CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME! CALIFORNIA OPEN RECORDS

Hey, Bastardettes and Bastards!

Born, adopted, or live in California? Help make history in California and make sealed records in California history by joining California Open!



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Issued July 30, 2005
By California Open
http://www.calopen.org

California Open announces registration is now open to attend the State Wide Planning Meeting 2005:

The Starting Gate for 2008!
Tsakopoulos Library Galleria
August 26 - 28th
Sacramento, California
www.calopen.org/meeting.html

California adoptee rights supporters are assembling under the banner of California Open. This early task force is formalizing to bring a 2008 ballot initiative that will restore adult adoptees' access to their own original birth certificate. Step up to the Starting Gate! We're calling on all who have been impacted by the 1935 sealing of birth certificate records to join the Cal Open statewide movement. This is the rallying point to organize, involve, and reform a flawed and antiquated law that threatens best adoption practice for thousands of families and endangers California's privacy and equal rights protections. Everyone's voice matters to assure our efforts succeed.

Cal Open is pleased to present the California Film Premiere of:

Measurable Rights: the fight for open records in Oregon
Appearing in person:
Paul Fournier, filmmaker
Helen Hill, Chief Petitioner of Measure 58

Registration is now open by mail or online:
http://www.calopen.org/meeting.html

Visit our web site to access: the meeting agenda; registration fees and forms; information regarding lodging, parking, ride sharing, and travel. Our statewide meeting coincides with The California State Fair! Bring the family for a weekend of fun in Sacramento.

See you in the Capitol City!

eBAYbee REDUX

I received several private emails from fans encouraging me to continue my eBay window-shopping spree. Though much of the current Ebay beg-a-thon is for financing adoptions from foreign lands, there is still some good adoption kitsch out there just waiting to be snapped up by sentimental adoptashoppers. Amongst the day-glo bracelets, Italian Choose Adoption charms, and adoptable Teddies, a few true pieces of work have appeared. Unfortunately, some of them have already been sold, but I think it's worthwhile to see just how deep AdoptionLander taste has sunk in the last couple of years as the HWI supply continues to dry up.

Here for instance is the Angel Dollar For Adoption offered by Brad and Camille to help them bring "our daughter home from China." Excuse me Brad! Just how did YOUR daughter get to China and why was she left there? But why quibble!



As you see, this is a real genuine US George Washington dollar bill, only an angel’s head is superimposed over George's. Isn’t there a law against defacing US currency? Actually, yes. Title 18, Section 33 of the US Code specifically says:

Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Brad tells us that we can spiff our the dollar to fit our own personal aesthetics. With feathers and "scrapbooking paper," for instance. Anne Geddes he's not. And, by the way, you’re actually not purchasing the Angel Dollar. You're sending a donation. Brad should consider holding on to his $1.00 bills since he may soon have to pay his lawyer and the government--hopefully not in Angel Dollars.

Books. There's a copy of The Chosen Baby (1950 ed.) yea! Glad to see its return. And a curiously titled volume: Raising an Adopted Child. “Somebody” wasn't paying attention in English class. You raise cattle; you rear children. Oh, that's right! We're talking about adoptees. My bad!

For totally creepy there's "Reborn Preemie--Keelie" a foundling. Here is Baby Keelie's story as told by seller "Mother Jean." Oh no! It couldn’t be THAT Jean from Safe Haven Yes, could it? I doubt it. Our Jean is way too busy with live babies.

Mother Jean:

Keelie's story is an all too common one, I'm afraid. Another case of a mother far too young to properly care for her infant, particularly one so small & sickly. When Keelie first came to the "Foundlings" home, she weighed little more than a pound & a half & was a mere 16" long. Wearing only a dismal little sundress & dirty diaper, Mother Jean took her in & gave her the expert care she so desperately needed. There was not an ounce of fat on her anywhere. Holding her felt like holding a board! Today, Keelie is a plump & cuddly baby who snuggles right into your arms when you pick her up. Bald as bald could be, she now has a lovely shade of medium brown hair that frames her face & is as soft as Angora mohair. Mother Jean suggests you dampen Keelie's hair & scrunch it into pretty curls for special days. She has newborn blue/gray eyes (all newborns do, of course), but they sparkle with life now, as they never did before. From the top of her head to the tips of her toes, Keelie has been bathed & scented, primped & pampered as only Mother Jean can do.

