Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯

@janinebaer

An #adoptee, my book "Growing in the Dark" explains who was behind the sealing of adoption records and the harm done by these laws. 🕊️ "Never again" means never again for anyone.

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Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jun 3

Thanks for sharing this; I'm glad you and your children are healing. Lies and secrecy are far too common in adoption. You may know that the stated reason for sealing records in California in 1935 was actually that "someone" could tell a child they were adopted. Lying was baked in from the start. 🥚

Explanation from January 22, 1935 "Sacramento Bee" for why it was necessary to pass a law to keep birth certificates sealed from the people named in them states:

"...there have been cases in Southern California where unscrupulous persons have obtained access to the adoption records and blackmailed the adopted parents by threatening to tell the child it was adopted."
(from page 19, "Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences" by Janine Baer, 2004)

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Apr 24

I am so inspired by Amy Goodman after seeing the film about her life, "Steal This Story, Please!" The message comes through early: when knowledge of injustice is suppressed, it can take place unimpeded. But when journalists reveal injustice, there is a chance of fighting it. See it if you can. 🎞️

A small orange ticket stub reads in part:
"Realto Cinemas, Steal This Story
Bargain $13.75 [the matinee price]"

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Apr 3

🌺 Outside the café in Berkeley today I saw this sidewalk memorial to Renee Good and Alex Pretti. ⏬

A sidewalk memorial to Alex Pretti and Renee good, with their pictures on a signpost and flowers in containers on the sidewalk beneath, in Berkeley, California

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Apr 3

Despite the world being a mess from political backlash, I am celebrating because: (1) I learned that I am cancer free!* 🎉 (2) Trader Joe's had wine (from Chile) that is kosher for Passover, holiday of liberation! 🍷 (3) It's a beautiful spring day 🌿 🥚*Adoptees deserve our family medical history!

Colorful wine bottle label has a bright blue background and a drawing of red flowers reads "Finca [farm] Altoroso, Cabernet Sauvignon"

Closeup of wine bottle label reads "Kosher for Passover and year round"

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Mar 28

A perfect song for the moment, "The Times They Are a'Changin'" sung by Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers & Tom Morello in St. Paul 3/28 "Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call, Don't stand in the doorway, Don't block up the halls, ...There's a battle outside and it's raging..." — Bob Dylan, 1965

This is a still photo on my television of singers Joan Baez, Maggie Rogers and Tom Morella singing Bob Dylan's 1965 song "The Times They Are a-Chaingin'" at the March 28, 2026 "No Kings" rally in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Mar 22

archive.is/vlx8R From Boston Globe, 3/18/26, by Aaron Regunberg. Note that he is referring to mainstream Jewish organizations, not the many smaller groups, publications and individuals who criticize Israeli policy. Article title: "American Jewish organizations are making a dangerous mistake"

Aaron Rugenberg, Boston Globe, March 18, 2026 wrote:

"A decade ago, your average podcast-listening young man was not likely to think in terms of 'the Jews are causing this or that harm.' But after years of watching a live-streamed genocide be committed by the Jewish state and rarely hearing any condemnation by mainstream American Jewish institutions, that is changing. And it's easy to imagine the change accelerating as those same Jewish organizations celebrate a war that is despised by the American people."

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Mar 1

World problems aside, I'm happy to be home from the hospital after surgery and to see this bird of paradise, the first to bloom this year.

Bird of paradise flower in San Francisco's East Bay

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Dec 25

I took a short walk in my neighborhood today before the rain started again and enjoyed this tree with white holiday lights. Off in the distance is San Francisco Bay. 🌦️

Photo of palm tree with white lights around the trunk. Cloudy sky; SF Bay in the distance.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Dec 17

I thought I might have found the Yellow Brick Road to Oz when I came to this carpet of ginko leaves covering the concrete sidewalk this morning after it rained.

An area of sidewalk in El Cerrito, California, is completely covered in bright yellow ginko leaves that fell from the tree above after rain. The edges of homes and a white fence are on the left of the sidewalk.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Nov 23

I have to add a special note for adoptees that the executive producer of "Beach Party" had been the attorney who arranged *my own adoption.* 🌊🌊🌊

"Beach Party" film poster (1963) shows Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon kneeling on surfboards, with surfers catching waves in the background.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Nov 21

Sign on glass door of bakery reads:
"Our worekrs reserve the right to refuse admittance or service to anyone. ICE is not welcome on our property."

