Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson @bekhenson Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

@bekhenson

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I’m still on this hellsite in spite of Elon Musk, not because of him. | #AdopteeRightsAreHumanRights | #CitizenshipForAdoptees | @NEAdoptees | 💵: $bekhenson

Vermont

https://t.co/4vtsleQRvO

Joined June 2009

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

*raises megaphone* Before we do anything else related to “reforming #adoption ,” let’s make sure all adopted people in this country have U.S. citizenship first. Thank you. *lowers megaphone* #CitizenshipforAdoptees #AdopteeCitizenshipAct #AdopteeRightsAreHumanRights

@NPRCodeSwitch

NPR's Code Switch

2 years

This week on the pod, @alyssajperry takes us to Mexico to meet a man who was deported there — despite having been adopted as a baby by U.S. citizens. And we take a look at the bizarre and complex legal landscape that makes cases like these possible

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Here’s something I really need people to hear and understand: ADOPTED PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS IN THIS COUNTRY. (🧵)

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

For roughly 70 years, now, adopted people have not had full rights to our own birth certificates. Our ORIGINAL birth certificates. The one that records the actual, factual details of when and where we were born and who we were born to.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@LiveAction Hi. I’m an adoptee. And what you’re describing here is forced surrogacy, not adoption.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

It is the law in every state in the U.S. that the moment an adoption is finalized in court, the adopted person’s birth certificate is sealed by the judge and replaced with a new one that lists the people who adopted us as the people who gave birth to us.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

This happens to every single person who is adopted, regardless of whether they were infants or teenagers at the moment they were adopted. And for the last 70-ish years, all adopted people have been legally prohibited from obtaining our unedited, original birth record.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

And it is only because we are adopted. People whose birth certificates have been amended for other reasons (correcting wrong information or changing a gender marker, for instance) still retain full legal rights to access the original version of their own birth record.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Adopted people do not have that right, and it’s only because of the social class we belong to—adoptees.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

A nationwide #adopteerights movement began in the early 1970s to challenge and overturn these discriminatory laws in every state to give adopted people equal rights to our own complete identities.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

But federal courts told adopted people the same thing SCOTUS is saying now: Our right to our whole selves is not explicitly provided for in the U.S. Constitution, therefore the 14th Amendment does not apply to adopted people.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

In the last 50 years of dedicated advocacy for #adopteerights , only 11 states have repealed these discriminatory statutes so far. Vermont just officially became the 11th state as of yesterday, thanks to a law I helped pass with 4 other advocates here.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

We challenged these discriminatory laws in the courts first, using the same equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment that SCOTUS is currently using in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

We’d have to challenge these laws in our own states instead. And that’s exactly what we did—and are still doing today, more than 50 years later.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Tens of thousands of us are not U.S. citizens and are at immediate risk of getting deported if Congress does not pass the #AdopteeCitizenshipAct , which adopted people have been trying to push through every Congress since 2013.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Our equal rights battle is just one of the many justice issues adopted people face, though. Adoption also impacts our access to adequate #healthcare and #mentalhealth services.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

I’ve seen friends, followers, and loved ones rally for other major social issues before. Can we rally for adoptee rights now, too?

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@LiveAction And I am far from the only adoptee with a story like that. 80% of women who relinquished their babies for adoption say they would have raised them—not aborted, but raised them—had their agency given them accurate information about aid they qualified for as single mothers.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Adopted people need your voice and advocacy right now, because we’re exhausted from doing all of this alone. 50 years is a long time to be told that your rights are not actually an area of national importance or concern.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@LiveAction Also, the reason I wasn’t aborted is because my original mother intended on raising me herself. She never intended to lose me to abortion OR adoption. She wanted me. Other people in her family made other plans for her, though.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Adopted and formerly fostered people have been doing the actual work of fixing this shit while everyone else around us just talks about how “someone should do something.” Adopted people are doing the work, but we can’t keep doing it alone like we have been.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Everyone who keeps expressing the desire to see our broken beyond repair adoption and foster care systems fixed: #adopteerights is where that work begins.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

