Found a new blog written by a social worker in Belgium who now works in adoption aftercare, who was asked by an English-speaking adoptee to translate some of the posts into English. You can read about the author of Adoption Coach here. I read the posts already translated with interest, and am linking to the first post on the blog and hope you read it – at the end of the post is a poem written by Lut Celie called “Listen” it really says it all, and hopefully speaks to some who wish to tell adoptees how they should feel.
Damian Adams at “Donated Generation” posts “Caroline Lorbach and myself have just had a paper published in a special edition of the Journal of Law and Medicine which focuses on donor conception here in Australia.” that post includes the abstract and link to publication. He also did a short post a while back that I intended to link to but forgot A Story to Help People Understand.
I took a look at the special edition of the Journal of Law and Medicine on donor conception in Australia and there are many articles I wish I could read, one abstract in particular caught my eye and adoptees will understand why – it seems that the same argument used against adoptee rights (mothers were promised confidentiality but the adoption industry cannot provide a written promise) may also problematic in the fertility industry – they may not be able to provide proof. “Keeping mum about dad: “Contracts” to protect gamete donor anonymity – Anne Rees” “This article considers the legal status of so-called contracts for anonymity between fertility clinics and donors of gametes that were made in the period before legislation authorising disclosure. […] The writer has not been able to locate examples of written promises by the clinics promising anonymity. There are written promises by the donors not to seek the identity of the recipients. These promises do not bind the resulting offspring nor do they appear to be supported by consideration.”
Australian Government to Apologise Over Forced Adoptions “The Australian Government today announced it will issue a formal apology to those affected by forced adoption practices.”
A very interesting post by Alama ya Kitumaini “Sign of Hope” urging caution and providing questions to ask if you are adopting in the DRC. Good post and discussion – but of course, in the comments is the question why once AP’s have their children home do they suddenly become concerned with ethics. It’s a method of trying to shut down the conversation and has such an obvious answer – they too were naive going into adoption and trusted their agencies – only to figure things out when it was too late or worse when their child could speak enough English to explain they weren’t orphans! That question always makes me think about AP’s who state that their children are happy and won’t be like us adult adoptees who criticize adoption. Speaking of which – someone did a post last week linking to a blog post on fundraising written by Shadow, and then identified that Shadow had a lot of criticisms about adoption – no, Shadow is the nice one, again, I am the one who will criticize HOW adoption is practiced – which is different from criticizing an adoption when it is the done properly – after family preservation efforts have failed. I am honestly amazed that people still cannot see the difference between hating all things adoption and talking about problems within the adoption industry. Adoption can be done ethically by protecting the rights of all and most of all the child and is a solution in some cases – I don’t disagree with that – it is the probalematic practices that drive me batty – but they do need to fix the laws for adoptee rights to our own original birth certificate in every single closed records state.
What posts did you read this week?
The adopted ones blog 