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Nov 14

"...and her sense of justice. Her passion and her integrity earned her the admiration of all." In 1986 she wrote this powerful letter, disagreeing with a Reform rabbi who had advised that there was no need for adoptees to know their original parents. Sally's letter is attached here in 2 parts: 2/4

[continuation of letter to the editor by Sally Brown, 1986]

"The papers I signed in 1950 relinquishing my son for adoption made no such promise to me. And even if anonymity were to have been inferred by the secrecy of the procedure, the concept of anonymity from my son was never addressed. The rabbi is incorrect, also, in his statement on birthparents that 'By giving up their child for adoption... They are saying, in effect, that they want no further contact with the child.'

"Many birthparents, myself included, have made themselves available to the children they once gave up. Without the support of accepted social tradition or knowledgeable clergy, we intuitively reach out to other adoptive parents, parents who have relinquished, and adopted persons for aid in establishing and developing these new relationships. An enlightened and empathetic rabbinate would be able to serve the emotional and spiritual needs of those Jews who are part of the adoption triangle, better than a rabbinate whose views are stagnating in the adoption miasma of the 1930s."

Sally Brown
Livermore, CA

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Nov 11

Here's a little history about how adoption agencies made birthmothers anonymous: a 1936 quote by an agency worker who says secrecy was the birthmother's idea and her name is unknown. This was a script (of lies) to tell adoptees. — "Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy & Its Consequences," p. 68

The top of page 68, "Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences" (2004).

The first paragraph quotes a 1936 book, "The Adopted Child" by Eleanor Gallagher, who was an adoption agency volunteer. This book from the early years of sealed records tells adoptive parents anticipated that an adoptee would asks about their birth parents but they would be told there was no information.

"Furthermore, at this solemn moment in her life, she decided that secrecy was best for you. We, in whose charge you were temporarily placed, have made that secrecy inviolable, your loving adoptive parents have accepted the situation, whether they originally wanted to or not, and now you, too, can be a fact-facer by realizing that further details about your origin simply are not on record anywhere."

Thus, following the agency's script, the reason behind lifelong secrecy became the birthmother's wishes; her voice was made to speak the agency's philosophy while her own voice was guaranteed never to be heard. "The Adopted Child" revealed that an adoption agency might choose to control the lifelong experience of adoptees—allegedly on behalf of birthmothers—in its decision to withhold information.
— Janine Baer, author of "Growing in the Dark"

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Nov 1

I was hoping to remind parents of trick-or-treaters to vote Yes on 50 in California by taping this sign to my front door. However, most of the adults waited away from the door so the sign may not have reached its target audience. 🎃

A flyer taped to a door reads "Stop Trump from rigging elections, Vote Yes on Prop 50 November 4" in English and Spanish, in orange letters on a black background. It's for Halloween.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Oct 28

Meanwhile, I was trying to clean out the junk I've saved in my garage and came across this booklet about DSA, from the 1980s about the group's founding. I like the founders' commitment to eradicate antisemitism in all its forms. However, at this rate, I will never clean my garage. 2/2

Black text on a brown background reads:

"The socialist society we seek to create is also one that does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. It would value sexuality and all sexual relationships—gay, lesbian, heterosexual—that are based on mutual respect and the enhancement of human dignity.

Racism and sexism are not the only forms of oppression that both predate capitalism and are continually transformed by it. Anti-semitism, for example, cannot be reduced to a dynamic of racial, class or religious oppressions. It occurs in a myriad of forms, and a socialist society must eradicate all of them."

This booklet, though undated, also mentions the merger of two groups that created DSA in 1982, so I assume it is from around 1982.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Oct 11

Today I voted YES on 50. If you are a Californian you can vote by Nov 4 to temporarily counteract what Republicans did in Texas. "Prop 50 makes sure the 2026 mid-terms are conducted on a level playing field without an unfair advantage for Republicans." 🌁 More info at cadem.org/yes-on-propo...

Photo of a round sticker that says "I Voted!" in three languages (English, Spanish and Chinese) in white lettering on a dark blue background. A U.S. flag is in the center. This sticker was mailed to voters in California.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Aug 26

Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park in Richmond, CA, was the site of the 109th anniversary celebration of our National Park Service. Located on SF bay, it's where people from all over the US built 747 ships at the Kaiser shipyards from 1941-45 to defeat fascism. 🌊

On August 25, 2025, after 12 noon, a group of supporters of Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, are shown standing in front of the park's visitors center holding up letters that spell out "Protect Our Parks" on a sunny day.

