Noteworthy Comments by Friends and Foes on Adoptee Rights

In a recent blog post over at The Life of Von, Von pointed out in this analogy how misleading it is that adoptive parents seem to do most of the talking about the institution of adoption:

"If you wanted to know what it was like to work in a bank, you'd ask a bank teller, a bank manager, an account manager and a loans advisor, wouldn't you, to get a full picture?  You wouldn't just go to a customer."

In the world of adoption, adoptive parents currently do most of the public talking.  The executive directors of both the National Council for Adoption and the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute are adoptive fathers.  In public forums, the voice of the adoptee or the original mother is rarely sought out.

In legislative hearings, the voices and fears of adoptive parents and the adoption industry resonate the loudest.  And those voices are often woefully ignorant about the realities of the adoption experience for all of those actually impacted by adoption practice.

Consider this statement by Deborah Jacobs, the executive director of ACLU-NJ for the past 13 years, and other members of the Coalition to Defend Privacy in Adoption:

 "In many cases, the right to confidentiality was at the crux of the (woman's) decision to choose adoption."  I would like to see the data supporting this assertion, since original mothers have told us again and again that they didn't choose confidentiality -- rather, it was forced upon them.

And then this troubling statement by Ms. Jacobs and other coalition members:  "More women may choose to keep babies that would be best cared for by an adoptive family."  Is the coalition saying here that confidentiality is the key that encourages women to relinquish their babies?  If so, the data screams otherwise.  And who are they to say that a child would be better served in an adoptive rather than in an original family? 

Before claiming that a confidential intermediary system is the answer to the adoptee rights dilemma, Ms. Jacobs in another advocacy letter makes one more deeply problematical statement:  "Our coalition members have statewide and national experience which shows that a non-confrontational approach is an essential element of successful reunions."

Here, Ms. Jacobs makes the leap that the Adoptee Rights Bill was all about reunions, even though it was a carefully-crafted civil rights bill that simply granted to adult adoptees the same right that every other American citizen enjoys -- the right to apply for and receive their original birth certificates for a nominal fee.  By using the word "non-confrontational," Ms. Jacobs seems to imply that those adoptees who search on their own will use confrontational methods.

This assumption is insulting and unfounded.  We adoptees have plenty of experience tip-toeing around other people's feelings, and in my experience, tend to be more sensitive than the average person.  Ms. Jacobs also seems to imply that coalition members are better suited to navigate the complexities of adoption than I myself am: a mother, grandmother and educated professional who has lived for 61 years as an adoptee.

Is it any wonder that adoptees become so disenchanted with the legislative arena?  Is it any wonder that they become disgusted as their viewpoints are discounted again and again?

In response to a recent post on my blog, one adoptee wrote this:  "You wrote in the comment section that we need more APs to speak out because their voices carry more weight.  While this is undoubtedly true, we also need to work on strengthening the power and respect of the adoptee voice.  APs should no longer be running the show or be the most important voice in the 'triad' when the adoptees are adults."

I agree completely with the sentiment expressed here.  We do need to increase "the power and respect of the adoptee voice."  But we want to be careful not to antagonize those adoptive parents who have the best interests of their children at heart.  And there are many more adoptive parents, I believe, who truly don't yet know the level of discrimination that adult adoptees face.  Consider this comment I recently received from an adoptive mother:

"Please don't paint all adoptive parents with the same brush.  My son was adopted through the child welfare system -- I located his birth family when he was 10 (he is now 13).  He chose to meet them (and they him) and he sees his maternal aunt (his birth mother's twin sister) at least once or more a year.  He also met and visited his maternal grandmother and brother.  I located a photocopy of his OBC and am in the process of petitioning the court for a court order to obtain that certificate in an "official" form from the state so that I can proceed with trying to reclaim his dual citizenship, which was his birthright through bloodline.  My husband and I have visited graveyards, newspaper archives, and his birth mother's high school yearbook photos so that we can begin to build a family history for him to know and feel proud of."