How about a viral donation drive for @AdopteesUnited and @Adoptees4Just —the two biggest organizations that are dedicated to advancing #adopteerights in the U.S.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Please be accomplices with us. #adopteerights #adopteevoices

@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

3 years

If you're hearing about the decades-long movement for #adopteerights and justice for the first time in the wake of Justice Barrett's statements last week, here are some ways to align with, amplify, and incorporate our aims and goals in the work you already do:

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Ready for your mind to be blown? Ok, check this out. In 2015, @gesisson published a study of women with unplanned pregnancies who placed their babies for adoption.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@LiveAction What we must reject is the commodifying of people like me and women like my original mother. Crisis pregnancies are not your win-win business opportunity. Stop putting the name “adoption” on what is actually a version of surrogacy.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Through interviews with these women she found that most often, they weren't weighing adoption and abortion against each other, but were first deciding if they wanted to stay pregnant, then deciding if they wanted to parent. Adoption vs. parenting, not adoption vs. abortion.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

A second study she led in 2016 reinforced her previous findings that for both women who abort their pregnancies and women who consider adoption, abortion is a pregnancy decision and adoption is a parenting decision, and they're made at separate times.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Abortion is a pregnancy choice, adoption is a parenting choice. They even affirm in their own recommendations: "Adoption advocacy should not be positioned against abortion."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@eveewing Academics 7 months and 5 days from now: I’m so sorry, I’m overscheduled. Can we reschedule at the end of next semester?

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@Roger_Xanth_Day @ReadsVictoria @happydoglady55 @supergirlsudz @megxharry @acechhh This is the most perfect context for a Downtown Abbey gif I’ve ever seen.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Oh, wow. I am absolutely blown away & so deeply grateful for the response to this thread. The only thing I’ve got to promote is #CitizenshipForAdoptees . Go give @Adoptees4Just a follow & take action ⬇️ to secure US citizenship for all intercountry adoptees

Tweet card media

Adoptees for Justice

www.adopteesforjustice.org

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

4 years

@HoarseWisperer Not just soulmate—soul & dream mate! That’s like, the rarest kind of love.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

They interviewed 51 women who had made decisions about their unplanned pregnancies. And you know what the found in 1999? The same damn thing @gesisson found almost 10 years later in 2015: Women choose for or against staying pregnant first, THEN make a decision about parenting.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 months

@lifetimeadopt No, housing homeless pregnant folks and families is the answer. What you are describing here is predatory. #AdopteeVoices

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@hootypuff This is equally not surprising and fully horrifying to me that the professionals running this business (because that’s exactly what it is) can be failing so tremendously in this area. Like, where are all these adoption workers getting their training, anyway?

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

You know what their study calls that dignity, self-worth, and sense of identity in expectant mothers? "Barriers to adoption." And women's impulses to want to keep their babies instead of relinquishing they correlate with "less mature women."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Furthermore, just as @gesisson found through her interviews, women who aborted their pregnancies made that decision early and unwaveringly, and women who chose to continue their pregnancies showed a strong preference for raising their babies, not relinquishing them.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Which is what @gesisson says too: promoting adoption as the alternative to abortion doesn't match women's decision-making OR their feelings about adoption.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

1 year

@harsesischild “I changed my behavior and took accountability.” Did you, though? Cause it doesn’t really sound like you have, quite honestly.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Did you get that? If you choose to stay pregnant, develop a bond with your future baby during your pregnancy, and decide you'd rather raise it than place it for adoption, you lack maturity. You're also acting selfishly, irresponsibly, and possibly endangering your own child.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@guns_shit @dougisaliveatl @qaomene I'm adopted, not a foster carer, but as far as I'm aware, licensed foster carers can say "no" to any kid they're contacted about. Like, a social worker doesn't just show up at your door with child just whenever. They contact you about it first and you either accept or decline.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

And here’s a link to donate directly to legal defense, emergency relief, and advocacy funds for adoptees without U.S. citizenship. #CitizenshipForAdoptees #Citizenship4All

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@Franch07726273 @Roger_Xanth_Day @ReadsVictoria @happydoglady55 @supergirlsudz @megxharry @acechhh Oh what a shamefully embarrassing malfunction of my autocorrect!