By the way, Keelie comes from an old & respected family. "Berjusa" is the name. [whisper] They were once very big in the toy business, you know...

Nobody will ever have to know you had this baby….

If you ask me Baby Keelie looks dead.

Keelie ought to go over big, though, with the Baskets for Babies folks in Pittsburgh. They must be getting pretty frustrated waking up every morning and finding dog-doo, newspapers, and cigarette butts in their baby baskets, instead of a foundling. Since they’re always complaining about money, Baby Kellie would be a great fundraiser for the Illinois, Save Abandoned Babies Foundation, though she might not bring in as much as a real live foundling. But you never know!



My personal favorite is the Joan of Arcadia prop 1991 Adoption Records with a certificate of authenticity from Columbia Pictures. I'm torn. Should I bid on this myself or let CaliforniaOpen grab up this treasure? Oh, that's right! It's a prop! But if Columbia says it's authentic, then it must be. I'm so confused!

I can't close without The Entitleds. Meet "stuffromtexas." Mr. And Mrs. Stuff are selling 25 baby shirts imprinted with “From Guatemala with Love" to help finance the adoption of "our baby" in Guatemala. Mrs. Stuff tells us they’ve been reduced to selling their household goods on eBay (at least there’s no Night Ranger LPs!) because they have gone stone broke on IVF-- $30,000 stone broke. They’ve maxed out their credit cards, spent their savings and oh, horrors! Their state won’t mandate insurance coverage for infertility treatments. Time for Plan B! Clean out the closets! In a revealing section of her sales spiel, Ms. Stuff complains meanly about the pitfalls of domestic adoption: nobody wants to cooperate. Birthparents, adoptive parents, adoption agencies, governments. What’s an Entitled to do? Why go to Guatemala, of course!

Why International adoption: We had to decide if we wanted to pursue domestic adoption or International adoption. After carefully weighing all aspects we chose not to do domestic adoption. With domestic adoption once you have the child in your home the birth mother has a certain amount of time (anywhere from 48 hours to 6 months) to change her mind. It is also common for the birth father to come forward at a later date if he did not relinquish his rights, and judges have been known to turn custody over to the birth father. We could not bear to bring a child into our home, raise them as our own, only to lose them.

Also, there is no cap on expenses for the birth mother. A couple could end up paying from $30,000 upwards for medical care, room, board, and all expenses for the birth mother once chosen by her to adopt her child.

The last reason that domestic adoption was not our choice is that you submit a “life book” or “scrapbook” of your life together to an agency or attorney and then wait to be chosen by a birth mother. We didn’t like the idea of having to compete with other potential adoptive parents.

And then there’s those Russians. Damn them! Apparently Russia was the Stuffs first choice (after much “review.”) But those horrible Russians not only kept first dibs on Russian kids for Russians, they expected the Stuffs to come to Russia twice--twice mind you--once to arrange the adoption and once to pick up the baby. I’m surpirsed she didn’t demand that Baby House #3 FedEx them one. D'svidanya Russia with love! Buenas Dias, Guatemala con amor!

The Stuff's need to raise $18,000-$22,000 now. The baby shirts are yours for a "donation" of $3.00 each (boy what a haul! $75.00 if they sell them all!)--and if you want to "donate" more you can just click on the quantity button”' “You'd be surprised how quickly $3 adds up." Mrs. Stuff assures us.

No doubt.

We can only hope that Baby Stuff will be suitably grateful for all of Mrs. Stuff's IVF pain and suffering and her tendious fundraising to pay for Baby Stuff's acquision at any cost.

Wouldn't it be easier to just buy Baby Keelie? She's certainly cheaper, she's perfect, she'll never ask any embarrassing questions about where she came from, and she'll be yours forever. Unlike Baby Stuff.

IT'S BAAACCCKKKKK!!!!