We adoptees can't forget that there are adoptive parents like this out there who really "get it" and who can help us in our efforts to reclaim our rights.

And who knows?  Maybe there is even hope for the ACLU-NJ.  Ms. Jacobs recently announced her intention to move on to another job opportunity, and new leadership, perhaps, might follow the lead of the Florida ACLU that reached this encouraging conclusion way back in 1987:

..."Careful scrutiny of adoption statutes and practices has indicated that legal changes are necessary, and that civil liberties of adopted adults are being violated in the absence of any state or national policy on this matter, and with the belief that adopted persons should be treated no differently than other citizens, the Southwest Florida Chapter Board has voted to endorse the following policy:

Numerous states have laws or procedures which impede the ability of adopted adults, their birthparents and other relatives to ascertain each others' identities.  The ACLU believes that as long as state and/or local governments choose to maintain birth records, such records must be maintained and accessible without discrimination by virtue of adopted or non-adopted status."

Equal rights and equal access for adult adoptees -- such a simple concept, and one that every critical thinker should be embracing without reservation.

Sealed Records -- A Secret the Industry Would Like to Keep

In this era of more open adoptions, my guess is that few people in the population at large even realize that the original birth certificates of adopted children in the US are routinely sealed.  Although we adoptees are well aware that adopted people are expected to live for life with amended birth certificates that list their adoptive mothers and fathers as the people who conceived and bore them, many people, I suspect, are not so aware.  I'm not basing this assumption on any data -- just the fact that most people I meet are shocked when I share the realities of adoption law.

I've been going into my local Apple store for one-on-one computer training for about six weeks now.  Every instructor I've met has been stunned when I've related the fact that adoptees' original birth certificates are sealed for life, and that adult adoptees have no legal access to them in most states.  They just assume that adoptees have access, because they hear that most adoptions are open now, or they have read the popular, human interest reunion stories, the media's favorite adoption subject.

Unfortunately, the media tends to focus on the reunions themselves, not the history of the obstructive laws that block the exchange of information between adoptees and their original families.  The media could help adult adoptees regain their civil rights by delving into the history a bit and correcting the myths that the adoption industry and other opponents continue to disseminate.

But newspapers are in business to make money, and feel-good reunion stories sell.  We're still waiting for the investigative journalism that would uncover the link between corruption and secrecy in adoption.  The stories are out there, but they remain hidden, for the most part, and I'm sure the industry likes it that way.  What better way to remain in control of the entire adoption process than to keep the records that would ensure integrity and accountability permanently sealed?

Sealed records, as most adoption reformers know, are a relatively recent phenomenon.  Before the year 1940, adoptions in America were usually open and informal.  One notable exception to the rule was the Tennessee Children's Home Society, operated by the infamous Georgia Tann from the 1920's through 1950.  Tann, highly respected in society at the time, often removed poor children from their homes under false pretenses and then "amended" their birth certificates so that she could cover her tracks and more easily sell them to wealthy adopters.  In most cases, original birth certificates were destroyed.  Tann was eventually charged with stealing or otherwise separating 5,000 children from their families so that they could be adopted by notable, well-connected couples.  She was able to run her fraudulent adoption ring for decades because a "save the children" message always resonates with the public, and secret birth records virtually guarantee that there will be little or no accountability.

The legal practice of sealing adoptees' birth records did not exist before the mid-20th century and did not become prevalent across the states until after the 1960's.  As we know now, the intent was misguided but probably benevolent, although Tann's story in hindsight clearly shows the dangers of amending and sealing birth records.  In the 1950's and 60's, social workers believed that those families formed through adoption should be viewed just like those families formed through birth.  By sealing birth records, they believed they were protecting children from the "shame of illegitimacy," and adoptive parents from "unwarranted intrusion" by the original family.   As legal scholar Elizabeth Samuels points out in her thorough history of the sealed records movement, protecting the confidentiality of birthparents was the last thing on anyone's mind.

