(The following was initially published in May, 2008, by the Pioneer Press, St. Paul, MN. A new bill, subject to the same failings, is working its way through the Minnesota Legislature again in 2009. This time, I'm told, Pawlenty may sign the bill. Wrong result: wrong reasons.)
TWBM
Governor Pawlenty vetoed an obscure bit of legislation on May 16, one which few Minnesotans have heard of and in which even fewer have any interest. But for tens of thousands of Minnesotans whose lives have been touched by adoption over the last 90 years, it was a significant event, one in which Governor Pawlenty reached the right result for all the wrong reasons.
Every birth in Minnesota is memorialized by a birth certificate. A second birth certificate is issued for any minor adopted in Minnesota. Since 1917, Minnesota has sealed the original birth certificates of those born and adopted in this state. Initially, the information was locked away only from the general public. Over the years, however, the law was changed to prohibit anyone from seeing the original birth certificate, parent or offspring, adult or child. Under current law, some adult adoptees have access to their original birth certificates, some don't. It all depends upon when they were born and whether one of their biological parents has told the state not to release that information to them.
The bill in question would have changed the situation slightly, allowing any adoptee at least 19 years of age to obtain an uncertified copy of his or her original certificate upon request, provided that one of the birth parents had not already vetoed the adoptee’s right to that information.
Neither the existing law, nor the bill vetoed last week by Governor Pawlenty, makes sense to this adoptive father. Why my son should be denied the right to obtain a copy of his original birth certificate from the state, while I have the absolute right to my own, is a mystery. Both of our births were public events, like virtually every other person in this state. Yet, the state decided at some point in the distant past that some adults in this state should be denied access to this most fundamental personal information: who they are and where they came from.
No one should have the right to tell the state whether or my son may have access to this information. Yet our current law and the failed attempt to modify it place that right in the hands of the man and woman who conceived him. Why? Because he was adopted after being born. Had he been placed in foster care, he would have the same rights I do. Whether he was born inside or outside of marriage, he would have the same rights I do. Whether he had been raised by one parent or two, he would have the same rights I do. But because he was adopted, the State of Minnesota has granted either of his biological parents the power to deny him the right enjoyed by every other non-adopted person in Minnesota: the right to know from whence he came.
The exercise of this power would not affect only my son. It would affect all those to whom he is related by blood and who may be deprived of the possibility of ever knowing him, his father, mother, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, nieces, nephews, and cousins. All because he was adopted.
Governor Pawlenty was right to veto a bill that would have perpetuated this injustice. Sadly, he did so for all the wrong reasons. His veto was based not on a recognition of the rights of adult adoptees, but on the erroneous belief that those who relinquished children for adoption were in some way promised that the fact of the adoption would be kept forever secret by the state. He also cited a report that fewer than one-quarter of biological parents contacted by a single Minnesota adoption agency preferred not to have identifying information released by the agency.
Fortunately, my son was born in a country which does not seal original birth certificates. He already has a certified copy of his. He knows his origins. But thousands of others adopted in Minnesota since 1917 (and their descendants) will never know theirs, so long as Minnesota continues to meddle in their private lives.
91 years of such meddling is more than enough. Perhaps our next legislature and our next governor will recognize that the state has no legitimate role to play in this area of our lives. Perhaps they will recognize that adult adoptees are indeed adults, not the children they once were. But they’ll need to hear from us to do so.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
A eulogy, of sorts.
(The following originally was published, in slightly different form, by the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, June, 2006.)
Twila Brase's June 8 diatribe against Medicare hit my dining room table only a few hours after I had learned of my mother-in-law's death at age 91, of Alzheimer's. This political extremism requires a response.
Brase calls upon Republicans to "follow the enduring conservative principles of individual liberty and personal responsibility" in building a "new Medicare free generation." Brase writes either from ignorance or blind faith in mythical economic and political systems. She assumes that Medicare is the result of and encourages personal irresponsibility and that it somehow threatens personal liberty. Her assumptions are not just wrong; they slander generations of men and women who have struggled to survive and thrive in this society.
My mother-in-law, Alice, took responsibility for herself and others throughout her life. Born in 1915, the eldest of 14 children, she saw only 8 years of formal education before her father died. She went to work on neighboring farms to help support her family. She married and had four children of her own, as she and her husband, Bill, worked a small farm east of Crookston, MN. Before her husband died in 1991, they had moved to a small home in Red Lake Falls, MN, living off their tiny life-long savings and a meager social security check. But for Medicare, they would have received no meaningful medical care in the last decades of their lives. They simply could not have afforded it: not because they were irresponsible, but because of the time, place and economy into which they were born.