OK, adoptadogooders! (and you know who you are!) Time to get out your hankies, limber up your typing fingers, and put on your tinfoil hats. According to the July 17, edition of Digital Spy, Who's Your Daddy is back. This time Daddy will be snuggled cozily amongst Temptation Island, animal attacks, COPS, and re-runs of Joe Millionaire on Fox's new subscriber Fox Reality Channel. Just imagine, 24/7 reality. I know I can't wait. I've already put in a big supply of popcorn and bought a new block of blank tapes.

Of course, I realize a lot of you heaved a great sigh of relief when the original WYD tanked after one episode. But how many more were in the can? 6? 7? 8? 12? Now, in the privacy of your own home, you can watch adoption, as you know it, implode right before your very eyes, week after week after week after week after week.

Bastardette is no Pollyanna, even if she is adopted. She will admit that many of those who opposed WYD are friends and colleagues. She holds nothing against them personally for loathing the show and she hopes they hold nothing against her personally for loving it. Adoption can always do with a good send-up, especially a good kick in the sensitive spots, and sealed records and adoption anonymity is THE hyper-sensitive spot--at least to hear the adoptacrats at the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) talk.

Here's the opening paragraph of NCFA's letter to Fox from last December in which they prophesied the doom of adoption in America if the show aired. BTW, you need to read the whole letter to fully appreciate the terror facing the Red Power Tie crowd. As a bit of a wonky threat at the end of the letter, NCFA warns that if WYD airs it will harm the reputation of Fox Broadcasting. Apparently nobody at NCFA ever heard of I Want to Marry a Millionaire. I bet Fox president Peter Chernin pissed his pants.

On behalf of the Board, staff, and adoption agency membership of the National Council For Adoption (NCFA), I am writing to express our grave concern regarding the upcoming Fox television show, "Who's Your Daddy." We respectfully request that you not air this program. Its very concept--"guess your birthfather" game show, complete with $100,000 prize--exploits and trivializes adoption, and demeans the dignity of persons involved in adoption.

Well look who's talking! Exploits? Trivializes? Demeans? I thought NCFA cornered the market on exploitation, trivialization, and demeaning years ago with its dismissal of adoptee rights as "mere curiosity" (one of their kinder contentions) and its excessive incessant pathologzing of adoptees, birthparents, adoptive parents, adoption professionals, and anybody else who happens to believe that adopted persons should be treated like everybody else. After all, if original birth certificates were open to adoptees as they are for the rest of the riff-raff, well...adoption would just cease to exist. Women would line up for blocks at abortion clinics (and probably beat up those baybee-bits Bible thumping "sidewalk counselors" while they're waiting), we'd all be tripping over abandoned babies in the alley, adoptees and their families would need residential round-the-clock therapy, and adoptive families would just go pffftttt!!!!!!! in the night. After all, one can't have more than one set of parents, can one? I mean, check out NCFA's hyperbolic testimony on a current New Jersey bill-- a bill jammed full of compromises and restrictions that only activists beaten down after 20 years would accept, to see just what a danger adoptees are to the great institution of adoption.

Such a policy [adoptee access to their records] would not only promote emotional and traumatic experiences in families, it would also send the corrosive message that adoptive families are somehow inadequate to meet the psychological needs of their adopted members. This message attacks a very foundation of adoption, that the adoptive family is the child's true and permanent family. Adoptive parenting has provided untold social and familial blessings to children throughout the years. Law and society must continue to respect the adoptive family's status as the adopted person's true and permanent family, in order for those benefits to continue.

No doubt about it. The 6 million adopted persons in this country today are simply an army of Manchurian Candidates placed here to destroy The Adoptive Family.




Manchurian Candidates Bastard Nation, CalOpen, CUB, and the San Francisco Adoptee Rights Project do Honk If You're My Daddy! at Fox in Studio City, January 2, 2005, the day before the broadcast. Honk! created provocative action that placed "Who's Your Daddy?" smack in the middle of the political landscape of the sealed records laws that created the show's premise.

