Adoptees Rights

[raybuffer]

 

Adoptees are Everywhere.  Will you assist our cause?

http://amendment.cjb.net 

 

There are only 5 states in the U.S.A.(Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Oregon, and Tennessee) that provide adoptees access to their original birth certificates. Allow me to explain the problem. When a closed adoption occurs the original birth certificate is sealed and hidden. Some adoptees after 1983 enjoyed open adoptions, but the majority of adoptions are still closed. A fictionalized  birth certificate with a new name, new parents and false delivery physician signatures is what adoptees are permitted to access through vital statistics. Adoptees have no access to medical records, ethnic heritage, or a consistent biological history.

The last class of United States citizens that were deprived of such basic rights were known as slaves.

A petition has been developed to bring awareness to legislators and the public by insisting that adoptees in all 50 states over the age of 18, possess their original birth certificates. Slavery was abolished with a constitutional amendment, and it was through an amendment that women were empowered to vote. Please sign this petition that demands an "Adoptees' Amendment", and help restore an invisible minority to equal status. "All men were created equal..." yet under the current political climate, adoptees are not.

The Constitution provides for all citizens to have the right to life. It also demands that all persons have their rights to property.  By denying Adoptee's their Original Birth certificates the State Governments are denying adoptee's their rights to property. They are being denied access to, or possession of, the Original Birth Certificates which every other citizen in this country is entitled to. They are therefore suffering discrimination as a class of citizen and their Civil Rights are being denied them.  Many adoptee's are being denied their right to LIFE because they are refused necessary medical information that is relevant to their health and welfare, information which provides them with genetic predisposition to diseases which may cause harm to their lives is not accessible to the adopted person, in preference of closed adoption records.

The United States of America has not ratified the United Nations' "Convention of the Child", which includes international law regarding the sale of children, as well as on the involvement of children in armed  conflict. Out of all the countries in the world, the U.S.A. remains one of three countries, together with Somalia and Timor-Leste(which newly became a country in September of 2002), that is not a party to this human rights treaty.

Civil Rights for Adoptees in America is a Human Rights issue that all Americans should care about. Please join the thousands of other citizens who would like to see an end to the unconstitutional treatment of adoptees as separate and unequal. Please click on the link below. It will take you to the petition which can be signed online. When you are through, please consider forwarding the petition to as many people that you know.

http://amendment.cjb.net 

 

My Very Best Regards,


Ray Buffer
(DOB 9/2/69 Florida)
Moderator of Adoptee Activists on Yahoo at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adopteeactivists
 
 

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi Raybuffer,

Are you an adoptee yourself?

My wife & I adopted two wonderful boys here in Israel. We adopted our eldest in May 1997 when he was 4 months old 7 our youngest in November 2000 when he was a wee 2.5 weeks. All domestic adoptions here are, by law, under the sole & exclusive jurisdiction of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare's Child Welfare Service; private adoption, US style, is very illegal. All CWS adoptions are closed & doubleblind. An adoptee here, when they turn 18, may go to the CWS & ask to see his/her file. (The birthparents have no similar right; the initiative must come from the adoptee.) The file will be shown minus identifying details about the birthparents. If the adoptee wishes to contact his/her birth parents, the CWS will act as an intermediary & first ascertasin the birthparents' wishes. If the birthparents do not care to be identified and/or contacted, then there is no identification/contact. Our eldest son's bmom walked out of the hospital 5 days after giving birth to him, after having presented false/stolen identification details, and disappeared; his bdad is a complete mystery. We know a little more about our youngest son's bparents.

I would sign the petition only if the type of consent system we have here in Israel is put in place. I cannot see how one person's right to see his/her original birth certificate necessarily takes precedent over another person's right to privacy. If there are medical grounds, the CWS will approach the birthparents (to the extent that their whereabouts are known).

Be well!

ssv

 

[gimracs]

Are you claiming that adoptees cannot own property, cannot get a passport, and are forced into labor in a manner different than the rest of us? Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see a whole lot of anti-adoptee discrimination going on. It's not on any job application I've ever seen, not on the driver's license form, and there aren't "non-adoptees only" seatings areas on buses.

 

[raybuffer]

SSV,

Secrecy/privacy is not promised in writing to any party of adoption in the United States. It is merely implied by social workers and upheld by States due to capitalistic greed. Adoption is a business. Adoptive parents are customers and money talks. The secrecy is mentioned because it is a comfort to the adoptive family. They fear someone coming out of the woodworks to claim their child or take their child away.

Adoptees rights must take priority. Adoptees deserve the same ability to access their original birth certificate that you enjoy. They are not a lower class of human or a pet. Their rights should not be subordinate to the convenience of other parties. The ignorant reply to this usually is: "What are you fussing about, you should be glad someone finally wanted you, and that you weren't aborted."