As late as the 1960's, adoptees in 20 states were still permitted to see their birth records, but then gradually, states began sealing the documents, one-by-one, although two states, Kansas and Alaska, never did.  It didn't take long for adoptees to start complaining about their second-class status as citizens, and during the 1970's, search and support groups began to organize across the country.  In 1978, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare commissioned a panel of adoption professionals to draft model legislation that would serve as a guide for states to reform their adoption laws.  Released in 1980, the Draft Model State Adoption Act recommended that all adoptees at the age of majority be given free access to their original birth certificates.

Unfortunately for adoptees, the HEW proposal spawned the growth of new and powerful groups that wanted to keep adoption secret, and as a result, protracted legislative wars occur in every state considering restoring adoptee access.  In 1995, Tennessee became the first state to allow adoptees access to their own birth certificates -- the Georgia Tann scandal was most likely a contributing factor.  Oregon followed suit in 2000, granting adult adoptees access at age 18.  The decisions in both states were challenged legally, but opponents' arguments that abortions would increase and that birth mothers had been promised anonymity were refuted by the higher courts.

With so much evidence to support adult adoptee access -- empirical, professional and legal -- why doesn't legislation to restore adoptees' rights move forward more quickly?  Part of the answer is that too many people don't know how sealed records came to be, don't know that the vast majority of original parents oppose them, or even that the practice of sealing records still exists.  That ignorance makes it too easy for opponents to spread their misinformation.

Professionals in the media should be asking why the opposition to adoption reform is so fierce and so well-funded.  They should be questioning the opposition's claims.  We have facts now from all the states that have restored adult adoptee access, and those facts can be investigated.  Editors and writers covering adoption stories should be better informed about the issues than the general population.  Those who do their homework will discover that the facts in no way support the adoption industry's and the Catholic Conference of Bishops' position that birth records should remain sealed from the very people whose births they document.  

Adoption may be more open today, but the original birth certificates of adoptees in most states remain permanently sealed.  As a country, we should be ashamed that we continue to put the best interests of moneyed lobbies ahead of the best interests of adopted people.

As Nicole Burton wrote in 2010 in response to an essay opposing an Adoptee Rights Bill in NJ,  "As a British adopted person who received her original birth certificate when the UK opened up its adoption records 33 years ago, I consider America to be a barbaric, backward country in the way it treats its adopted citizens.  Nothing less than full human rights are at stake, and I expect to see the end of adoption as we know it in my lifetime, just as I have witnessed the end of the Soviet Union, South African apartheid, and the fall of the Berlin wall.

May it be done."  



Sources:  

Adoptees Deserve Access to their Birth Records
The Strange History of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth Records
  

The Ethics of Adoption and Reproductive Technology

The need for ethics reform in both adoption and reproductive technology can be traced in large part to our desire as human beings for instant gratification -- we want what we want now, and often without thinking through the long-term consequences of our actions.  Many people desperately want children, and I would never minimize the pain of being unable to conceive.  I saw my daughter's dear friend struggle with infertility -- and witnessed with sadness and empathy her frustration and profound depression.

But being desperate for a child should not be an excuse for willfully ignoring the long-term consequences of our decisions.  When people are desperate, it is far too easy for adoption agencies and fertility clinics to exploit that desperation.  It is far too easy to treat infants like commodities or "treatments," because infants, obviously, cannot speak for themselves.

As a result, we have all kinds of child trafficking abuses that thrive in a culture where anonymity and sealed records are accepted.  We have an entire generation of donor-conceived adults starting to express their frustration at being cut off from half of their biological roots because the practice of anonymous sperm and egg donation has been accepted and encouraged.  On the internet, we see ads promoting low-cost surrogacy in India for "40 to 70 percent less" than the cost of US surrogacy.  What are these future children going to think about their half-Indian, low-cost identity?  Of course if the prospective parents pay $12,000 to $15,000 more, they can contract to have the egg from a Caucasian woman implanted into the Indian woman's womb, therefore guaranteeing a 100 percent white baby.