"Those of us who are adopted know that "Who's Your Daddy" ain't nothin' next to the ultimate reality show: Adoption: Secrets and Lies where everyday normal, tax-paying citizens who just happen to be adopted face down the corrupt adoption system, negotiate a gauntlet of paternalistic and "protective" laws, hypocritical adoption agencies, do-good adoption "experts," bored judges, insensitive bureaucrats, sell-out politicians, adoption trade lobbyists, religious zealots, and snotty records clerks that even the brightest program developers and Fox producers couldn't dream up. What is more perverse? "Who's Your Daddy" or a public policy that steals identities and locks up the birth records of adopted citizens for "they're own good" and replaces them with forged documents."

Photo: David Winge


The exploitation, trivialization, and demeaning were bad enough for the industry and their more sensitive counterparts on the "progressive" side, but their fears only increased when they learned that WYD adoptee "contestant" TJ Myers turned out to be a busty star of B films (erroneously referred to as soft porn.) I guess adoptees are supposed to be dowdy and work in library basements; that is, when we're not busy hacking up our parents (either kind) with axes. And even worse: a prize of $100,000 for guessing the right Daddy! How freaking exploitive is that? Boy, I wish somebody would offer me $100,000 to go on Fox and make a fool of myself--especially now that I'm getting back my svelte self after too many years of pizza, Taco Bell, and KFC delirium. With $100,000 I could buy a few politicians and get records open in at least one key state--California, New York, Ohio. Texas. Hey! Texas! That's the ticket! Who ever heard of vote buying in Texas! Sounds like a plan!

And then the real horror. TJ's adoptive parents were cut from the show. How rude of the producers! Rightwing media bozo Brent Bozell, III got especially exercised over that. Citing who else but Tom Atwood, NCFA boss man, Bozell wrote:

Atwood suggests that FOX's (for some reason he capitalizes Fox) parental reunion ploy reinforces an erroneous idea that adopted people aren't complete if they don't solve the mystery of their birth origins. He says adoption is most successful when the society and the culture accept that the adopting parents are the true and permanent parents of an adopted child. Since FOX can cleverly manipulate any individual adoption story for a contrived happy ending, it can ignore the fact that searching for birthparents can be most hurtful to adoptive parents.

Well, guess what, Brent? The show wasn't about TJ's adoptive parents. And it wasn't about you.

Here's a thought. Maybe FOX...er...I mean Fox... could design a reality show built around YOUR dysfunctional family. Sort of Meet the Osbournes for white priviledged Anglo-Catholic Republicans. Remember the time your dad, Brent 2, Joe McCarthy's speechwriter, grabbed a giant wooden cross and sledge- hammered his way into the George Washington University Health Center to protest abortions reportedly performed there? Or when your mother, Pat Buckley (Bill's sister) attempted to rush the stage and punch-out radical feminist philosopher Ti-Grace Atkinson when she was speaking at Catholic University. Now that's sure beats watching Ozzy ditz around Home Depot! I bet you wish you didn't know where you came from and you don't want anybody else to know where they came from either. Admit it Brent! You want to be adopted!

But I digress.

I understand NCFA's reaction. After all, it's a trade organization that wants to keep its factories looking squeaky clean and uninspected. And they most certainly don't want adopted persons to be visible in the media, especially if they might be critical of the industry's beneficent practices.

But on the other side--our side--the reaction was pretty weird--except for The Honkers. Nearly identical, in fact, to the industrialists. Moan, mutter, groan, sob, wring hands, weep, threaten, write letters, hold press conferences, send faxes, send emails, make demands, take 2 Lexapro, and start over. It was so darned Democratic Partyish. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, you'd think some of our friends had channeled Brent Bozell.

Carpe Diem? Except for the Honkers, nobody saw the political opportunities for WYD. Except for the Honkers nobody had any fun with this outrageous moment in adoption history. Except for the Honkers, no one seized this media moment to expose the underbelly of adoption: secrecy and lies. After all, if it weren't for those secrets and lies Who's Your Daddy wouldn't exist.

If adoption in the US is so great today how could a TV reality show harm it? Or is the real fear that if enough of the rot is exposed people will start to ask: is adoption worth saving?

