Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / April 2004

(Format may come out wrong.)

Marley

Bastard Nation, the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil
rights organization in North America, is deeply disturbed by the marketing
campaign for the April 30 20/20 production of "Be My Baby." While we reserve
judgement on the program itself until it is aired, we believe that the show'
s promotion exploits, degrades and demeans adopted persons of all ages,
portraying us as prizes for "desperate couples" in the great adoption duck
shoot.

ABC may weasel at this point, putting the blame on some misguided and
uninformed marketing department for this public relations disaster. You
have, in fact, posted a nicer kinder promo on the 20/20 website in the wake
of universal condemnation of the original Bowling for Babies theme.  No
matter what spin is spun, however, ABC can't deny that John Stossel and
Barbara Walters joked about the program, Stossel calling it "the ultimate
reality show" and Walters "humorously" comparing it to The Bachelor and The
Bachelorette.  Nobody told them to joke around.  Nobody put those words in
their mouths but themselves.

If ABC really wants to do an adoption reality show, here's a suggestion:
The Bastard.

In 46 states the records of law abiding adult adoptees are sealed from us,
locking up our identities, names, heritages, histories and original birth
certificates-things that the non-adopted take for granted.

Watch  The Bastard each week as adopted persons state-by-state crawl through
ever- shrinking hoops set up by politicians, fat cat adoption industrialists
and petty bureaucrats  to keep us from our own personal information:

 a.. birth parent disclosure vetoes
 b.. contact vetoes/a priori restraining orders against adoptees based on
nothing we have done, but on our adoptive status alone
 c.. nanny state mandated confidential intermediaries that inhibit free
association and relationships of adult adoptees and their birth parents who
simply want to contact each other
 d.. useless government-controlled "reunion" registries
 e.. mandatory expensive "mental health" counseling to prove that adopted
persons are competent and  "sane enough" to handle their own information
 f.. court orders
 g.. high-end search costs
 h.. self-serving social workers
 i.. religious nuts who think that open records = abortion
Watch adoptees grovel before judges, argue before legislators, send
countless letters out to newspapers, picket ABC, and boycott 20/20 sponsors
and Disney World.

Watch the cosmic finale:  Adoptees v Birthparents; Birthparents v Adoptive
Parents; Adoptees v Adoptive Parents; and various permutations ingeniously
created by industry lobbyists and their media handmaids as bread and
circuses to deflect the real issue:  identity rights, equal protection and
civil rights for adult adoptees.

Back in 1999 after 20/20 aired Connie Chung's sensationalist anti-adoptee
"Mothers in the Shadows" featuring birth mothers in hiding (without
disclosure of Chung's status of adoptive mother), Bastard Nation suggested
to Bill McGowan just such a show, though not couched in reality TV terms
since the genre didn't exist then. McGowan, dismissed Bastard Nation's
concerns over Chung's program as well as our proposal calling it
"sensationalist" and "Springer-esque."  I wonder what he thinks now.

Perhaps we shouldn't complain about 20/20s promo campaign after all. Perhaps
some disgruntled adoptee moled himself into ABC and decided to have some fun
exposing the over-riding consumerist, competitive approach to child
acquisition that rules US adoption today-entitlements shared by politicians
that keep adult adoptees as eternal infants and justify the sealing of our
own records.

Sincerely yours,

The Executive Committee, Bastard Nation:  the Adoptee Rights Organization

Dr. David Ansardi

Anita Field

Donna Martz

Natalie Proctor Servant

Pamela Zaebst

Marley Elizabeth Greiner, Executive Chair

Contact information:

Bastard Nation:

PO Box 271672

Houston, TX  77177-1672

415-704-3166