This took place at the end of a public event in support of telling the true, diverse, history of the United States in our National Parks, as Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park does.

Behind the people holding the black-and-white sign is a one-story brick building that houses the visitors center.

A photo of the San Francisco skyline as seen from the area next to Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront National Historical Park in Richmond, California on August 25, 2025. This is the location where hundreds of Liberty ships were built between 1941 and 1945. https://www.nps.gov/rori/learn/historyculture/what-is-the-wwii-home-front.htm

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Aug 22

✏️ Years ago I did freelance proofreading of "News from Native California" and other projects of #Heyday Books. When I started the "Chain of Life" newsletter about the politics of adoption, I wrote to Malcolm. Here is his reply. It's from Issue 5, p 2: digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/chainoflife/... 🥚

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Aug 13

In Dec. 2024, Joe Biden was seen buying the book by Rashid Khalidi about Palestinian history. Khalidi said it was "four years too late." Near the end, Khalidi describes the problem: "...there are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being..." forward.com/opinion/6789...

The last paragraph on page 246 of "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine" by Rashid Khalidi:

"While the fundamentally colonial nature of the Palestinian-Israel encounter must be acknowledged, there are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other. Their mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights, including national rights, notwithstanding the crucial historical differences between the two. There is no other possible sustainable solution, barring the unthinkable notion of one people's extermination or expulsion by the other. Overcoming the resistance of those who benefit from the status quo, in order to ensure equal rights for... [continued on page 247]

...all in this small country between the Jordan River and the sea—this is a test of the political ingenuity of all concerned. Reducing the extensive sustained external support for the discriminatory and deeply unequal status quo would certainly smooth the path ahead."

— Rashid Khalidi, "The Hundred Years' War on Palestine," 2020, page 247

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Aug 7

Walking in Berkeley today I noticed this chalk message on the sidewalk. 🌿 "Gaza kids deserve 2B free"

Photo of a concrete sidewalk in North Berkeley (Vine Street) with colorful words in chalk that read
"GAZA
KIDS
DESERVE
2B
FREE"

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jul 27

34 years ago ⌛ I wrote about the difficulty adoptees have obtaining our family medical history and noted that staying healthy presents many obstacles in a country without universal health insurance. The 1991 article can be downloaded in Issue 14: digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/chainoflife/... 🥚

The conclusion of the article in the last paragraph describes the challenges of staying healthy in the United States in 1991, especially for adoptees who must try to obtain family health history despite closed records. It reads:

"Four Impossible Steps to Good Health

"In the end, adoptees are faced with a series of problems in the process of optimizing their health, some they share with other Americans and some that are unique to adoptees. Aside from inheriting healthy genes and crossing their fingers, what can adoptees do to stay healthy? First, find your relatives, both birth mother and birth father, despite closed records — and perhaps despite your birth mother's reluctance to name your birth father. Second, hope that your extended birth family members on both sides talk to one another, and also are open about ther illnesses. Third, hope your birth relatives will be willing to share this information with you. And fourth — whether or not your search is successful — be sure to obtain good medical insurance coverage."

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jul 26

📚 In "Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences" I explain the sealing of adoptee birth certificates in California—when and how legislation was passed in the middle of the Great Depression—then I list the ongoing effects of this now 90-year-old law. From the Table of Contents:

A page from the Table of Contents of "Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences" by Janine Baer (2004) listing the consequences of sealed records.
1. Criminal baby selling was less likely to be discovered (p. 81)
2. Secrets could be kept in the adoptive family (p. 90)
3. Birthparents' invisibility was legislated (p. 91)
4. Psychologists speculated about adoptees' mental health while adoptees could not learn their genetic family's medical history (p. 93)
5. Searching for relatives was done legally and illegally (p. 100)

- Challenges to secrecy (p. 102)
- Opening records in Oregon (p. 104)
- Conclusion and the future (p. 106)
- Postscript (p. 109)
- Bibliography (p. 111)
Endnotes (p. 133)

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jul 17

"Here is love born of pain, of the past century’s most horrific crime, love of one’s own spread outward into love of another.” — Omar El Akkad, p. 144

Photo of orange library book cover, titled "One Day, Everyrone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad (2025)

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jul 17

Flashback ⚡ : This is how I remember MacArthur Park. In this photo I'm about 3 years old, feeding pigeons there with my dad* in 1953. * My adoptive dad. 🥚

This is a black-and-white photo of me at about 3 years old, feeding pigeons in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, with my dad* in 1953. Named for General Douglas MacArthur after the war, it was called Westlake Park before the war.

