Who to believe: The National Council for Adoption or the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute?
In "Mutual Consent: Balancing the Birthparent’s Right to Privacy with theAdopted Person’s Desire to Know," Marc Zappala (NCFA supported) argues against Madelyn Freundlich's "For the Records: Restoring a Right to Adult Adoptees." Freudnlich's work is supported by the Evan B. D. Institute.
Instead of looking at the studies for bias, which will clearly be present in any study, I looked at the websites. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute is research focused and run by an adoptive parent at this date with membership being adoptees, first parents, adoptive parents among others. The National Council for Adoption's membership is adoption "entities." Those who make money from adoption placements are the ones who support NCFA; of course, this organization and its published work support secrecy. Secrecy is necessary to maintain the cash flow. If the truth is revealed about adoption in America and its inherent problems, then the cash flow could be interupted or even cease.
Do read the links, think about the studies. But do not forget the biases of the funding institutions.
Title: For the Records: Restoring a Right to Adult AdopteesAuthor: Madelyn FreundlichPublished: 2007 November. New York NY: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption InstituteDocument Type: White Paper (31 pages)Availability: PDF Full Report Executive Summary Glossary of Terms Web Page Press Release
This study, published as part of National Adoption Awareness month, represents the most comprehensive examination to date of one of the most controversial, emotional issues in the modern adoption world: whether adopted people, once they become adults, should have access to their original birth certificates. This report suggests that all states change their laws so that the answer is "yes." This policy paper is the result of the broadest, most extensive examination to date of the various issues related to state laws governing adult adopted persons' access to their original birth certificates and/or adoption records; and recommendations in this paper are drawn from a review and analysis of past and current state laws; legislative history in states across the country; decades of experience on relevant issues; and the body of research relating to sealed and open records on the affected parties.
Mutual Consent: Balancing the Birthparent’s Right to Privacy with the
Adopted Person’s Desire to Know
Marc Zappala
https://www.adoptioncouncil.org/resources/documents/NCFAAdoptionAdvocateVolumeNo10.pdf
Friday, May 15, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
International Adoption: kidnapping, fraud, coercion, deceit, lawbreaking, repulsive
There's no need for me to comment. This story speaks for itself. Be sure to click on the slide-show for specific stories. I pray more American families seek the truth and find their adoptees first families. Everyone deserves to know the truth about themselves.
The Orphan Trade:
A look at families affected by corrupt international adoptions.
By E.J. GraffPosted Friday, May 8, 2009, at 7:08 AM ET
Click here to read a slide-show essay about international adoption.
Who wants to buy a baby? Certainly not most people who are trying to adopt internationally. And yet too often—without their knowledge—that's what happens with their dollars and euros.
Westerners have been sold a myth that poor countries have millions of healthy abandoned infants and toddlers who need homes. But it's not so. In poor countries, as in rich ones, healthy babies are rarely orphaned or given up—except in China, where girls have been abandoned as a result of its draconian one-child policy.
Yes, tens of thousands of needy children around the world—many languishing in horrible institutions—do need families. But most children who need new homes are older than 5, sick, disabled, or somehow traumatized. Quite reasonably, most prospective Western parents don't feel prepared to take on those more challenging kids, preferring to wait in line for healthy infants or toddlers.
The result is a gap between supply and demand—a gap that's closed by Western money. Adoption agencies spend sums in-country that are enormous compared with local per-capita incomes. In poor countries without effective regulation or protections for the poor, that can induce locals to buy, coerce, defraud, and kidnap healthy children away from their birth families for sale into international adoption.
To use the language of globalization, orphans are sometimes "manufactured": Children with families are stripped of their identities so that Westerners can fill their homes. No one knows how many or how few are "manufactured." Whatever the proportion, the Western adoption agencies can plausibly deny knowing what their local contractors are doing wrong—and yet continue to send tens of thousands of U.S. dollars in per-child commissions to local "facilitators" who supply children. Once an illicit orphan-manufacturing chain gets going, "facilitators" may even solicit older and unhealthy children to order. When one country's adoptions are closed down to regulate or stop the trafficking, the adoption industry moves to the next "hot" and under-regulated country. (For Americans, these are currently Ethiopia and, to a lesser degree, Nepal.)