It will be interesting to see if anybody raises a ruckus over the return of Who's Your Daddy on cable. Adoption in the US is (excuse the triteness) alive and well and growing--something that all adoptionists know. So maybe they can just bop off a few Ommmmmmmms, chill out, and enjoy Who's Your Daddy for what it is: low brow entertainment and a place where adoptees actually have a voice and a face.

Fox can't destroy adoption. Only the institution of adoption itself can do that.

eBAYbee

eBay has always been a safe haven (excuse me, I can't help myself) for the weird, the bizarre, and the collectible. It's the place where Bastardette regularly replenishes her Tsar Nicholas II icon, Ghoulardi, and Che Guevara collections. Being temporarily impoverished, however, she's avoided even visiting the place lately, fearing an attack of conspicuous consumption that even a few bedtime readings of Thorsten Veblen couldn't cure.

Due to a recent post on a private email list, though, regarding a certain peculiar adoption-related item (more about that in a minute), Bastardette ventured forth once more into the Land of Leisure Time Spending to take a look at what was being hawked under the guise of "adoption."

A few years ago, eBay was a place to find genuine adoption artificats and curiosities. Once I purchased a page from the long-running Delineator series on adoption published nearly 100 years ago under the editorship of a young Theodore Dreiser. Then there were the "pagan adoption certificates" from the 1930s and 1940s issued by the Catholic Church (don't ask!) Occasionally some interesting adoption books have been offered, including the much coveted Chosen Child and NCFA's Factbook 3, a must for any adoptee rights activist. Usually, though, one was confronted with a collection of Precious Memories gewgaws, Greyhound adoption buttons, Christopher Radko Commemorative Christmas ornaments, and framed copies of that scary poem about two mommies.

Now there's a whole new kitsch parade of items being sold by people to finance their adoptions--usually foreign. (There are too many to link. Just go over to eBay, type in "adoption" and play in the water.) Bracelets are big. There's the "Adoption--Love for the Heart" bracelet; the "Glo in the Dark--I'm The Best Thing Made in China" bracelet; the "Adoption = Love" bracelet; and the "Red Thread" bracelet (various styles made from "New Jade" and does not "glo" in the dark.) If Lance Armstrong stylin' isn't your forte, try these out: The Cabbage Patch Boy in a Box (b. 1985--no shoes or socks, but he does have adoption papers, and he never grows up). Or a nice "Virgin Mary of the Adoption" ceramic art tile. Or an "Adoption Awareness" car magnet. Or an attractive weatherproof "Adoption is a Blessing from God"decal. (Tell that to 2-year old Nina Hilt who was beaten to death by her forever mom last week.)

PAPs take Spring (and Summer) House Cleaning seriously. We've got roadtoadoption-dot-com selling her Walt Disney pin collection; "Willowtreeconsignments" selling vintage tea towels and table runners; "johno7ka4 selling boys-sized t-shirts jeans, and an Old Navy winter coat; and jackdannyhannah selling a set early 20th century artist Maude Humphrey Bogart (Humphrey's mother) knock-off collectibles, and a water filtration bottle they used last year in Kazakhstan. They've also broken into their record cabinet. Chubby Checker That's the Way It Is/The Fly (45); and LPs: Clarence Carter Strokin', Journey Captured (with posters), the self-titled, A Flock of Seagulls, the Partridge Family Shopping Bag, Night Ranger Midnight Madness, and a signed copy of the Doobie Brothers Best of the Doobies (without Michael McDonald). I don’t' know how I'd feel if I learned my parents had been reduced to selling their Tommy Dorsey records to adopt me, but I could have done without some of that jumbo colonial furniture my mom acquired under the influence of Harriet Nelson.

All of which brings us back to the peculiar adoption-related item which started us on this shopping trip: "Chip Up for Adoption"," which you might surmise is shown above. This "one of a kind" item, discovered apparently amongst the fish tacos at the seller's favorite restaurant, is described as a "symbol of giving life--an adorable abandoned baby laying in a basket wrapped in a cozy, cuddly, crisp blanket" ie, the tortilla chip. And not only is it a symbol, it's an omen. Divine providence! The day after this amazing discovery the seller's sister-in-law left for China to pick up--what else? An abandoned baby! Who says irony is dead?