Jobs were never plentiful in the Red River Valley. Small farms abounded, homesteaded by immigrants in the 19th century, handed down in bits and pieces to sons and daughters. Poverty was and remains a constant in this and many other parts of our country. Absent Medicare, and similar government funded medical programs, Alice, Bill, and thousands of elderly or disabled citizens would have received no medical care in the last 40 years other than, perhaps, the emergency care required to save a hand or keep a heart beating.
Brase's imagined threat to individual liberty is merely paranoid rhetoric. There has never been and will never be a law in this country that limits what an individual may pay for the medical treatment he or she wishes to obtain. Virtually every medical care provider in this country charges a number of rates for its services, varying only with the person paying the bills. If a patient is covered by Medicare and a doctor chooses to treat Medicare patients, the Medicare rate is charged. If the patient is covered by a private health insurance plan and the doctor has chosen to treat that patient, the agreed upon rate is paid. That rate typically is higher than Medicare's. Ironically, it is those patients who are covered by nothing but their own wallets who are charged the most for medical services.
If Medicare, an HMO, or a private insurer does not cover a given procedure, a patient is free to purchase it on the patient's own. Most simply can't afford to do so. The claim that Medicare and similar programs limit what medical care there is to be had is equally baseless. If you can afford an existing treatment, you can get it.
In all the decades before and since the advent of Medicare, neither our medical profession nor our insurance industry has found a way to make medical care universally available and affordable. Our once widespread medical insurance system was largely a by-product of labor shortages following WWII. With the collapse of the labor movement, we have seen corporations unilaterally abandoning both retiree health care and pension plans, reneging on payment of wages already earned by years of labor. These actions are not the result of any lack of personal responsibility on the part of retirees. They do, however, guarantee increasing reliance on the plan that we, as a society, have undertaken to insure medical care for ourselves and our parents. There is no reason to believe that the future will be any different, whether shaped by Republicans or Democrats. We do know, however, that if we dismantle Medicare, we abandon older Americans to unnecessary disease and death.
Twila Brase's June 8 diatribe against Medicare hit my dining room table only a few hours after I had learned of my mother-in-law's death at age 91, of Alzheimer's. This political extremism requires a response.
Brase calls upon Republicans to "follow the enduring conservative principles of individual liberty and personal responsibility" in building a "new Medicare free generation." Brase writes either from ignorance or blind faith in mythical economic and political systems. She assumes that Medicare is the result of and encourages personal irresponsibility and that it somehow threatens personal liberty. Her assumptions are not just wrong; they slander generations of men and women who have struggled to survive and thrive in this society.
My mother-in-law, Alice, took responsibility for herself and others throughout her life. Born in 1915, the eldest of 14 children, she saw only 8 years of formal education before her father died. She went to work on neighboring farms to help support her family. She married and had four children of her own, as she and her husband, Bill, worked a small farm east of Crookston, MN. Before her husband died in 1991, they had moved to a small home in Red Lake Falls, MN, living off their tiny life-long savings and a meager social security check. But for Medicare, they would have received no meaningful medical care in the last decades of their lives. They simply could not have afforded it: not because they were irresponsible, but because of the time, place and economy into which they were born.
Jobs were never plentiful in the Red River Valley. Small farms abounded, homesteaded by immigrants in the 19th century, handed down in bits and pieces to sons and daughters. Poverty was and remains a constant in this and many other parts of our country. Absent Medicare, and similar government funded medical programs, Alice, Bill, and thousands of elderly or disabled citizens would have received no medical care in the last 40 years other than, perhaps, the emergency care required to save a hand or keep a heart beating.
Brase's imagined threat to individual liberty is merely paranoid rhetoric. There has never been and will never be a law in this country that limits what an individual may pay for the medical treatment he or she wishes to obtain. Virtually every medical care provider in this country charges a number of rates for its services, varying only with the person paying the bills. If a patient is covered by Medicare and a doctor chooses to treat Medicare patients, the Medicare rate is charged. If the patient is covered by a private health insurance plan and the doctor has chosen to treat that patient, the agreed upon rate is paid. That rate typically is higher than Medicare's. Ironically, it is those patients who are covered by nothing but their own wallets who are charged the most for medical services.
If Medicare, an HMO, or a private insurer does not cover a given procedure, a patient is free to purchase it on the patient's own. Most simply can't afford to do so. The claim that Medicare and similar programs limit what medical care there is to be had is equally baseless. If you can afford an existing treatment, you can get it.
In all the decades before and since the advent of Medicare, neither our medical profession nor our insurance industry has found a way to make medical care universally available and affordable. Our once widespread medical insurance system was largely a by-product of labor shortages following WWII. With the collapse of the labor movement, we have seen corporations unilaterally abandoning both retiree health care and pension plans, reneging on payment of wages already earned by years of labor. These actions are not the result of any lack of personal responsibility on the part of retirees. They do, however, guarantee increasing reliance on the plan that we, as a society, have undertaken to insure medical care for ourselves and our parents. There is no reason to believe that the future will be any different, whether shaped by Republicans or Democrats. We do know, however, that if we dismantle Medicare, we abandon older Americans to unnecessary disease and death.
