Why the Roberts' adoption details matter.

[SoCalDem]

Had he chosen to remain a rich lawyer/judge, no one would have ANY reason to care how they came to be parents or where the kids came from.

BUT...


He has set himself up to be one of only NINE people whose job it is, to determine what is legal and what is not.

If their adoption is "iffy", the public deserves to know. Millions of people are trying desperately to adopt children, and THEY have to play by the rules, and sometimes even lose children because they didn't dot all the i's and cross all the t's.

It's not unreasonable to investigate the personal/legal/financial records of someone who had VOLUNTEERED to become a very public person. If they want total anonymity and privacy, they need to NOT volunteer to become a public figure.

What if?

What happens when someone eventually uncovers something shady about the adoption of the "Latin American??Irish??" adopted children, and he's a sitting supreme court justice?

Money changed hands to get two cute little white kids so close in age.

It may have been a lawyer "friend" who arranges these things, or a payment to a willing poor woman for "services rendered"..but there's no way that a couple in their 40's just all of a sudden "wants a few kids" , and just gets two dropped into their families.

[txindy]

1. Excellent points

I've said it in other threads: This isn't about the kids, it's about their parents.

[Booster]

2. Very good point. Something kept gnawing at me when I saw

those two perfect little kids. Yes, it's not about the kids....

[kestrel91316]

3. I smell a transaction involving lots of $$ .......................

Hey, isn't it illegal to buy children??

[SoCalDem]

5. and foreign adoption, so that records would be "fuzzy"

BUT..somewhere in their financial dealings, there HAS to be a few LARGE withdrawls

[SoCalDem]

30. Only illegal if you trade them for drugs or get caught selling them

If you are rich, and have lay=wyers and ARE lawyers, you can buy all the kids you can afford.

[Alcibiades]

4. Right on the money

Plus, they were adopted as babies. Blonde, white babies--how much do those go for in Latin America?

[SoCalDem]

6. They have got to be rare in latin America..probably

why their friend was told the kids came from Ireland...so she wouldn't ask too many questions

[REP]

8. SAmericans of Euro Descent Usually Don't Relinquish for Foreign Adoption

SAmericans of European descent are not usually in the socioeconomic class that relinquish newborns, especially for foreign adoption. It's possible that the children aren't of European ancestry, but I find that a little hard to believe.

[SoCalDem]

9. But a young woman might be coerced to be a surrogate for

a "fee"... Someone without a lot of money, but with fair skin and an acceptable lineage could get themselves set for life by popping out a couple of cute blond babies for the rich Americano....just sayin'

[REP]

10. "Coerced" You Say? I'm Shocked, I Tell You, Shocked

Such a thing never crossed my mind. Never. Why, it would take an enormously powerful couple and a lot of money to insure her silence, wouldn't it?

I think it was a US woman taken to South America for the impregnation/adoption. Foreign adoptions are a lot harder to contest.

[Hekate]

11. Many "orphans" are children of unwed mothers ...

... and in more "traditional" cultures shame and social ostracism are pretty powerful incentives for a mother to relinquish her infant for adoption. In previous generations many Irish babies made their way to the US under those circumstances -- life back in Ireland would have been pretty grim for both mother and child, as recent memoirs have attested.

In the US the entire adoption industry was fueled by white, teenaged, unwed mothers. I have two cousins and any number of friends born between 1935 and 1965 who were raised as adoptees -- there was absolutely no shortage of healthy and available blue-eyed babies. It was almost unthinkable for an unwed woman to keep her baby -- in spite of the heartbreak of giving away a child, the social consequences were just too severe. And abortion? Criminal, dirty, and dangerous -- it could kill or sterilize a woman.

What changed? Why is there a shortage of available healthy white newborns in the US now? Several things: first, the Pill became widely available in the 1960s, though not yet for teenagers, and that cut deeply into the number of unwanted pregnancies. Second, abortion became legal in 1973, reducing the number even further. And finally, an unintended consequence of both of these: both the sexual revolution and the Right to Life movement made it much, much, easier for a woman to decide to keep an out-of-wedlock baby -- the first because of the relaxation of social mores, and the second because it proved that at least the woman had not had an abortion.

So what I'm saying is that we here don't know enough about the social strata of South American or Irish cultures of 2005 to be able to judge whether a white woman or girl in those presumably traditional Roman Catholic cultures would be induced by social stigma to give up an out of wedlock child. Certainly, though, the importance of "contacts" to making the transaction cannot be overestimated. It was important in the US in the past, and it is important on the world stage in the present.