Unfortunately, Chip is under-appreciated. He (or is it she?) sold for only $1.25 with a $10.00 shipping and handling charge tacked on.

The safe haveners are obviously missing out on something here. Imagine what they could do with "Chip." Genuine tortilla chips are obviously a bit fragile for the job, but with a little bit of plastic ingenuity Chip could be replicated as an awesome tool of safe haven conversion, much like the plastic fetus "pocket pals" (not to be confused with sex toys of the same name) that are carried around by anti-aborts to initiate discussions with those unlucky enough to be stuck next to them in airplanes or grocery store lines. Chip key chains, pendants, earrings, pins, barrettes, and of course, bracelets would follow. Glo in the dark optional.

And why should the safe haven gang do all the marketing? After all, they're busy pulling baybees out of Dumpsters all day.

The solution is simple: Licensing. Third party income, is a no-brain opertation and is integral to the growth of any business as long as the product is right. And Chip is the right product at the right time. Just think about it. Chips in Tostida bags, tie-ins with Mexican restaurants. Turn in your Chip and register for an all-expense paid trip for 2 to Cancun! How about board and computer games? (who can adopt Chip quickest and cheapest?) A designer baby blanket line: plain, corn, tortilla, rojo, blue, or ranchero. Celebrity endorsements. Oh, and then there's film, video, and TV. I mean, everytime you look at a tortilla chip you'll think, "Don't eat your baby, safe haven it."

MGA could add Chip to their Bratzbabyz collection. Currently, Chip most resembles Chloe, but let's not be ethnocentric here. It won't take much for a makeover into Jade, Yasmin and Sasha.

Let's not forget to diversify either. There could be a Chip in a Basket for the religiously inclined, Loogie Chip, the Garbage Pail Kid, and Chipper the...well Beanie Babies already has a Chipper. We'll think of something.

The marketing opportunities are endless--and like the Jesuits, if you get a child early enough you've got her for life. Teach her by the age of 8 that's it's OK to abandon a baby, and she'll do it 10 years later. Nobody will ever have to know. Chip told her so.

In a few years Chip could be as iconic to abandoned safe havend babies as Betty Crocker is to housewives and Morris is to cats. And when that happens Chip will be a hot collectable and resold on eBay at an inflated price. Just like real abandoned safe havened babies.

UPDATE: OUR DIMPLE GOES FOR THE JUGULAR

Dimple Menezes has quickly become Bastardette's favorite dumpee. According to today's Times of India, Dimple is going for the jugular. Her lawyer S.P. Chopra says his client, in a separate action, plans to file criminal charges against the Singhs under the Indian penal code "which offers seven years imprisonment to parents if a new-born is abandoned and left to the mercy of the unknown."

Hungry dogs appear to qualify as a serious "unknown."

"She threw me away. She did not feed me. Did she hold me? And then after 12 years she came to me. How can there be any love?" Dimple said in a phone interview. "My mother dumped me because she did not want to pay dowry for me and then she came to hurt me again when I wanted to marry the man of my choice."

On the husband front, Mr. Menezes is currently working in Kuwait and can't wait for this legal imbroglio to be over so he and Dimple can start over. "I want to end this pain...all this anger and move on in life."

The Singhs, not surprisingly, are not available for comment.

Dimple's suit, the first of its kind in India, is being brought under India's Adoption and Maintenance Act which "makes it obligatory for birth parents to care for their children as well as the marriage of their female offspring," says Chopra.

DIMPLE MENEZES: UNGRATEFUL ADOPTEE

Every adoptee who contemplates searching--or just accessing their own information--also contemplates what they may find. And that contemplation usually leads straight to disaster.

