable to best practice in child welfare and adoption; a heave-ho to over 100 years of evolving  practice and a slap in the face of everyone who has ever surrendered a child "the right way."


Moreover, "safe haven" laws did nothing to decrease infant abandonment. On the contrary, they gave infant abandonment the state's seal of approval, which in turn encouraged women who would have otherwise  sought counseling and alternatives to abandonment to now make  "non-bureaucratic surrenders” that lacked the legal protections for mother and child under traditional child welfare law.  They were  also concerned that the law, with the promise that "nobody would ever have to know you had this child" would encourage young women to forgo pre- and post natal care, putting  the welfare and lives of themselves and their babies at risk.

 Reform groups  particularly objected to lack of informed consent and parental involvement, anonymous "relinquishment,” secret birth and adoption, and the erasure of  the other parent  (usually fathers) and the biological family.. Adoption agencies were especially critical of  hidden, unattended pregnancies and birth,  lack of informed consent, and lack of fathers’ consent, all of which in business terms, put their own incomes at risk.


In 1999, I attended three of the four  House Children and Family Services Committee hearings for HB 660 and testified against the bill at the second hearing. So-called "pro-life" proponents made no objection to the lack of informed consent and parental input.or the inherent danger of unattended pregnancy and birth. They acted as if magic babies would suddenly appear on a pink fluffy cloud, clean and healthy as ...well... who knows.  One woman from Akron whose church was eager to adopt "every abandoned baby in the state" testified  that  medical conditions and psychological problems caused by secret pregnancy, delivery, and anonymous abandonment were unimportant. "The baby will just  be glad to be alive.  If it has problems, it will just have to live with it."

Neither the Church Lady nor the committee as a whole cared just what those problems might be. Children born with no pre-natal care are subject to numerous disabilities including cerebral palsy, mental retardation and delay, blindness, low birth weight, diabetes and hyperlidemia, short life spans.and...death.  Women who receive no pre- or post-natal care and give birth unattended are subject to life-threatening pregnancy-related disabilities including infection, premature birth, breech birth,  placenta previa/accreta (which can require a C-Section), preeclampsia, hypermesis, gravidarum,  post-partum depression or psychosis, and... death.. Very young women are at especially high risk.

House sponsor and bill author Rep Cheryl Wmikler, who also chaired the House committee meetings,  made the improbable claim  during one hearing that 14-year old girls,  a few moments after giving birth alone over a toilet or in a bathtub, would just hop on a bus or catch a ride with "an older friend in college" (!) and drop off the baby before anyone knew what had happened. Bleeding out was not an option..

 "Safe haven" was seen simply as another way to "save babies." and consequences  be damned!   Winkler, in fact, closed each hearing with a tearful  "Thank you for saving the babies." (see Carol Sanger's excellent Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life, Columbia Law Review  104:4 :4 May 2006 on the connection in the greater political culture between "safe haven" laws and abortion.). Ironically, when the bill passed the House, the two dissenting votes came from the most conservative anti-abortion members in the chamber:  Rep Jim Jordan (now  a Congressman) and  Rep. Ron Young, both believing that the law "cheapened life." Jordan, during hearings, objected on many of the same grounds as did adoption reformers and adoptee rights activists.  Cincinnati Republican Doug White opposed in the Senate..

 HB 660 passed into law, dreaded rubber stamp in hand.


LEGISLATORS ON THE RECORD
Ohio Right to Life's legislative support for  HB 660  is no longer online. For more than a decade, though, it  has supported baby dumping and advocated  the use of "safe havens" by posting information about the program on its website.  Various ORTL state affiliates link back to it.  Its webpage does not mention medical complications and psychological problems for mother and child..Other state anti-abortion organizations signed on, too:   Americans United for Life, The Catholic Conference of Ohio, Democrats for Life in Ohio, Ohio Christian Alliance, Priests for Life, and the Life Issues Institute.)