The situation is so appalling on so many levels that it renders me almost speechless.  Just because we can do something technologically does not mean that we should do it.   As Alessandra Rafferty pointed out in a 2011 Newsweek article, "You need a license (in the US) to sell a condo or cut hair in a salon, but not to broker human life."  While the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Australia have all legislated for more transparency in the fertility business, America's $3 to $4 billion fertility industry continues to move right along, for the most part privatized and largely unregulated.

For years, adult adoptees have been expressing their frustration at being severed from all their DNA connections for all time.  The power brokers have not responded with constructive legal changes, and now we have a whole chorus of donor-conceived adults joining the choir.  About 75 percent of all surveyed donor offspring would recommend to today's prospective parents that they use a known or willing-to-be-known sperm donor, according to the online Donors Sibling Registry.

Says Toronto journalist Olivia Pratten, age 28, "I'm not a treatment, I'm a person, and (my) records belong to me."  Kathleen LaBounty, who grew up just outside Houston, is now the mother of two and would like to know her own medical history, for her own and for her children's sake.  Lindsay Greenawalt, a donor-conceived adult who blogs about her experiences at "Confessions of a Cryokid," says many donor-conceived people are reluctant to criticize the circumstances of their conception and their desire for information for fear of hurting their parents, whom they love.  Sound familiar?  We adoptees have been saying similar things for years.

Today Grennawalt counsels prospective parents to "put yourself in your future child's shoes.  Understand that it's not all about you."  While some are listening and advocating for change, many others charge right ahead, undeterred and willing to believe that just a few misguided souls are complaining.  When we allow ourselves to think about the subject logically, says Grennawalt, there is an ironic hypocrisy in the fact that a couple will do just about anything to have their own biological children, and yet then deny that their children -- either adopted or conceived through the fertility industry --  should have a need to know anything about their own biological connections.

When it comes to securing a baby, it would seem that almost anything goes.  In a free market, the business migrates to the least expensive and least regulated country.  Thus the popularity of foreign adoptions and surrogacy in India, where the cost runs about $25,000, as opposed to anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 for surrogacy services here in the US.  Women are paid about $8,000 to carry a child for another couple, and of course, India does not yet have legislation governing surrogacy.  When we consider that the average income per year in India is $1,017, what choice do these women receiving such a proposition really have?  As they struggle to survive and to feed their children, I can only imagine the conflicting pressures they must feel.

What do the adoption and the fertility industries have in common?  Both are responding to a tremendous market demand, and both insist that anonymity remain a part of their practices.  Sealed records invite abuse and violate the civil rights of the adopted person.  Anonymity in the fertility business likewise invites abuse -- one sperm donor has spawned over 150 children -- and violates the right of the donor-conceived child to know his or her basic identity.

The sad truth is that money is driving the production of children, in both the adoption and the fertility fields.  Ethics are sadly lacking, and the lack of transparency in both industries is a major contributing factor.  When will US lawmakers wake up to the realities and do something constructive to further "the best interest of the child" rather than  "the best interest of the adoption and fertility industries?"



Sources:

Donor-conceived and Out of the Closet
Donor-conceived children seek missing identities
Who are You? The Ethics and Impact of Donor Conception
Debate Swirls Around Overseas Surrogacy
Donors Sibling Registry

An Adoptee's Perspective on Love and Why Truth Matters

I loved my parents very much.  So it makes me really sad and angry when some people insinuate that I must not have because I am passionate about adoptee rights.  My mother lived to be 89 years old, and during the last couple years of her life, it was my privilege to look out for her, just as she had always looked out for me.  I looked forward to taking her shopping and out to lunch each week.  She was determined and independent, but her mobility was restricted, and she needed a scooter to get around.  Near the end of her life, when she was hospitalized, a nurse, testing her mental faculties, asked her who I was.  "That's my daughter," she replied, "and I couldn't live one minute without her."  She loved me fiercely, and I loved her.