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

4 years

@jordisqt @local__celeb @anna__goldie I didn't know I was capable of laughing and having a panic attack at the same time.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

4 months

@cornell_pj @HighnessOphelia Men who who would consider this a “gray area” are not the kind of men I’d feel safe being alone in a room with anyway, so no loss there.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

A direct quote from the FRC's study: "Upon suspecting they are pregnant, respondents feel an immediate predisposition either to abort or to carry to term before they ever enter a pregnancy resource center."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Listen to adopted people, not overpowered lobbying groups and adoption agencies, about adoption, its impacts, and what needs to change.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

This decade-old study from one of the most powerful conservative, faith-based lobbying groups in America affirms multiple times what adoptees like myself and birth mothers have been dismissed—often with hostility—for stating for at least as long:

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

Adoptees speaking against popular narratives and assumptions about our experiences and getting published for it. We need more of this. We need diverse voices sharing truth—that adoption carries challenges that each adoptee reacts to differently.

@NPR

NPR

6 years

Meeting birth parents has been billed as a huge life-changing event in movies, books and news stories. But what happens when it's not?

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Yes, tell your conflicted client that she's at higher risk for neglecting or injuring a child she probably doesn't want anyway, despite 13 pages of compiled evidence in your own report that illustrates the opposite.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

These are the foundational messages about unplanned pregnancy that many private adoption agencies are built on, and have been threaded through America's social subconscious through strategically pointed marketing campaigns.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

One of the most influential fundamentalist lobbies in America actually agrees with what adoptees, birth mothers, our allies, and women's reproductive rights supporters have been openly scorned for saying ourselves for years and years.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

You've seen me tweet this before. I've shared these studies many times in many conversations, both online and in person. And when the person I'm talking to is a firm believer in adoption as the answer to abortion, they tend to pick apart the studies.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

For everyone who’s been asking questions related to privacy, medical information, and more, I tweeted recently about these ramifications for adopted people:

@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

The ramifications of no longer having any legal right to my own relatives means that I also have no legal right to things like medical records I might need to obtain to confirm my genetic health risks and history.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Lots of people are real interested in reforming foster care and adoption all of a sudden. If your efforts are not led by fostered and adopted people who actually live the consequences of these broken, exploitative systems firsthand ourselves, you’re doing it wrong. #adopteevoices

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

I don't want to link directly to the report that's fed into the steamrolling of both adoptee voices & vulnerable women for the past 10 years, but it's publicly available & you can find it for yourself by Googling "family research council the missing piece." It's the first result.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

They tell counselors to "address the fact that women who keep babies they do not really want are much more likely to neglect or injure them. While children may have been saved from abortion, by staying with unprepared mothers, they may very well live lives of pain and suffering."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Here are women's own words on their feelings about adoption cited in these different studies nearly a decade apart: "I think if I am going to carry my baby for nine months, I couldn’t give it away." "If I do not keep the child, [they] will grow up and wonder why I did not."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

"If I had given birth...no. I would never give it up for adoption. I wouldn’t let it leave my sight." "I had too many feelings for her to give [her] to someone I barely knew." "I would always wonder if I made the right choice."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

That last one is from the Family Research Council's study, which also acknowledges a sense of dignity, self-worth, and positive identity associated with motherhood among the women they interviewed, and relinquishment for adoption representing a loss of all those things.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@laurenthehough FYI, this TikTok was originally filmed and posted back in January. It’s just making new rounds on Twitter today. Here’s the original tweet.

@_cairde

Cairde

2 years

Dancing to ‘Queen’ for the Queen 📍 Buckingham Palace, London ᚉᚐᚔᚏᚇᚓ

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

"Well the original data it's based on is known to be flawed," or "Well that's only a handful of women. What about the rest of them?" Here's where things get interesting.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

"The choice was made for me when my daughter was born. When I saw her face and her little hands grabbed my finger, I knew that, for better or for worse, I was going to keep her. I don’t regret it."