 ORTL's support for SB 304, the 2008 expansion law, however, is easy to find..  ORTL testified in support of SB 304, but it's testimony is not online.  In a  December 9, 2008,  press release, though,  distributed to anti-abortion organizations and media throughout the country, and reprinted in ORTL state affiliate newsletters,  ORTL Director, Mike Gondiakis praised the expansion. "We believe that extending the time frame when a parent can use the Safe Haven law will help protect babies."

Large numbers of ORTL  PAC recommendations for  the 2008 session put their names on SB 304 and another time expansion measure, HB 485.  The second bill,  which would have  increased the age eligibility from three to six days, was left to die in committee in the wake of SB 304. (See sidebar below for names)


Ironically, by supporting the extension of the dump age to 30 days,  ORTL and its legislative buddies, appeared downright anti-family, suggesting that parents should be able to test-drive their children before deciding to keep them.  (This is not a far-fetched.  In California,  proponents of several unsuccessful attempts to expand that state’s “safe haven” time frame, citing post-partum depression, protracted C-section recoveries, and  new-parent sleep deprivation, argued that parents need time to decide they are up to the task, and they should be able to "send the baby back" if they came up short.  In a moment of clarity California Right to Life Advocates and the California Right to Life Committee opposed the expansion for moving the intent of “safe haven" from "child saving" to "child welfare.")

 Not satisfied with simply having baby dumping on the books, sponsors of both expansion bills included provisions  for the state to educate "at  risk populations" on how to abandon newborns without going to jail. HB 485 specifically required some sort of high school curriculum  unit  be developed "pertaining to the desertion of a child less than one hundred and forty-four hours after birth by parents with no intent to return for the child."  In effect, "safe haven" proponents and ORTL were eager to teach teenagers how to avoid parental detection of pregnancy and birth. So far, we have not see any baby abandonment curriculum coming out of the state, though several states, including California, Illinois and Catholic schools in  Florida 


THE SCAM
In the bizarro world of Ohio Right to Life, parental involvement  in teen pregnancies when "saving fetuses" is involved, is essential to the maintenance of “traditional family values” Involvement is eliminated in the name of “traditional family values” when it comes to the safety and welfare of young pregnant women, just delivered mothers, and just born babies as long as the babies are scheduled to be dumped on an ER counter.

Under the banner of informed consent, Ohio Right to Life insists on scaring -warning pregnant women with  a laundry list of what it claims are the harmful effects of abortion,   At the same time it  ignores the harmful effects of  secret pregnancy on the fetus,  the harmful effects of unattended secret birth on baby and mother, and the harmful effects of child abandonment. on both. Moreover, it does not address the legal ramifications of "safe haven." which are beyond the scope of this piece, but include protracted legal proceedings including  closed court hearings, the filing of a deserted child complaint against the "courageous" parent, and expensive DNA testing if reunification is desired.

Current informed consent procedures in Ohio include a menu of  best practice and ORTL-friendly  warnings, but "safe haven" procedures require none. Ever.  Mental retardation?.  Fine!  Premature? Fine! Breech birth?  Fine.  Preeclampsia?  Fine. Excessive bleeding?  Fine! Post Partum Depression?  Fine.   You'd think this would worry ORTL and its Statehouse point men, but it doesn't.   It it did, it wouldn't be pimping  baby abandonment.

______________________________

SIDEBAR

OHIO RIGHT TO LIFE PAC RECOMMENDATIONS FOR 2008 AND 2010 ELECTIONS WHO SUPPORT INFORMED CONSENT FOR ABORTION BUT NOT FOR "SAFE HAVEN"

Also see The Company They Keep below

____________________

SB 304:  Over half of the sponsors of SB 304 were either ORTL PAC endorsees or preferred candidates for the 2008 election.  

Senate:  6 out of 21 sponsors:  Cates, Wagoner, Seitz, Faber, Neihaus, Austria (already in office, but running for Congress with ORTRL endorsement).  

