Season 1, Episode 4
Bastard Nation finds its voice
An online community of adoptees fight for their birth records in 1990s Oregon - framing the issue around civil rights instead of parent/child relationships.
In the early 1900s, birth records of children given up for adoption were sealed and confidential, an effort to shield mothers and children from the societal shame of being born out of wedlock. Fast forward to the advent of the Internet, and adopted adults used the power of the web to form online networks connecting the community, and as helpful as these support groups were, adoptees still lacked the legal protections to access their birth records.
Groups like Bastard Nation helped its members navigate access to birth records, as well as fight the stigma of adoption altogether. It was out of this radical group that the very intimate issue of adoption made its way to the ballot box, begging the question, what are the limits of making the personal, political? This episode explains how this initiative addressed the social stigma around adoption and addresses the longstanding debates around the power of ballot initiatives.
Resources
Measurable Rights documentary by Paul Fornier/Storm Rock Films
Adoption Politics by E. Wayne Carp
In This Episode
Warren Deras, an Oregon attorney and adoptive father who led the opposition to Measure 58.
Helen Hill, an artist and writer who led Oregon’s Measure 58 campaign to make original birth certificates available to adoptees.
Ron Morgan, a member of Bastard Nation who traveled from California to Oregon to work on the Measure 58 campaign.