Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58

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Description

The passage of Measure 58 in Oregon in 1998 used to be a milestone in adoption reform. For the first time in U.S. history a grassroots initiative restored the legal right of adopted adults to request and receive their original birth certificates. Within a day after the law went into effect, nearly 2,400 adoptees had applied for these in the past sealed records, elevating their right to know over a birth mother’s right to privacy.

E. Wayne Carp, a nationally respected authority on adoption history, now reveals the efforts of the radical adoptee rights organization Bastard Nation to pass this milestone initiative. He has written an intimate history of a passionately proposed and opposed initiative that has the potential to revolutionize the adoption reform movement nationwide.

Carp follows the campaign from its inception through the hard-fought signature drives of proponents Helen Hill and Shea Grimm to the electoral campaign and ensuing court battles. The opposition used to be formidable: government officials, adoption agencies, news media, the ACLU, religious organizations, and ad-hoc citizen political groups. The use of correspondence and his own candid interviews with all of the key players, Carp shows how both sides mobilized their constituencies and formed their strategies. In describing challenges to Measure 58’s constitutionality, Carp reveals legal arguments that were never publicized by the Oregon media and remained unknown to the American public until now—issues centering on privacy rights that are the most important to understanding both sides of the controversy and the hazards of initiative politics.

As Carp shows, Measure 58 used to be important because it framed the issue of adoption reform with regards to civil rights and equal protection of the law quite than with regards to psychological needs or medical necessity. The resulting law now gives adult adoptees get admission to to birth certificates but it also allows birth mothers to indicate whether or not they want to be contacted. Carp not only chronicles a milestone initiative and a model piece of legislation for other states to emulate, he also proposes a sensible way to cut the Gordian Knot that bedevils adoption reform as of late.

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