Many adoptees have died of terminal illnesses that could have been treated or caught early if they had biological/genetic information regarding their heritage. Is your privacy and the privacy of birth parents more important than a human life?

The marketing of babies is wrong. A rough analogy might be the tale of when Jesus was in the temple and he chastised the rabbis for bringing money inside. Just as faith in God is not for sale, babies, the most precious in God's eyes should not be for sale, either. People are spending thousands of dollars vying for the perfect babies. White males command the highest prices, going for as much as $70,000. Females sell for less, babies of color even less and those with medical conditions are practically given away at $5,000 to $7,000.

When the rights of the adoptee's are not honored and babies are sold in closed adoptions, whether they be legal or not, it is only a civilized version of slavery, and the amended birth certificates are only a receipt.

I recommend you read the following websites when you have a moment. You asked if I was an adoptee. I am. My site is also below. But make sure to review the other sites as well as they may give you a new perceptive on this issue.

Best Regards,

Ray Buffer
Moderator of Adoptee Activists on Yahoo at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adopteeactivists

Let your voice be heard! Sign this petition for the Adoptee's Amendment: http://amendment.cjb.net
Over 3727 signatures and counting!

Learn more at these Websites:

Visit my personal ADOPTEE page at: http://adoptee.cjb.net
Adoptees' Caucus for Truth - http://www.caucus.cjb.net
Learn about human rights initiatives, adoption statistics and books: http://theeducatedadoptee.cjb.net
The Genesis of Adoption and it's evolution: http://genesisofadoption.cjb.net/

 

[eldermike]

I moved this thread here so it would not violate our self promotion rules.

Blessings

 

[Brimshack]

I can't remember if I'm allowed to post in this forum or not. I followed it here from apologetics. Anyway, sorry if I'm breaking the rules.

Ray: I signed the petition, but an Amendment doesn't usually standd a chance with such a narrow interest group to support it. I'm wondering if you guys are pursuing any other avenues. Can't some of the same goals be accomplished with federal legislation short of an actual amendment?

 

[A Sheep]

Favorite Web Links is for Christians only, thank you.

 

[Annabel Lee]

Originally posted by A Sheep
Favorite Web Links is for Christians only, thank you.

Maybe this thread should be moved to Current Events then so everyone can post.

 

[raybuffer]

Brimshack,

Sure legislation would work. We say 'amendment' because we are aiming high rather than low. Yes, Adoptees alone are a narrow interest group. there are 7 million estimated in the USA. (whether they know they are adopted or not), the reason for petitioning and discussing publicly is to get non-triad (people who are not adopted, have not adopted, or relinquished children to adoption) to support us.

 

[A Sheep]

I have already informed everyone that this is a Christians-Only forum.

If any non-Christians post here they will be warned.

 

[raybuffer]

I'm not sure what you are implying - but I am a Christian. Remember: Kindnes is Love in Action.

-Ray

 

[stillsmallvoice]

Hi all!

A Sheep, since this thread was moved here from an "open-to-everybody" forum after a non-Christian like myself had already posted on it, I think we/I should be allowed to continue posting here (but, of course, if Erwin decides otherwise, I will agree by his ruling).

Raybuffer, you posted:

Secrecy/privacy is not promised in writing to any party of adoption in the United States. It is merely implied by social workers and upheld by States due to capitalistic greed.

Your leftist rhetoric shows that you also have an agenda/baggage unrelated to adoption & adoptees rights per se. This does no justice to adoption & adoptees rights & will only serve to alienate a great many people who might otherwise agree with you. I am politically conservative but am very glad that private, US-style, adoption (i.e. the buying and selling of human flesh) is illegal here in Israel. My wife & I are of very modest means & could in no way afford private adoption a la America. But our agreement on this subject should have nothing to do with our views on adoptees rights.

Adoptees rights must take priority...Their rights should not be subordinate to the convenience of other parties.

Why? Why must this necessarily be the case? The US Supreme Court takes the right to privacy very seriously. I don't know that a situation in which one "right" must necessarily take precedence over another is just. No right is absolute & no right exists all by itself in a state of pristine purity. All rights are juxtaposed to each other. There must be some middle ground between the rights of adoptees & the rights of birthparents; I think that the Israeli system (see my previous post) is a good one.

Be well!

ssv

 

[raybuffer]

Baby Dumping Laws should provide a Safe Haven for BOTH mother and child, encouraging families to remain together, instead of encouraging mothers to relinquish their child.