There is a sign behind us that says "No Swimming Allowed in Lake." This is how I remember MacArthur Park.

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jul 4

Summary: Democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983. The Grandmothers had protested the disappearance of their children during the dictatorship and "have been trying to identify and gain custody of their grandchildren who were stolen..." King, the geneticist, "has been successful in matching children with their biological families through the use of blood tests and statistical methods..."

I [Janine Baer] wrote, "As someone concerned about human rights and an adoptee, I was fascinated to hear Professor King describe the work she has done in Argentina at a lecture at UC Berkeley in April" [1989].

This segment of the article gives details of the DNA test and then discusses "arguments used by psychologists to explain why the children should be returned to their grandparents..." We don't know what they will remember; kidnapping is a crime; and the adopted children would eventually learn "that the parents with whom they are living were involved in the murders of the birthparents..."

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jun 28

Shabbat Shalom on Pride weekend. 🌈

Communal Prayer of Remembrance from prayerbook of Congregation Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco, read tonight on Pride Shabbat.
"O God, remember today those members of our family who were martyred in years past because of their sexual or gender identity: those murdered by fanatics in the Middle Ages, those who perished in the Holocaust, and those struck down in our own cities, in our own time. Remember also those who took their own lives, driven to despair by a world that hated them. And in mercy remember those who lived lives of loneliness, repressing their true nature and refraining from sharing their love with one another. O God, watch over the souls of tehse beloved ones: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and help us bring an end to hate and oppression of every kind." (page 491 https://shaarzahav.org/our-siddur/)

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jun 27

🥚 Here's a time machine look at a TV portrayal of adoptee search from Issue 17 of the Chain of Life newsletter (1992) I described two television serials I watched that had adoption stories; "Beverly Hills 90210" was one. The rest can be found at digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/chainoflife/...

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jun 20

The 26-page report feels personal because my (birth) mother was 19 and living in Vancouver with her sister when she conceived me. She "disappeared" from Canada to Los Angeles where I was born. This short excerpt describes "Unmarried Mothers — A Lifetime of Suffering." 🥚

From page 3 of a Canadian report about post WWII adoptions. Written in 2018, the text reads:
"Unmarried Mothers — A Lifetime of Suffering
"Emotions were still raw and the trauma was still evident when mothers bravely told their stories of heartbreak, humiliation, shame and longing; stories that date back to up to 55 years. Committee members heard the tragic accounts of women who, at the most vulnerable points in their young lives, were abandoned by family, banished from society, and mistreated during pregnancy and labour. The women were then dispatched without regard and with the sole instruction to never say a word about the babies they had just surrendered for adoption."

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jun 15

Here is the historical note that I always think of when I read about late discovery #adoptees. Amazingly, the ability to keep adoption secret was part of the rationale for sealing birth records. I found this when I was researching my book "Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences."

From the "Sacramento Bee" newspaper, January 22, 1935. This short news items provides a rationale for the bill to block adopted people in California from obtaining their own birth certificates. Without this new law, it says, adoptive parents could not stop strangers from telling the child he or she was adopted. In other words, the ability to keep the adoption secret from the child was part of the motivation for sealing adoptee birth certificates.

The text reads:

"Bill to Keep Adoptions Secret Is Introduced

"Assemblyman Charles W. Fisher of Alameda County introduced two bills yesterday which would require all adoption records be filed with the state department of vital statistics and would place the records on a secret file.

"Fisher said there have been cases in Southern California where unscrupulous persons have obtained access to the adoption records and blackmailed the adopted parents by threatening to tell the child it was adopted."
— Legislative Notes, January 22, 1935

Janine Baer 🌈 ☮️ 🕊️ 🌁 🌻 🔯@janinebaer· Jun 9

🌈 Fifty years ago, gay people were criminals in California. In 1975 the state passed a bill, authored by Willie Brown, that changed this law. Today a #Pride flag can be seen in front of a high school in the Bay Area, a reminder of how much has changed — and we are not going back. 🌁