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

And here’s what it’s like for me to navigate my own #healthcare as an adopted person:

@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

Second, it's not merely legalities that keep adopted people from being able to access our own family medical history. It's the social separation from our families, too.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Have you heard of the Family Research Council? The Christian fundamentalist political activist group founded by James Dobson and they with a powerful lobbying arm?

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

From 1997 to 1999, they researched the effectiveness of crisis pregnancy centers deterring women from abortion and encouraging them to pursue adoption over other options, including parenting.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@ksieff @alexanderchee You left out one class of people: adoptees. Since about the 1940s, when a child’s adoption is finalized, their birth certificate gets rewritten w/ the adoptive parents’ names where the biology parents’ names once were. The original is sealed away from even the adoptee themselves.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@ksieff @alexanderchee @StateDept Many of us have run into big issues bc the @StateDept has astoundingly limited knowledge of how adoptees’ amended birth certificates work. We’ve been asked to produce our original birth certificates, which we can’t if we live in a state that blocks our access to our own records.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

But I want to press a little further, specifically into the part about women's feelings about adoption. Because that's where things take a sinister turn. The Family Research Council interviewed 51 women in 1999. @gesisson and her team interviewed 31 almost 10 years later.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

3 years

If you're hearing about the decades-long movement for #adopteerights and justice for the first time in the wake of Justice Barrett's statements last week, here are some ways to align with, amplify, and incorporate our aims and goals in the work you already do:

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

Holy shit. This is horrifying and needs national amplification immediately.

Federal judge in Texas strikes down Indian Child Welfare Act

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton argued that the law "elevates a child's race over their best interest."

www.texastribune.org

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

4 years

Unpopular Adoptee Opinion: Maybe instead of funding research to make adoption perfect, we could channel those funds into fixing the actual socio-economic challenges & inequalities that lead to the disruptive transfer of children from one family to another in the first place.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

1 year

@akafacehots @ZoAndBehold Her constituents did.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Fellow adoptees who, like me, have found it increasingly difficult in recent years to break through public opinion with our real life experiences and voices on adoption issues, we have the Family Research Council’s comprehensive messaging strategy to thank for that.

Tweet media one

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

1 year

Because Safe Haven Baby Boxes™️ prioritize anonymity over safety, there’s no way to verify whether an infant was left in the box by its distraught mother or stolen from its mother and left by someone else. This new Indiana law should horrify everyone.

@adopteelaw

Adoptee Rights Law

1 year

Well, this is now Indiana law.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

9 years

@joshgroban http://t.co/sXS71zUMvD

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@ksieff @alexanderchee @StateDept It’s a long-running injustice.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

1 year

Adopted people and #AdopteeRights advocates have been sounding alarms about the dangers of this kind of adoption “reform” since before Roe got overturned. A lot of us have been victims of “streamlined,” “fast tracked” adoptions ourselves. I’m one of them.

@JessicaValenti

Jessica Valenti

@JessicaValenti

1 year

In both Alabama and Tennessee, Republicans have been talking about "streamlining" the adoption process post-Roe. One lawmaker said they want to “make it easier, cheaper and faster to adopt.” This should make people very nervous!

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@Annsara18 @designmom Yep. First thing I thought of when I saw this thread is that infant is in danger of disappearing REAL fast because “adoptable” babies are in such high demand and always have been. 1/

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Hi. I’m Rebekah, I’m adopted, and I’m just now experiencing the revelation that my parents who adopted and raised me were both raging narcissists who were only happy when I was loyal to and dependent on them. 🙃