What if my birthmother is..A fundamentalist? A Democrat? A stripper? A feminist? Hillary Clinton? Rosie O'Donnell? A social worker? A nun? What if she's a grifter and gave away 7 others? What if she reads Harlequin romances or is Dick Cheney's secretary? What if Dick Cheney is my birthfather? What if my birthfather wants to move in and sleep on my couch? What if he's a rapist? A pimp? A junkie? A drunk? A priest? (That's how he got together with my mother the nun). What if my birth family thinks Thomas Kincade is a great artist? Or pickets abortion clinics? Or are Scientologists?? Or keeps John Kerry signs in their yard year 'round? What if they wear polyester? What if they're old hippies? Old rednecks? What if my grandparents were Nazi collaborators or belong to the Revolutionary Communist Party and can't speak in coherent sentences? What if my sister breeds Pomeranians? Or my brothers guzzle beer every Sunday during NASCAR or cook meth in their trailer? What if they don't like me? What if they like me too much? What if I fall in love with my brother? Or my sister? Or worse?

Bastard Nation even has a page devoted to just such scenarios: True Tales of Revolting Reunions.

Fortunately, most of the time you'll find people just like you--or at least a reasonable facsimile--and things work out OK...as OK as any family relationships work out...unless you are...

Dimple Menezes, a permanent resident of Chandigarh, India currently residing in Adoption Hell. According to stories published recently in The Calcutta Telegraph and The Scotsman Dimple's reunion far exceeds anything found in the annals of BN's Revolting Reunions.

Of course, Dimple should have known what to expect--reasonably. At the age of 9 days she was tossed into a garbage bin adjacent a local hospital near Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab where she was rescued from a pack of drooling dogs. She was adopted eventually by the hospital superintendent Dr. Sulochana Michael Karanjia. Dimple's twin sister, whom she learned about years later, was kept by the biological parents.

By all accounts the adoption was and is a happy one, and Dimple has led a relatively untroubled life--except for the arrival about 16 years ago of the biological parents Harbans Kaur and Giani Sukhdev Singh, hereafter referred to as The Singhs. The Singhs, who later pled impoverishment for Dimple's dive into the Dumpster, learned of her whereabouts from a newspaper account of "a garbage baby." Tracking down Dimple and her adoptive mother, they demanded that Dr. Karanjia send Dimple to them during school holidays. Upon arrival they insisted on keeping her. It particularly "pained" Mrs. Singh to see Dimple, born a Sikh, reared in a Christian family. Dr. Karanjia relunctantly agreed to the transfer, but Dimple refused to cooperate, and the Singhs eventually returned her to her adoptive family.

Fast forward a dozen years. Dimple is now graduated from college with a degree in computer science, has a good job at Reliance Telecom, and gets engaged to dreadful Christian, Jude Eric Menezes. The Singhs, who according to Dimple have never shown a single regret over trying to turn her into a doggie diner, much less apologized for the unfortunate incident, decide to assert their "parental rights" over her, not only by insisting that she leave her fiance and marry a Sikh they have picked out for her, but that she turn over part of her salary to them--ie, support their skanky asses.

Since this demand, details are fuzzy (in the articles), but apparently the Singhs, even after Dimple's 2003 marriage to Menezes, continued their campaign to "assert their rights" --or as Dimple prefers to call it--their campaign of "harassment." Recently she has taken a step to remove the Singhs from her life permanently: she's suing them for 1 million rupees (nearly $23,000) as compensation for abandonment and neglect.

As Dimple says:

They have no right to interfere in my life now....Did I commit a crime by coming out alive from a garbage dump full of killer dogs?

The Singhs have ignored court summons in the past, but since learning recently of the compensation suit they have decided to disown Dimple. Mr. Singh, now says that she is not his daughter after all, it was all a mistake. She's really the daughter of a former neighbor. They're due to appear in court on July 20.

Could lawsuits like Dimple's catch on in the US, especially now that "legalized" baby abandonment is encouraged as a way to "place" newborns outside of the ethical norms of best practice? While Safe Havens are obviously not as traumatic as a pit of starving dogs, we hope so. While the Singhs have an excuse for their actions--though a piss poor moral excuse at that--our local dump pimps have none.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Click here for Dimple's recipe for breaded pepper chicken. It's so simple even Bastardette can fix it.