I used to think that because I loved my parents so much, I had to love adoption too.  Or at least keep my conflicted views to myself.  It's obvious that some adoptees still feel this way, given the defensive responses that roll in every time an article is printed about adoptees wishing to reconnect with their original families.  There are always a few responses along this line: "I know who my real parents are, the people who loved and raised me."  The clear message is that this knowledge should be more than enough.  The implied message is that those folks who actually conceived you really aren't all that important.  There's also an unspoken message in there that as an adoptee, you must choose which family comes first.

As a mature adult who tries to honor the truth in all that I do, I find all these attitudes offensive.  And given that they still surface anytime a discussion about adoption comes up, I certainly understand why more people don't speak out.  Working for adoptee rights in New Jersey is very much like hitting your head against a wall -- over and over again.  Every time we approach success, armed with facts and testimonials, we are always thwarted by some back room deal, which has obviously been brokered by monied and influential lobbies.  Along the way, it is routinely implied that we are stalkers, intent on causing pain and disruption to our original families.  Opponents always drag in a few adoptees to claim they are just fine knowing nothing about their pasts.  Again, the implication is that we must not be fine, since we seem so intent on knowing.  The whole scene is frustrating and depressing -- some years, I find I need to take time off because the atmosphere is so toxic.

But I believe strongly that the laws governing adoption need a major overhaul, and the more I learn, the worse the landscape gets.  Several people pointed out to me after my last post on the National Council for Adoption (NCFA) that the NCFA has been supplanted by even more influential and unethical agency umbrella groups.  I realize that when it comes to adoption reform, adult adoptee access is most likely just the tip of the iceberg.  But the attitudes that keep the archaic laws in place banning adoptees from knowing their own genealogy are really very destructive -- and I believe that those attitudes, which insist that secrecy and deception must be a part of adoption, contribute greatly to the corruption that has been uncovered and that still goes on.

In my mind, adoption is not ethical unless all three parties involved are treated fairly.  Original parents should never be exploited in any way.  They must be respected, and every effort should be made to enable them to parent their own child, if it is at all possible.  There should be no coercion to surrender, either implied or outright, and open adoption agreements should be legally protected.

Once the child is born, that child's inherent right to know his or her birth identity should be honored.  She should not have to pretend that her adoptive parents are in fact her genetic parents when they are not.  It should be explained to those few original parents who prefer to remain unknown that while they are not required to have a relationship with their offspring, they may be asked at some future point to exchange information.  Telling an adopted person that such an exchange is too much to ask is an egregious insult, and it is a violation of his or her civil right to be treated just like any other American citizen as an adult.

Finally, adoptive parents need to be aware of the many abuses that have taken place and that still occur in the adoption field.  They also need to be better prepared for the realities of raising an adopted child.  Too many agencies ensure them that the child will be "just like their own" and fail to share the complexities of the adoption process.

We're obviously a long way off from the ideal picture I've just painted, although many good people -- adoptees, original parents and adoptive parents -- are working hard to improve adoption practice.  For the short term, I'd settle for an end to the offensive practice of questioning the loyalties of outspoken adoptees to their adoptive parents.  I, like any other human being, am a product of both my DNA and my nurturing, and which is more important is not relevant.  Both are integral parts of me.  The culture that encourages either-or thinking about adoption needs to change.

I loved and cherished my parents.  But I abhor the laws that prevent full-grown adults from securing their own legal documents of birth.  Truth and transparency are always better than lies and deception, and it is truly unethical to say that adoption must operate outside of those very basic and fundamental moral values.    