Forty-two states now have some type of safe haven legislation. (The following states do not have safe haven legislation: AK, HI, MA, NE, NH, VT, VA and WY.) Most of the laws designate hospitals, emergency medical services, fire stations and police stations as safe locations. One exception is New York, which stipulates that the baby may be left with a suitable person or may be left in a suitable location so long as an appropriate person is promptly notified. Immunity is granted generally to employees who are required to accept and care for relinquished infants. About half of the states will not prosecute parents who relinquish unharmed infants. The remainder allows an affirmative defense to prosecution. State laws vary on the age of infants who may be relinquished. The ages range from 72 hours old or younger up to 5 days old or younger. The most common ages found in the statutes are 72 hours and 30 days.

While the intent of lawmakers and supporters to save babies is a noble one, the solution by creating new "privacy laws" just as adoptees are succeeding in overturning older privacy laws, is a blatant manipulation by the adoption industry.

The alternative to creating new and damaging privacy laws should be creating places where an overwhelmed mother can get financial and emotional assistance to care for and keep her own child by keeping families together, not tearing them apart. Promoting abandonment is not the answer.

If you doubt that the adoption industry is the prime financial benefactor to these new laws then look at how these laws effects some parts of adoption:

They contravene sections of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) which give tribes first custody rights in cases of child relinquishment and they deter adoption through traditional legal channels and replace standard practice with what some Safe Haven advocates call "non-bureaucratic placement". They deny the right of identity to infants abandoned "legally" and strip the infants of all genetic, medical and social history. They include little or no safeguards against third party intervention (father who doesn't want responsibility and embarrassed grandparents,). They ignore established birth parent revocation timeframes that permit a birth parent - usually the mother - to reclaim her child in a reasonable amount of time.

Fathers, Aunts and Uncles, Grandparents, Sisters and Brothers all deserve an opportunity to care for a child before a government sanctions the child as anonymously relinquished and incontrovertibly abandoned and bequeaths he or she (through adoption) to a total stranger with enough money.

Allowing 'Safe Haven' laws in their current form will encourage home or private births without medical attention which risk the health of the mother and the child. Many women have complications during and after childbirth. Women will be discouraged from seeking pre-natal and post-natal medical care and counseling, thus endangering the health, well being, and even the life of both the mother and the baby. In Florida, receiving centers are PROHIBITED from even asking women if they need care.

You may have heard on the news that passing "Safe Haven" legislation will save the lives of babies, but you are being lied to. No serious studies in the US have been made on mothers who abandon or kill their newborns. Evidence suggests, however, that they suffer from a dissociative state in which the pregnancy is denied. Many suffer from substance abuse, mental disability, and physical abuse at the hands of family members and boyfriends. Anecdotal evidence from those who work with at-risk girls and women as well as testimonies of women who have abandoned suggest that "baby dumpers" will not utilize Safe Haven programs.

In states that have passed "Safe Haven" laws, babies continue to be illegally dumped. As of September 2001, Texas reported at least 12 infants had been abandoned illegally since the passage of its law, but the abandonments occurred before the start of a public awareness campaign. None have been abandoned outside safe havens since this publicity. Louisiana reported that five infants had been abandoned illegally since passage of its law. Three babies died, and the parents were prosecuted. At least five babies were illegally abandoned in California; two more of them were found dead. In Connecticut, one baby was discarded near a highway. Three babies had been abandoned illegally in Colorado. In one case, the mother attempted to regain custody. Michigan reported nine attempts including one in which a judge ruled that the case was not a safe haven surrender because the parents had not been given enough information on their legal rights. As of September 2002, California reported 21 illegal abandonments and 17 infants abandoned found deceased. Illinois reported four infants illegally abandoned and found deceased. Illinois averaged 25 illegal abandonments over the previous four-year period.

Does it really require states to advertise a blanket policy of "secret abandonment" as an easy escape from the pressures of parenthood to save the lives of these babies? No, it doesn't.

What it does take is education of the kids in school and the adults out there in the churches, private organizations, neighborhoods and crisis centers, P.S.A.s on TV and radio; Involving Social Services to act as supporters rather than child retrievers. If you teach young girls that 'sex equals pregnancy', then you have some of the battle won. Teach them abstinence. Now teach them about NOT dumping babies. I believe that if most of the officials and statesmen would check their EXISTING adoption laws, and promote them, then the battle might also be won.

We already have the tools in law. Creating more law doesn't fix things. Use the laws that are in place, first. Distraught women would see and recognize the alternatives to murdering their baby by leaving them in strange places. However, a girl who is going to dump a baby, is going to dump a baby. She doesn't care where it is, and she won't bother to check her state's statutes before doing it. Current implementation of Safe Haven laws do nothing to address the real problem, and the woman, who abandons her baby in a hospital one week, may be back nine months later to make another 'speedy delivery'.