In something as intimate as this, I prefer to cut the Roberts family some slack and withold judgment. Call it "presumed innocent until proven otherwise."

Hekate

[SoCalDem]

12. I would be in favor of cutting slack too, EXCEPT

that HE wants to be a supreme court justice.. That should elevate the investigation of possible lawbreaking to a higher level.

I didn;t even know who the guy was a few weeks ago and diodn't give a crap how many kids he had or where he got them, but HIS actions have made it MY business..and all of the citizens..

If he's willing to "cut corners" and slink around the edges of the law when it concerns his own family, he's a pretty poor excuse for a supreme court justice.

he should have VOLUNTEERED the information to the senate, as a pre-emptive measure.

[Hekate]

13. Good point

"he should have VOLUNTEERED the information to the senate, as a pre-emptive measure."

Good point, all things considered.

Hekate

[SoCalDem]

14. For the children's sake, it should be kept private

(as in NOT in the papers), but the senate committee should have the COMPLETE records regarding the "adoption"..If the senators cannot keep a secret...welllll..

[Bridget Burke]

19. "The Snapper" is not a sociological study.......

It's a novel by Roddy Doyle, who also wrote "The Commitments"--slices of modern Dublin life. Both were made into films.

The story line? A young woman gets pregnant by a man she DOESN'T want to marry. She stays at home & has the baby--with her family's help. It's a comedy, not a tale of shame & tragedy.

Overseas adoptions are popular because there are fewer of those nasty "parental rights" to mess with. Ireland is no longer so poverty-stricken that children must be sent overseas. And most "white" South Americans are middle or upper class.

[REP]

35. Adoption Not As Common as You Think

Look up the history of the Butterbox Babies, for a start. Adoption has always been about profit, and not for the relinquishing mother. Back in the bad old days, yes, some young women were coerced into relinquishing babies to strangers with the profit going to a middleman, but the usual model was for the infant to be adopted by a family member or to be raised by the girl's parents. The idea of poor young women as vending machines for the desires of the wealthy infertile is not a modern one (ever hear of a wealthy or middle-class woman giving up her newborn to a poor infertile couple?) but it has gone high tech; now eggs are being bought and uteruses are being rented when they aren't enough babies.

[SoCalDem]

36. Indeed. The infant was often passed off as a "brother or sister".

many of these children only found out on their "mother's" deathbead, that their sister was actually their Mom.. But poor families made the girl "get rid of it" by adoption...and there were MANY wealthy white folks just waiting to scoop those babies up..

THAT's what the real beef about abortion is. these people have no issue with the "darker women" aborting their babies, but those white babies are "theirs" because they can afford to pay for them:grr:

[bobbieinok]

39. another thread said they were Irish

[REP]

43. Born in Ireland, Adopted in South America - Smells Even Worse

Ireland does not allow foreign adoptions. Why was the paperwork done in South America?

[SoCalDem]

44. Every credible report that hs been published says latin America

the only published report that says Irish was a comment from a friend..
If the kids came from ireland or are of irish descent, purchased in Latin America, the Roberts' made their adoption an issue by mentioning a county of origin or by not correcting false information.

I think the republican feel so safe that they think they never have to ever clear anything up..Every little thing they say is to be taken at face value and never questioned.


If my kids came from Neptune, and the papers said P;uto,. I would have insisted that the print a correction... OR, I might have just said "our kids are adopted...aren't they cute?"

[Modem Butterfly]

51. It's the wife's law partner

Someone in a very good position to know. He most likely gave them advice and/or a referral.

[SoCalDem]

55. That's what makes it smellier.. Why TWO stories?

Why ANY story?

[REP]

7. Why Wouldn't a "Feminist for Life" Adopt US Kids?

Yeah, I know - only about 2% of women with unwanted pregnancies can be ... persuaded to relinquinish their newborns, and those 2% aren't always healthy white children and they go pretty fast. So why didn't the "Feminist for Life" adopt darker, older children perhaps with special needs? I'd like to know that, too, along with how much they paid for their perfect blond children - and who they paid. (Hint: it wasn't their mother.)

[LynneSin]

23. Those are great questions which is why "Feminists for Life" piss me off...

plus the fact that one of their spokeswomen, Patricia Heaton, is a freaking silicone frankenstein. I'm not begruding plastic surgury and yes Heaton has admitted to having SOME of what she claims she has had. But if you look at her before and after pictures she's had alot more than she claims.