House:  31 out of 68 sponsors: Goodwin, Sears, Uecker, Wachtmann, Huffman, Mecklenborg, Jones, B Williams, Adams, Bacon, Batchelderr, Blessing, Bolon, Bubp, Coley, Combs, Dodd, Gardner, Garrison, Gibbs, Hite, Hottinger, Hughes, Mandel, Newcomb, Oelslanger, Schlichter, Stewart and Sehringer.  Brinkman,  a veteran of ORTL point man was term limited out at the time of the vote and Nero was a "preferred candidate."  Brinkman,  a veteran of ORTL point man  was term limited out at the time of the vote and Nero was a "preferred candidate."

HB 465: 10 out of 28 sponsors of HB 465 were ORTL PAC endorsees:  DeGeeter (lead spoonsor) and: Watchmann, Garrison, Driehaus,. Brinkman, McGregor, Combs, Dodd,  Bolon,  BWilliams, Gardener,  and Domenick.

HB 304 and HB 63: 13 ORTL-PAC  endorsees sponsored SB 304 against parental involvement and informed consent for baby dumping  and sponsored HB 63 for parental involvement and informed consent: for abortion:    Goodwin, Sears, Ueucker, Hoffman, Wachtman, Mecklenborg, J Adams, Batchelder, Blessing, Coley Bubp, Gardener, Hottinger.

To keep the record straight and going: 2010 ORTL PAC endorsses either not endorsed earlier or not in office during the 2008 SB 304 campaign  who supported the new bypass regs are  Roegner,  Henne,  Brenner,  Maag,  Boose,  Grossman, Martin, Stautberg,  Kozlewski, Dovilla, Blair, Combs, McKenney, Burke, Balderson, Amstutz, Beck, R. Adams, McClain, Rosenberger, Johson, Schuring, Carey, Gonzales, and Young. For unknown reasons, Senate sponsors aren't included on the Senate copy of theonline bill,  but Mike Gondakis, in his September 27 press release thanks  ORTL PACT endorsees and expansionists Nehaus and Wagoner.for their support for informed consent.

Rep (and sometime Senator) ) Kurt Schuring is probably the only institutal memory of the1999-2008  baby dmp campaign left at the Statehouse.  He was an original lead sponsor in the House, and a sponsor of the expansion in the Senate. In 2008 I reminded him that in 1999  Cheryl Winkler, author of the original law,  had adamantly opposed an extension of the timefame calling anything beyond three days "premeditated abandonment."  He acted like I'd just told him Kim Kardasian had written the Declaration of Independence, though the nformation came directly from the lips of Winkler's legislative aide to my ear.  Schurding was also a sponsor of  the HB63 judicial bypass changes. Although not a ORTL PAC endorsee, he comes close to it. Rep. Ron Young, who opposed the original "safe haven bill" was also a sponsor of HB 63.

*THE COMPANY THEY KEEP

Jared Martin:  In  January 2010 Rep.Jarrd Martin and five other men were kicked out a Beavercreek hotel .for fighting.during a bachelor party.  Two months later, in March, he  was found drunk, slumped over the steering wheel of Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder's Chevy Suburban in an overnight downtown parking garage.  Then, on. July 27, 2011, Martin was arrested at a traffic stop near Beavercreek and charged with drunk driving and child endangering  At that point, Speaker Batchelder asked Martin to "consider" resigning his seat. Martin refused, saying he doesn't have a drinking problem and then mumbled somethng about "stupid rumors."

Robert Mecklenborg: In April, Rep. Bob Mecklenborg was arrested in Indiana drunk and pumped up with Viagara while in the company of a stripper.  Later he neglected to mention his arrest when applying for his new drivers's license. . House Speaker Bill Batchelder requested Mecklenborg's resignation.  Although the resignation was announced  in mid-July, it did not take effect until August 2. 

Sen. Kris Jordan (and here): In July and August 2011,  Sen. Kris Jordan was investigated by the Delaware County Sheriff''s Department after his wife, Melissa, the Delaware County Recorder,  made several calls to the 911 center asking for assistance and then cancelling. She reported that he was drunk and had a gun. (Both have CCW permits).  Later he claimed the Sheriff's office was conspiring to destroy his political career. No charges were filed.

A slightly different version of the article  appears in the Columbus Free Press.