ILLINOIS OPEN'S ANITA FIELD: "...FEIGENHOLTZ FOLLOWED HER OWN PATH--ONE OF COMPROMISE..."

Here are some recent comments from Illinois Open's

Anita Field. "Curiously," we only learned of the impending March 12 introduction of Amendment 1 (aka a re-write of the bill) on Monday March 10 in an article in the Chicago Trib. Tuesday, March 11 Anita entered the hospital for scheduled surgery. We were told by Feigenholtz's office that the vote on Wednesday would be on the "new language only" not the bill itself. On Wednesday, the bill passed out of committee after a show hearing whlie Anita was in surgery.

See previous entry for Reform Coalition statement on HB 4623.

We aren't going away!

Dear Illinois Open Friends,

Thank you all for your support during the days when Representative Feigenholtz was preparing her bill. I tried my hardest to let her know that adoptees don't want restrictions put upon them by the state. She countered by saying I'm living in a dream world and don't understand the underbelly of politics.

I worked very hard to persuade Representative Feigenholtz that the time was right for a clean bill, one that would help all adoptees equally. I know many of you wrote to her not once, but several times, without ever receiving a reply. We tried to tell her we don't want to be tied to the state's apron strings any longer, but she didn't listen to us.

Instead Representative Feigenholtz followed her own path – one of "compromise," the very same path she chose to go down 13 years ago.

With HB 4623 Representative Feigenholtz has put some of us adoptees in a potentially divided position and that's too bad. If she had introduced a pure bill that would have given equal rights to every adopted citizen, we would all be moving forward and working together now.

But she didn't.

Personally, I am opposed to HB 4623. I will not support it under any circumstances and I will speak out against it whenever I can.

I'm stepping back from Illinois Open for awhile because I'm finding that I need more time to recuperate from my surgery.

One of these days soon I'll be back blogging. Stay tuned to www.grannieannie.orG