[LynneSin]

15. I think it's important to know why he didn't get married until he was 40

and believe me, I'm a 39 year old single woman, personally if he stayed a rich lawyer I wouldn't care.

But the man could be put into position to make a decision on what I can do with my body, whom I can marry and countless other decisions that I consider personal. So I want to know what personal choice Roberts made when he's such a devout Christian and yet he wasn't out there fruitfully multiplying at age 23 (I'll let him be single through college and law school).

[SoCalDem]

16. Lynne..are you accusing that christian man of

"spilling his seed" or worse yet..."hoarding it"? :evilgrin:

[LynneSin]

17. I may even question if he has lain down with other men

and you know this is something I normally would never question

[SoCalDem]

18. Does he know "Cap'n Jeff"??

You are a sly one Lynne:)

[LynneSin]

20. I don't know who he knows but I do know that there are very strong rumor

of a powerful group of gay neo-conservatives that start with Karl Rove. Greed & Power are more important than the identity and they work hard to protect and promote their own.

[SoCalDem]

21. Yep.. and somehow they almost ALL end up suddenly getting married

at around age 40..just when their careers would be boosted by the "family man" image.. Rock Hudson tried the "bearded marriage too..Nobody bought it either..

Ari married in his 40's
scotty
Karl (he's been married longer)


and these guys keep their family bios pretty lean

[LynneSin]

22. Boy, if we could get some of those 'wives' to talk

the stories I bet they could tell. You know they had to sell their souls to be a part of those marriages. They're probably promised this great life provided that they ignore their 'husbands' 'late-night meetings'

[SoCalDem]

24. They probably signed "non disclosure" papers

and would be cut off financially if they ever spoke.. remember when *²'s former sister in law was gonna write a book? I haven't heard a word about it lately..

her children's futures were probably threatened if she went thru with it,

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. As a former resident of Oregon, I know that the adoption laws there

have been criticized as allowing practices uncomfortably close to child selling. The population is overwhelmingly white, and you see ads from out of state people promising that the child they adopt will grow up in comfortable surroundings with all the advantages. You also see ads in public places from adoption agencies aimed at birth mothers, something I haven't seen here in Minneapolis, where the ads are aimed at persuading potential adoptive parents to take a hard-to-place child.

[SoCalDem]

26. and in exchange for a big chunk of change, a young woman "might" just

think that 9 months as an incubator would be worth ..say a half a million bucks..

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. There have been investigations of adoptive parents who paid

the birth mother large sums of money above and beyond the permitted medical and legal expenses, but I don't know what came of these cases.

[SoCalDem]

28. Lawyers can "justify" expenses

and unless ther birth mother complains, who's to even know how much money changed hands.

[theboss]

29. As I said before, some people are dying to be a permanent minority party

Because what the Democrats need to do is look like they are attacking children.

That's really smart politics.

[REP]

37. Attacking the SALE of Children, You Mean

Or don't you?

The adoption of these children looks more and more like it was done under questionable and possibly illegal circumstances. How is that attacking children?

For clarification: "Jack acts like a crackmonkey" is an attack on one of his children. Asking about the circumstances of his adoption is not.

[nonincriminatin]

31. Whatever

Leave his kids outta this.

[SoCalDem]

32. The kids are NOT the issue.. HE and the Missus are the issue

:)enjoy your stay :hi:

[patcox2]

33. And when Ken Starr investigated the adoption of that woman?

That was okay then? When Ken Starr tried to pressure the woman, I forget her name, but Starr tried to pressure her into testifying against Clinton by delving into the adoption of her child.

I think you may have become what you hate.

[SoCalDem]

34. Julie Steele was not in line to be a supreme court justice

That;s the issue.

[fujiyama]

38. I was very uncomortable at first

questioning the adoption (and it still doesn't sit right), but the simple fact is, if there was money exchanged it would be a violation of law.

So far like with everything else, the administration is being extremely secretive and trying to reveal as little possible as it can about Roberts.

This really isn't an issue I'm interested in going too far into. Hopefully Roberts will come forward with the info himself just to set the record straight. Maybe he has done nothing wrong and maybe it was completely legitimate. Being that he is a nominee for the highest's court in the nation, I'd say his entire background should be investigated thoroughly.

[cabbage08]

40. good ponts n/t

[Heidi]

41. Sorry. This adoptee says your speculation isn't cool.

My sister and I (also both white like Roberts' adopted children) are 11 months apart, were dang cute, and were adopted by a nice middle class family who didn't sell their souls or do anything underhanded to "get" us.

