Wednesday, June 9, 2010

no english = no babies

I don't want to be accused of leaping to wild conclusions here, especially because I already have such huge issues with adoption, but I'm actually too busy keyboardmashing with rage over this article to do the usual linking/research to prove my point.

Adoption approved, despite wrongful removal at birth
THE NSW government's welfare agency seized a baby girl from her Chinese immigrant parents and, against their wishes, adopted her out to an Australian-born couple, prompting a judge to observe that the infant may have been "wrongly taken away".
BECAUSE THE MOTHER DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH. The article also goes into the fact that the mother was distrustful of government processes. So when the baby was finally discharged from hospital four months later, that's a great reason for DOCS to foster her out.

MAYBE PROVING HER DISTRUST IN GOVERNMENT PROCESSES?

The article doesn't really mention the father, except for this: Her father, who is also Chinese but speaks better English, has not seen her either. So would this outcome have been the same had it been the mother who spoke 'better English'?

Mothers who can't speak English are bad? OR SOMETHING, I don't know.

And if you think the comments don't contain things like, 'sounds like the kid is better off where she is' then YOU ARE VERY WRONG. And if you want to say, 'maybe it wasn't racially-motivated' you are also very wrong.

VERY WRONG INDEED.

5 comments:

  1. Every time I read about something happening in the US and complacently think "That wouldn't happen here," I'm proven horribly wrong. This is just appalling. And yeah, the child's mother was absolutely right to distrust.

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  2. It is a little disingenuous to completely ignore:

    (a) that the baby was removed from the mother's custody because she refused consent to treatment of a "potentially life-threatening" medical condition;

    (b) that the court "tried hard over many months" to get the mother to challenge the adoption and sent letters in her native language explaining how she should present her case.

    It does seem that the baby was wrongly placed into foster care after being discharged. Is it this that you assert was racially motivated, or the court decision?

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  3. It may also interest you to read the full reasoning of the judge rather than the newspaper's summary.

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  4. @tellurium having read that judgment, I totally stand by my opinion that it was racially informed. I also, knowing the difficulties DCOS has had with access to adequate translation services, stand by my opinion that the original action was also racist/or at the very least, wrong - certainly the judgment contains no information on whether any attempts to communicate in a dialect/language the parents could understand was made (before the surgery/removal of the child).

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  5. @lilacsigil I KNOW RIGHT? I always think 'oh, it's just the US' but the reality is, bad stuff happens here, too.

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