Sometimes these people don't seem real; their names are strange, and they live far away, in unimaginably different circumstances. To help imagine their lives, we present some pictures of families affected by corrupt adoptions.
Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2217608/
Click here to read a slide-show essay about international adoption.
E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University. You will find documentation behind these stories, as well as more research and information about irregularities in international adoption, at the institute's Web site.
The Orphan Trade:
A look at families affected by corrupt international adoptions.
By E.J. GraffPosted Friday, May 8, 2009, at 7:08 AM ET
Click here to read a slide-show essay about international adoption.
Who wants to buy a baby? Certainly not most people who are trying to adopt internationally. And yet too often—without their knowledge—that's what happens with their dollars and euros.
Westerners have been sold a myth that poor countries have millions of healthy abandoned infants and toddlers who need homes. But it's not so. In poor countries, as in rich ones, healthy babies are rarely orphaned or given up—except in China, where girls have been abandoned as a result of its draconian one-child policy.
Yes, tens of thousands of needy children around the world—many languishing in horrible institutions—do need families. But most children who need new homes are older than 5, sick, disabled, or somehow traumatized. Quite reasonably, most prospective Western parents don't feel prepared to take on those more challenging kids, preferring to wait in line for healthy infants or toddlers.
The result is a gap between supply and demand—a gap that's closed by Western money. Adoption agencies spend sums in-country that are enormous compared with local per-capita incomes. In poor countries without effective regulation or protections for the poor, that can induce locals to buy, coerce, defraud, and kidnap healthy children away from their birth families for sale into international adoption.
To use the language of globalization, orphans are sometimes "manufactured": Children with families are stripped of their identities so that Westerners can fill their homes. No one knows how many or how few are "manufactured." Whatever the proportion, the Western adoption agencies can plausibly deny knowing what their local contractors are doing wrong—and yet continue to send tens of thousands of U.S. dollars in per-child commissions to local "facilitators" who supply children. Once an illicit orphan-manufacturing chain gets going, "facilitators" may even solicit older and unhealthy children to order. When one country's adoptions are closed down to regulate or stop the trafficking, the adoption industry moves to the next "hot" and under-regulated country. (For Americans, these are currently Ethiopia and, to a lesser degree, Nepal.)
Sometimes these people don't seem real; their names are strange, and they live far away, in unimaginably different circumstances. To help imagine their lives, we present some pictures of families affected by corrupt adoptions.
Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2217608/
Click here to read a slide-show essay about international adoption.
E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University. You will find documentation behind these stories, as well as more research and information about irregularities in international adoption, at the institute's Web site.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The truth will be heard
I am back, somewhat. Thanks for the kind words during my illness.
I was searching adoption and old stories and found this link to the video of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Allison Quets's fight for a best interests hearing in the case of her twins, Tyler and Holly.
Video link of hearing: http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/4880619
Though the law requires a best interests hearing in this custody case, one has never happened. The lower court judge, Anne Salisbury, must be entirely humiliated and embarrassed, too, as her inability to follow the law is made clear in this video.
How humiliating for Kevin Needham and Denise Needham and their attorney, Deborah Sandlin, to be chastised by the appellate justices and asked why the Constitution wasn't applied to the case.
I was searching adoption and old stories and found this link to the video of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Allison Quets's fight for a best interests hearing in the case of her twins, Tyler and Holly.
Video link of hearing: http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/4880619
Though the law requires a best interests hearing in this custody case, one has never happened. The lower court judge, Anne Salisbury, must be entirely humiliated and embarrassed, too, as her inability to follow the law is made clear in this video.
How humiliating for Kevin Needham and Denise Needham and their attorney, Deborah Sandlin, to be chastised by the appellate justices and asked why the Constitution wasn't applied to the case.
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