It's not right to just speculate wildly about "a willing poor woman," "money changed hands to get two little white kids so close in age," etc. Honest adoption of cute white kids _does_ happen.

Just sayin.

[REP]

42. Born In One Country, Adopted in Another?

Born in a country that does not allow foreign adoptions, with the paperwork being done in another country, for children that will reside in yet a third country?

It's those circumstances that are raising the alarm bells, people. Just sayin'.

edit - typo

[SoCalDem]

45. and WHY was their "country of origin" even MENTIONED?

If they had just said.."the Roberts' have two adopted children"..that would have been the END of it.. But when they toss in "from Latin America", and the kids are whiter than Wonder Bread, it does arouse suspicions or at least curiosity.. If Latin America is crucial information, why not name the country?? Argentins..Peru..Colombia..Mexico.. (all are "latin america"..)

[Heidi]

47. If anyone can has reasonable cause

to believe something illegal took place, something more salient than speculation just because we don't like Roberts, then that should be investigated. But those children, and their biological parents, have a right to privacy, just as I do. It'd take a heck of a lot more than folks not liking my adopted parents' politics to cinvince me that my adoption records should be opened to public inspection.

[SoCalDem]

48. No one said anything about public inspection.

The records should be available to the COMMITTEE (in private session) so that they have no doubts about the legality of it.

[Modem Butterfly]

53. Roberts gave up his right to privacy when he accepted the nomination

His academic, financial, employment, military, medical and criminal records are open to inspection. Why not these records as well?

In my own case, my adoption records, and those of my brother, were examined when my father sought a job requiring a security clearance. They wanted to make sure he hadn't done anything illegal in our adoptions. Why should a fairly low level financial analyst get a higher degree of examination than a potential Supreme Court justice?

[Heidi]

54. His children haven't forfeited _their_ right to privacy.

I wouldn't mind seeing a guardian ad litem appointed to look out for their rights.

[SoCalDem]

56. No one is suggesting that the information is made public.. Just checked in

the committee that is vetting him...I am sure the children would be protected. But in reality, when your daddy is a supreme court justice, your life is no longer "mainstreet, USA"...and most adoptees, at some point in their lives DO get very interested in the circumstances surrounding their birth and adoption.Serets have a way of festering their way to the surface, no matter how deep people try to bury them:(

[Modem Butterfly]

57. No, their father did that for them

It's an unfortunate fact but true, their father, in seeking political office, gave up some of his children's right to privacy, as well as his wife's right to privacy.

I don't think a guardian ad litem needs to be appointed unless a documented irregularity exists.

[DoYouEverWonder]

46. Has anyone asked Roberts?

What is the big deal about asking?

A lot of my friends have adopted, usually children who are obviously not theirs. Most of them are more then willing to share their stories about what they went through to get their child.

Roberts put his children on public display when he accepted the nomination for Supreme Court Justice. The reports in the M$M had stated that the children were from South America. Most people had assumed that these were going to be Latin children, so when they turned out to be two perfect snowflake babies, that of coursed raised some questions.

Now it is trickling out that they are probably Irish. The fact that finding two perfect Irish babies for adoption in the US is just about impossible raises even more questions.

Clinton withdrew a Supreme Court nomination because the women didn't pay Social Security for her nanny. I think Roberts needs to answer the questions about the circumstances of his children's adoptions. It is a very serious issue for someone heading to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.

[SoCalDem]

49. Thank YOU!!!.. That's the point.. the possible illegalities

NOT the cute little kids.. They started the whole thing by making the country of origin an issue..

The kids are adopted..that's all that needed to be said.. no one would have doubted it, or even cared...but the nationality" of the children does not "fit" the way they look.. If they had said the kids were Romanian/Russian/Dutch, it might have been interesting, but not eyebrow-raising..

[chimpymustgo]

52. It's about the PARENTS not the kids. It's the SUPREME COURT. For LIFE.

And as I stated in another thread, Bay Buchanan was nothing short of apoplectic that this adoption NOT be delved into.

Why not? It's a legal, possibly financial matter involving a man who puts himself forward as being fit to judge the laws of the land for the rest of his life.

The Senate and the media have a DUTY to look into this.

[Tsiyu]

50. I also believe very strongly in being completely honest

with children. At this age, these kids can be sheltered from any discoveries, but they should, at some point in their lives, be apprised of the truth about the circumstances of their lives. To do any less is cruel and an injustice.

Kids can handle the truth. It's adults who often can't.

Or won't.