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

This @montclairstateu and @DrexelUniv study is extremely special not only because it’s the first of its kind in the U.S., but also—and most vitally—because it was proposed AND LED by ACTUAL ADOPTED PEOPLE who have lived this exact experience.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@Wise_Ox Adoptee here to add to the discussion. There are 3 main ways to adopt in the US: from public agencies that run state foster care, from private agencies that match pregnant women with hopeful couples, and from private agencies that source children from other countries.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@ksieff @alexanderchee The amended birth certificate becomes your legal identification. The original birth certificate is no longer recognized as valid in any way and in all but a handful of states, adoptees are legally prohibited from obtaining those documents about ourselves.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@RandomQuiet @laurenancona The generational impact of the ways adopted people are marginalized is also something we need to talk a whole lot more about, because it doesn’t end with the adoptee. 💛

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@ksieff @alexanderchee Per the @StateDept ’s passport requirements updated in 2011, if your birth certificate was issued more than one year after your birth—which is common for adopted people—you must other prove you’re a U.S. citizen, whether you were born here or not.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

3 months

🧵On Wednesday, March 27, I received a phone call from the lawyer representing my grandmother’s estate notifying me as next of kin as a legal obligation to begin the probate process. This is how I found out she died in January.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@peace_change @hootypuff I have been talking for years about how I want to see child welfare agencies hire fostered and adopted people to train adoption workers on all the aspects of foster care and adoption that their formal education doesn’t cover.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@C_Stroop @kathrynajoyce Adoptee activists like myself have been raising alarms about Bethany for a long time. I felt sick inside as soon as I saw their name attached to the placement of these migrant children.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

3 years

1) #HealthEquity & justice: People who were #adopted are not receiving the same access to preventative care that you are. Adoption's current legal statutes mean #adoptees lose the right to access vital information about our genetic health risks and history.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

@thesusanito @nicsigni This thread is my eternal mood.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

My community is dying and being murdered: A thread about adoptees, foster care, murders, and suicides, and a plea to give a damn and make this topic viral

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@thekatyrex @dougisaliveatl @guns_shit @qaomene Yes, that part's got me especially heated. I was once an adopted 11-year-old who needed my adoptive parents' emotional support, too, and didn't get it. Was this woman like, binging on podcasts instead of listening to the training instructor every time or what?

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@chickadizzle @laurenancona I am so sorry for your loss. 💔 It’s happened to far too many of us, too. I’ve personally found that I get better preventative and diagnostic care from my doctors when I lie to them about being in reunion with my birth family.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

6 years

@ksieff @alexanderchee The amended birth certificate is issued AFTER the adoption is finalized. If the court finalized your adoption after you were a year old, your amended birth certificate will have an issue date reflecting that.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

4 months

“At what age do we think an existing adoptee has the maturity level and life experience to be able to make these decisions?” This is what the institutionalized infantilization of adopted people looks like. #AdopteeRightsAreHumanRights

@adopteelaw

Adoptee Rights Law

4 months

Back when I was still in diapers as a 32-year-old . . .

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

3 years

In transferring all parental rights and responsibilities from our original parents to the new parents adopting us, adoptees lose all legal rights to our own relatives. That includes the right to access certain relevant health information that HIPAA extends to family members.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@abandofstrays @qaomene And this is why adopted people and people who experienced foster care need lifetime access to mental health services paid for by the agencies that selected the families to replace our existing families.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

5 years

Everyone, please, stop using adoptees and foster youth in your arguments for or against abortion access rights in Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio. #AlabamaAbortionBan

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

2 years

@Annsara18 @designmom Add in the fact that the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act gives state child welfare services financial incentives for the number of adoptions they complete every year—not reunifications, only adoptions— 2/

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

4 months

@Dnellicious @Tyler_A_Harper Yeah, had to retract my like on the first tweet after I saw this one.

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@bekhenson

Rebekah #CitizenshipForAdoptees Henson

3 months

Until my grandmother’s obituary is properly amended to include me as her granddaughter and my father’s daughter as it should, I am posting this publicly for posterity so at least I am visible and counted somewhere, as I always should have been.

Tweet card media

Ruth H. Henson - View Obituary & Service Information

Share Memories and Support the Family.

www.givnish.com

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