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The outdated Michigan anti-surrogacy law must be changed.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 »
“Grown and Flown” published my essay, “We Found Our Children’s Birth Mothers” back in November, but so much was going on then, I think I forgot to post the link. The piece explores the evolution of my thinking on the subject of reunion. The first few paragraphs:
“When we began the process to adopt my daughter Olivia from Guatemala in 2002, we never considered open adoption. Why would we? No one mentioned it–not our agency, not our social worker, not our in-country facilitator. I hadn’t known it was possible. Over the course of my life, I’d been close with people who are adopted—including two cousins—and not one had met their birth families. I’d never heard the subject discussed.
“Then, during Olivia’s adoption, which went on for nearly two years, I quit my job in San Francisco and moved to Antigua, Guatemala to expedite the process. We lived together in a small rental house, and sometimes I’d stare at my beautiful daughter and silently question, “Who made you? What’s her story? Does she know where you are?”
“Occasionally, at the market or on the street, at a restaurant or church, I’d see a woman who closely resembled Olivia, and I’d be seized by a mixture of curiosity, fear, and elation as I wondered, ‘Are you my daughter’s mother?‘”
You can read the entire essay here. As always, thanks for your interest! xoxo
Essay in Grown and Flown Read More »
On this day in 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the Grand Canyon a National Monument.
“Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is,” Roosevelt said. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you.”
We visited the Grand Canyon in 2018, during a trip through the beautiful state of Arizona. Vast, dramatic, breathtaking, majestic: The Grand Canyon is every superlative used to describe it, and more. The kids covered their eyes as we approached the first vista, and Olivia burst into tears when she removed her hands.
Today and every day, I’m grateful to President Roosevelt for thinking of his children and his children’s children, and for leaving a magnificent legacy.
On this day in 1908 Read More »
