Our big activity this week was a drive over the Richmond Bridge to Annie’s Annuals & Perennials. Annie’s is a nursery that features all kinds of seedlings: California natives, low-water, groundcover, deer-resistant, bee plants, and succulents. Our find of the day was “Guatemalan Leaf Sage,” which is billed as “densely tidy & boasting flowers of the most intense royal blue.” We bought a small pot and anticipate the blooming.
Counting the day as a win.
This essay by Shrestha Singh on HuffPost really got to me. In it, Singh talks about being a first-generation Indian American woman who married a white man whose family’s values are different from hers. Substitute the words “married into” with “adopted into” and you may find parallels. From the essay:
“Could they love me without truly seeing me, in all my identities? Would they love me only if I stayed quiet and looked the other way from their racism and support of institutions that have been hurting Black and Brown people since they began?”
Read Singh’s entire piece here.
Photo by Tim Fitch Photography, from Internet
A benefit of quarantine is Tim is home more often and able to join me on dog walks. We encourage each other to get out the door and Charlie encourages us both. Tim’s logged our distance since the shutdown: 1,550 miles, or halfway to Boston. Walking Charlie every day is the thing that keeps me sane. xoxo
In this tragic case in Michigan, Tammy and Jordan Myers transferred an embryo to a gestational surrogate, Lauren Vermilye, who gave birth to the Myers’ twins. Due to Michigan’s 1988 anti-surrogacy law, surrogacy is illegal in Michigan. Thus, the couple is being forced to adopt their biological infants. Michigan, Nebraska, and Louisiana are the only states to outlaw surrogacy. If Lauren Vermilye had given birth to the Myers’ twins in another state, the twins’ birth certificates automatically would name the Myers as parents.
According to their attorney, Tammy and Jordan Myers were aware of the Michigan anti-surrogacy law, but, said Tammy Myers, “We really, truly didn’t believe that someone could hear the history and not give us rights.” (Tammy is a breast cancer survivor.)
Sadly, unfortunately, and tragically, legal decisions often are based on strict case law, as we in the adoption world know too well. (I’m thinking of the many adoptees who have grown up in the US without legal paperwork and have been, or are at risk of being, deported–due to negligence by their adoptive parents, who may not have understood or else ignored paperwork requirements.)
The outdated Michigan anti-surrogacy law must be changed. Until then, the Myers must go through the FBI checks, fingerprinting, and social worker visits required of all adoptive parents.
Read the article and watch the news clip here.
Photo from CBS News.
Michigan surrogacy case Read More »
I’m posting a link to a recent NY Times review of a new nonfiction book about adoption: American Baby: A Mother, a Baby, and a Shadow History of Adoption by journalist Gabrielle Glaser. While American Baby focuses on harsh practices of the past–secrecy, shame, coercion–the reviewer notes that
“[T]he shadows of the past cannot be easily dismissed as mistakes of an unenlightened moment. Today, the nearly half a million international adoptees in the United States do not have access to their birth records. And the tens of thousands of babies created from donor gametes are not legally entitled to identifying information.”
If you’re reading this, you know that identity is a core issue–perhaps the core issue–for many of us who write, think, and talk about adoption and donor conception. The reviewer’s conclusion of American Baby seems to indicate work remains to be done.
“American Baby” book in NY Times Read More »