Instead of teaching teenagers and adults that they can simply and anonymously turn their back on their responsibilities our federal and state government should increase funding to education.

Legalizing something that is wrong will not make it right. It simply creates a barricade to identity and truth for the few babies that do end up left in a fireman's or nurse's arms. If funding is increased and focused to education and it is used it to create programs that educate women about their choices early on, and offer support for expectant mothers who are in school, then yes, solving the education funding problem will alleviate baby abandonment. To some bill makers, education funding is too hard of an issue, and not really as glamorous as the perceived 'quick fix' of creating new privacy barricades through "Safe Haven" laws.

Instead of providing the adoption industry with more "baggage free" children to sell, and sentencing them to a future in which they will be removed of genetic heritage, devoid of medical history, and true origins, politicians should enact legislation that will provide a "safe haven" for BOTH the child and the parent.

The people's money in the custody of the government should be spent keeping families together, not encouraging them to separate. It isn't government's role to use our money to reverse years of discouraging abandonment by now start promoting it. Why not relegate this issue to the churches, private organizations, neighbors and crisis centers and sponsor their support in educating to reduce the number of fatalities due to child abandonment?

Passing additional Safe Haven bills and allowing the ones that exist to continue, is a wasteful and onerous Band-Aid to put on the problem.

Politicians, statesmen and other elected officials should be interested in more than the cosmetic appearance of an issue by realizing that underneath it all, enacting this bill will do more harm to the public's welfare. "Safe Haven" legislation puts us in contravention of customary international law, in particular, Articles 7 and 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. No child should be stripped of his or her identity with the collusion of the government. Countries that have enacted or tacitly allowed abandonment have done so in times of SEVERE social upheaval, such as war or famine, or as a result of embedded archaic law and tradition. Even after 911 the Columbia tragedy, unrest in Korea and War in Iraq, the current plight of the USA does not qualify as "social upheaval".

Safe Haven legislation:

* Obliterates the identity rights of the abandoned child.
* Ignores the causes of infant abandonment and the urgent needs of mothers in crisis; no counseling or social services are accessible either pre- or post-abandonment for abandoning mothers.
* Reverses a century long trend in child welfare policy discouraging abandonment.
* Directly conflicts with existing state and federal legislation and U.S. Supreme Court decisions, such as birthmother revocation periods, birthfather notification, and the Indian Child Welfare Act.
* Discourages the collection of medical and other background information. It also prevents anyone from being able to verify that the person leaving the baby is in fact the parent.
* Opens the door to potential fraud and abuse. People like Georgia Tann , convicted Tennessee adoption black marketeer of the 1940's, who perhaps now exist in NH, would benefit from these bills.

Continued in Next Post....

 

[raybuffer]

Continued from above...

Despite the newspaper headlines that follow if "Safe Haven" laws pass in each state, babies won't be saved. In an age where more and more states are gradually opening their records to adoptees, Safe Haven laws threaten to take that away from the future adoptees. In the fifties and sixties, "statesmen" thought they were doing the right thing when they enacted sealed records to "keep babies out of dumpsters". Whether politicians know it or not, they are being manipulated by the same forces that are against open records for adoptees. They are enacting a new type of privacy law for which there may be no future remedy. They might fool themselves into thinking the nameless child searching for their identity 20 years from now owes their life to "Safe Haven" laws, but more than likely, they will be abandoned BECAUSE of this legislation. Almost 15,000 adults who were adopted have requested their original birth records from the four states with open records in as many years. According to "Open Records Trigger Requests by Adoptees," by Cheryl Wetzstein, published in the January 20, 2003 edition of the Washington Times, over 80 percent of the 854 birth parents who contacted the four states (Alabama, Delaware, Oregon and Tennessee) consented to the adult adoptees contacting them. Just 15 birth parents in Delaware have vetoed the adoptees' request for records, while 472 of 502 adopted persons have received their records.

The children who are victims of "Safe Haven" laws will not be able to request records as adults, because none will exist for them. I encourage you to stop these laws, for their effect goes past encouraging the abandonment of children in the present, but spans into the future of a multitude of orphans who grow into adults with no record of origin. Creating nameless foundlings is not an acceptable trade off. There are always other solutions.


Peace,

Ray Buffer

Adoptees' Caucus for Truth: http://caucus.cjb.net
Identity Theft, Crimes Against Adoptees: http://identitytheft.cjb.net
Go to: http://babydump.cjb.net/ and learn how the U.S. promotes abandoning babies.
Have an Adoption Reform Website? Join this Web Ring: http://start.at/way
Ray's Professional Site: http://raybuffer.com

Ray was born September 2, 1969 in West Palm Beach, FL, http://adoptee.cjb.net and is the Moderator of Adoptee Activists on Yahoo at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adopteeactivists