🍉Harvest Oak 🍉

Inside Utah’s ‘human marketplace’ for adopted babies Desperate women denied abortion access in much of the US are being offered a way out for the children they cannot raise themselves. It’s not always what it seems

"In essence, it’s child trafficking": another article on the state of Utah as a hotbed for #adoption trafficking. With competition among would-be adopters so intense--roughly 1 million couples versus roughly 20,000 adoptions every year--Utah is a hot marketplace.

I wrote about the Trump administration’s embrace of the pro-natalist movement, and the need to combat pro-natalist misogyny in cultural terms. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Danish media are only willing to speak to #adoptees if we are willing to be the personal tragic trauma story or the heart warming "I'm so grateful" story.
Very rarely are they willing to just listen to us as experts on the adoption industry, racism, capitalism, sexism etc. 🥚

Update on this: I have hashimoto’s disease. Still waiting for my follow up appointment.

The interdisciplinary nature of orphanage tourism Orphanage tourism, where tourists visit or volunteer in orphanages, has emerged as a complex issue that intersects various academic disciplines. While often examined through the lenses of social work ...

The interdisciplinary nature of orphanage tourism, by Dr. Westerlaken. 👇🏽🥚
#adopteesky
www.linkedin.com/pulse/interd...

Musk cuts the team finding Ukrainian children stolen by Russia Trump’s federal cost-cutting - led by Elon Musk's Doge – has now hit the unit helping rescue Ukrainian children taken by Russia

Russia has kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin was indicted for this crime. Yale has a unit searching for them. Musk eliminated the funding.
inews.co.uk/news/world/m...

#adoption is a weapon of war and genocide. we see this again and again when states attack other states, or their own people.

Utah Legislature passes house bill allowing increased access to adoption records - SUU News A bill increasing adoptee access to adoption records passed the Utah Legislature on Feb. 21, 2025, and now awaits approval from Gov. Spencer Cox. The bill, HB 129, will allow Utah residents to access ...

Heads up, Utah. Tell your governor to sign this bill and normalize #adoptee rights to know where we come from and access our medical history.

Also, these are our fucking records. They should not be held as state secrets because other people want to play pretend games. 🥚

suunews.net/2025/03/06/u...

Mutual aid is love

never forget that if #adoption “saves orphans,” it does so by *making* orphans.

I had two living parents. I still do. I was “orphaned” not by an act of god but by an act of *law*.

The absolutely overwhelming majority of adoptees are likewise orphans on paper only.

Thank you so much, I’m so lucky that my doctor is LGBT+ affirming and took all of my concerns very seriously. She’s great!

I finally got diagnosed with hypothyroidism! It’s nice to know that I’m not making up my symptoms 😭

One of the nicest parts about independent adoption is that it normally allows you to bring the baby home directly from the hospital. There is virtually never an intermediate foster parent placement while you wait for the birth mother's consent to become irrevocable, or other procedural steps to be satisfied. (The popularity of immediate placements in independent adoption has caused many private agencies to duplicate the practice of immediate placement in their adoptions.) Most states allow the birth mother to release her child directly into your physical custody immediately upon the hospital's discharge of the baby, usually when the baby is one to three days old.

There is a great benefit to you in taking your baby home immediately. Every new parent, adoptive or otherwise, knows the early days of a child's life are precious and irreplaceable. Naturally, the child also benefits from being with you immediately as his or her future parents, rather than foster parents. But there is also a disadvantage. There is always a possibility you will bond to a child the birth mother has not yet permanently released for adoption and that she may seek to reclaim. This is because often the child is released from the hospital before the consent to adoption is signed, as many states require a specific number of days to pass before the consent can be signed, or she has to be discharged from the hospital. (In most states, the consent is signed within just a few days of birth. The state-by-state review in Chapter 15 details the laws of each state.

these passages from a “how to adopt” book make it clearer than any ranting of mine that adoption treats pregnant women—who in this book are termed “birth mothers” despite not even having relinquished their children—as nothing more than brood mares for baby buyers. 🥚

“They are too young to articulate what is going on inside them, but adult adoptees looking back in sorrow as much as in anger, understand what they did to survive.” That hits like a Mac truck going 70 down the freeway. 😭

Aid Request: Travel Costs for Naturalization Interview It is essential that I appear for this naturalization interview so that my client is approved for US citizenship.

We're halfway toward the goal. Funds needed so I can be at my client's naturalization interview in Los Angeles. My services are free, the travel not so much, and my client is homeless and obviously deserves to secure citizenship. Info: adopteerightslaw.com/intercountry...

an analogy, fwiw.

1. your privacy entitles you to conceal your bank account number from me.

2. your privacy does not entitle you to conceal *my* bank account number from me.

3. nor does your privacy entitle you to conceal our *shared* bank account number from me.

OBC access is like # 3.

Mutual aid is love. 🩷🩷🩷

I unfortunately cannot donate due to poverty, but I’ll certainly like and repost your stuff. 🩷🩷🩷

Mutual aid is love 🩷🩷🩷

Mutual aid is love 🩷🩷🩷

This is a great question I'll answer in a thread. If I miss any details hopefully someone else will chime in (1/x)

A picture of a hampster with the water dispenser deep in its cheek. The hampster is labeled “your girl” and the water dispenser is labeled “me”

It’s meme’n time. *memes all over the place*

Utah House betrayed Utah adoptees today by passing a last- minute amendment to the clean OBC bill with a Disclosure Veto that allows bparents to petition court to keep document sealed. I will have more later.

people would rise up in fury over the idea of the state taking a person’s house or car and giving it to another private citizen, but they don’t bat an eye at the state’s doing this with “undeserving” people’s children.

This is the reality that liberals and conservatives have built in the USA. 🥚

Mutual aid is love