It was 40 years ago today . . .
my maternal grandmother was laid to her rest in a cemetery not too far from where I sit. She had died three days earlier, on April Fool's Day. Some joke.
April 4 was my then girlfriend's 19th birthday. She was in Waukesha, WI. (Happy 58th birthday today, kid. I understand life's been rough on you.)
After the funeral, I was in no mood to play nice with the family. My grandma meant a good deal to me, despite her many failings. Of course, I wasn't that aware of her failings then. As a child, I'd never understood why she would spend her afternoons watching Jan Murray's Treasure Hunt and then bitch about him being a "damn Jew". I didn't even know what a Jew was at the time, much less know one. Most White Bear boys were in the same boat. Hell, a Jew couldn't even buy property in the privately-owned North Oaks, area to the West of White Bear Lake. Of course, I couldn't get in without an escort. But I digress.
So, I left town after her funeral. I called a few friends and headed West, to the town of Morris, MN, where a pal was a freshmen in college. We drove a 1965 VW bug, carrying 3 people and 10.57 gallons of 14.9 cent a gallon gas. It took more than a few hours to cover the necessary ground. You can only push a 69 CI, 24 hp, 4 cylinder engine so fast.
It was almost dark when we arrived. My pal, whose name will go unremarked for the protection of us all, shared a dorm room in Pine Hall, a co-ed building with guys and girls on alternating floors. His roommate, B., was preparing for a date. I'd met B. before, briefly. He struck me as jock-like but OK.
I met another resident shortly after I arrived: D. To this day, I don't know why he made me laugh, but he did. I couldn't be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes without cracking up, completely. I was powerless.
We cut and ran, heading to a concert in a small auditorium in the center of the campus. I have no idea who was playing. It wasn't any good to my ears.
The rest of the evening is a blur, now. All I know is that when it came time to call it a night, my sleeping arrangements required that share D.'s room. I couldn't.
We left town well before dawn, rolling south on Highway 9 and then East on Highway 12 to Minneapolis and a dingy 2 bedroom apartment above a NordEast meat market and laundromat. My buddy made us breakfast. We ate spaghetti and meatballs on a balcony overlooking the alley as the sun rose behind us.
Goodbye, Grandma. It was good to know you.
TWBM
April 4 was my then girlfriend's 19th birthday. She was in Waukesha, WI. (Happy 58th birthday today, kid. I understand life's been rough on you.)
After the funeral, I was in no mood to play nice with the family. My grandma meant a good deal to me, despite her many failings. Of course, I wasn't that aware of her failings then. As a child, I'd never understood why she would spend her afternoons watching Jan Murray's Treasure Hunt and then bitch about him being a "damn Jew". I didn't even know what a Jew was at the time, much less know one. Most White Bear boys were in the same boat. Hell, a Jew couldn't even buy property in the privately-owned North Oaks, area to the West of White Bear Lake. Of course, I couldn't get in without an escort. But I digress.
So, I left town after her funeral. I called a few friends and headed West, to the town of Morris, MN, where a pal was a freshmen in college. We drove a 1965 VW bug, carrying 3 people and 10.57 gallons of 14.9 cent a gallon gas. It took more than a few hours to cover the necessary ground. You can only push a 69 CI, 24 hp, 4 cylinder engine so fast.
It was almost dark when we arrived. My pal, whose name will go unremarked for the protection of us all, shared a dorm room in Pine Hall, a co-ed building with guys and girls on alternating floors. His roommate, B., was preparing for a date. I'd met B. before, briefly. He struck me as jock-like but OK.
I met another resident shortly after I arrived: D. To this day, I don't know why he made me laugh, but he did. I couldn't be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes without cracking up, completely. I was powerless.
We cut and ran, heading to a concert in a small auditorium in the center of the campus. I have no idea who was playing. It wasn't any good to my ears.
The rest of the evening is a blur, now. All I know is that when it came time to call it a night, my sleeping arrangements required that share D.'s room. I couldn't.
We left town well before dawn, rolling south on Highway 9 and then East on Highway 12 to Minneapolis and a dingy 2 bedroom apartment above a NordEast meat market and laundromat. My buddy made us breakfast. We ate spaghetti and meatballs on a balcony overlooking the alley as the sun rose behind us.
Goodbye, Grandma. It was good to know you.
TWBM
So, here's the deal:
There are a lot of things that piss me off. Some would say too many. From time to time, I've written a bit about those things. Some have been published here and there; others I've written for myself. I'll be posting many of those here, for the sheer self-indulgent pleasure of it. Feel free to agree or disagree. I'm not sure I care.
TWBM
TWBM
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