SelectedWorks of Mirah Riben

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Mirah Riben

No institutional affiliation

• Co-founder in 1980 of the original Origins, based in NJ
• Former Director, American Adoption Congress
• Past Vice President of Communications, Origins-USA
• Curriculum Vitae [PDF]

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MIRAH RIBEN is author of two internationally acclaimed books, "shedding light
on...The Dark Side of Adoption" (1988) and "The Stork Market: America’s
Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry" (2007) and numerous articles. 

Riben is former Director of the American Adoption Congress and Past Vice President of
Communications of Origins-USA, a national non-profit that advocates for mothers'
rights and keeping natural families together. 

Riben has been researching, writing and speaking about the need to reform, humanize, and
de-commercialize American adoption practices since 1979. She has appeared on several
national television programs, and was keynote speaker and many conferences. She blogs at
http://FamilyPreservation.blogspot.com 

Riben was among the very first mothers to go public to put a face on women who had been
called the invisible party in adoption, publicly addressing the lifelong pain of losing a
child to adoption. Risking imprisonment, she reunited hundreds of families separated by
adoption and helped mothers prevent unnecessary adoption. In 1980 Riben co-founded the
original Origins, a New Jersey-based national organization for women who lost children to
adoption (unaffiliated with any other similarly named organization). 

After the 1987 murder by Joel Steinberg of his illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, Riben
reunited the toddler boy found in the home Steinberg shared with Hedda Nussbaum with his
original family who had been pressured into allowing him to be adopted. Riben has housed
expectant mothers in need, is a former foster parent and raised three children, having
lost her first child to adoption and then to suicide. 

As a proponent of human rights with a focus on the rights of mothers, children and
families in crisis, Riben supports family preservation and opposes all profiteering in
adoption and falsification of original birth certificates. She opposes all coercive and
exploitative tactics in both domestic and international adoption. She supports repeal of
the laws that sealed original birth certificates from adopted people and the replacement
of sealed, secret adoptions with simple or guardian adoption, after all attempts to
provide resources for children to remain safely within their extended family have failed.
Such alternative child care would legally maintain the child’s name as well as integrity
of, and allow for knowledge of and contact with, the original family. 

Riben has been keynote and invited speaker at numerous national and state adoption
conferences as well as the 6th Annual PLI Adoption Law Institute Conference panel, “Costs
of Adoption: A Survey and Ethical Considerations”; the 7th Annual NJ Research Conference
on Women, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; the 2007 Adoption Ethics and
Accountability Conference sponsored by The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and
Ethica, Inc; Association for Research on Mothering Conference, York University, Toronto,
Canada 2009. 

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