05/15/2026
Sharing this because this case has the potential to impact advocacy voices across the adoption community — especially how adoptees, birth parents, and others impacted by adoption are able to speak publicly about lived experiences moving forward.
IAFC is partnering with NAAP and Saving Our Sisters on an amicus brief before the Iowa Supreme Court, and we are currently raising funds for the legal costs associated with filing it.
If you are able to help support this effort, we would truly appreciate it. Even sharing the post helps.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AmB2DpcJd/
From NAAP
Three adoption-constellation organizations — the National Association of Adoptees and Parents, Iowa Adoptee & Family Coalition, and Saving Our Sisters — are collaborating on an amicus brief in an Iowa appeal involving adoption-related speech, community language, open adoption, and the First Amendment.
An amicus brief allows organizations with lived experience, advocacy history, and subject-matter knowledge to provide broader context to the Court.
This case is about more than one person, one family, or one dispute. It raises a larger question:
Can adoptees, birth parents, adoptive families, researchers, and advocacy organizations speak honestly about adoption experiences, coercion, loss, trauma, family separation, and the realities of open adoption without fear that community language will be stripped of context and treated as legally punishable speech?
Each organization brings a distinct reason for participating:
NAAP exists to elevate the voices of adoptees and birth parents. NAAP is participating because the language at issue is not isolated to one person — it reflects vocabulary used across the adoption constellation to describe lived experience, moral injury, loss, and systemic concerns.
Iowa Adoptee & Family Coalition is the only Iowa-based organization in this amicus effort. IAFC brings critical Iowa context after spending seven years educating lawmakers, agencies, lobbyists, and the public during Iowa’s original birth certificate reform movement — using advocacy language that Iowa lawmakers understood as part of legitimate public discourse.
Saving Our Sisters brings a family-preservation and informed-consent perspective. SOS is participating because expectant parents, mothers, fathers, and adoptees must be able to discuss open-adoption promises, adoption-industry practices, coercion, transparency, and the lifelong impact of permanent family separation.
We are filing for the principle - responsible advocacy matters. Ethical boundaries matter. And constitutional protection for public-interest speech matters.
Iowa does not have an Anti-SLAPP statute, which means constitutional protection may be the only meaningful protection available when adoption advocates, parents, or adoptees are pulled into expensive litigation over speech.
Silence harms more than speakers. It harms the expectant parent searching for honest information. It harms the adoptee trying to name their experience. It harms the parent who has lived adoption loss. It harms researchers, reformers, and organizations working to educate the public.
We are raising funds to support the legal work required to prepare and file this amicus brief. Your donation helps ensure the Court hears from organizations rooted in lived experience, Iowa advocacy history, family preservation, adoptee rights, and ethical adoption reform.
Please consider donating and sharing.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WNSWVGYHLU7LN
NAAP, Inc. is a 501(c)3 Public Charity - EIN is 47-2399837
Dr Joyce Maguire Pavao
www.pavaoconsulting.com