NCFA is not the "Expert" on Adoption Issues

Courtney Garcia, an msnbc.com contributor, recently wrote a short piece on msnbc entitled "Was 'Avengers' joke cruel to adoption community?"  In the blockbuster movie "The Avengers," apparently, a joke is made at the expense of Loki, the movie's bad guy and adopted son of the god Odin.  When it is pointed out by one of the avengers that Loki has "killed 80 people in two days," Loki's brother Thor reportedly responds, "He's adopted."

I haven't seen the film and don't know the story or the context, so I can't respond intelligently to the debate.  But what I did find offensive was who Ms. Garcia sought out as one of her "experts" to comment about the controversy:  Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), a Washington D.C.-based trade association of adoptive agencies.

Every time a state legislature considers an adult adoptee access bill that would enable an adoptee, as an adult, to secure the legal document recording his or her own birth,  Johnson or another NCFA representative appears to insist original mothers were promised confidentiality and therefore need "protection" from their own offspring.  Never mind that a host of studies have shown that original mothers were never promised legal confidentiality and instead had to sign pledges that they would never "interfere" with the adoptive family; never mind that the vast majority don't want confidentiality and would like to know how their children have fared in life.

The obvious question is:  What motivates NCFA, and why is it so resolute in opposing adoptee rights?  The answer lies in NCFA's history, which I would like to share here for the benefit of those in the media and for those legislators who look to NCFA for their information about adoption issues.  NCFA incorporated in 1980 for one purpose: to fight adult adoptee access legislation that had been proposed by an Advisory Panel of the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare.  That panel consisted of adoption professionals from across the country, and even reflected the views of an adoptee and an original mother, the voices that are usually ignored in adoption policy discussions.

The document the panel produced, the Draft Model State Adoption Act, recommended that adult adoptees, age 18 and up, be given unqualified access to their birth certificates.  It concluded "that there can be no legally protected interest in keeping one's identity secret from one's biological offspring; parent and child are considered co-owners of the information regarding the event of birth."

Feeling threatened that adoption might become more transparent, Ruby Lee Piester, Executive Director of the Edna Gladney Home, the country's largest and oldest maternity home and adoption agency based in Ft. Worth, Texas, teamed up with William L. Pierce, then Assistant Executive Director of the Child Welfare League of America, to form NCFA.  Together, they urged adoption agencies across the country to get involved.

NCFA's opposition to adoptee rights has never wavered, even as more and more statistics have been compiled to refute its claims.  On its website, NCFA states: Adult adoptee access would "violate the basic
human right to privacy and harm the institution of adoption and the countless children, birthparents, and families it serves."

We now know in 2012 that secrecy in adoption has harmed countless children and original parents, and many adoptive parents have recognized its destructive effects as well.  That's why Holt International Children's Services and Spence Chapin Adoption Services, former charter members of NCFA, have dropped out and now support adult adoptee access.  That's why the Child Welfare League of America claims that every adopted child as an adult has the right to know his or her own birth identity.

Many other respected organizations support adoptee rights, including the American Adoption Congress, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, Ethica and Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform (PEAR).  So why is NCFA still considered the "expert" on adoption issues by so many?  The simple answer is: money.  While the advocate groups are gaining traction, they still cannot compete financially with the NCFA.

NCFA does not place children for adoption but does receive a fee from its agency members every time one of them succeeds in placing a child.  The average cost to adoptive parents at agencies facilitating the adoption of infants under one year is $30,000.  According to 2005 IRS form #990, NCFA's total gross receipts during that year were $2,920,818.  Besides placement and membership fees, much of NCFA's revenue comes from government grants.  NCFA is a skilled and savvy lobbying entity.

NCFA's most influential members and/or supporters include Bethany Christian Services, LDS Family Services, the Gladney Center for Adoption, and the ultra-conservative Family Research Council.  The trade association still operates under the misguided premise that more openness in adoption will lead to more abortions, even though no such link has ever been shown.  In fact, abortion rates tend to decrease in states that have restored adult adoptee access.

As more and more abuses come to light in the world of adoption, is there anyone who really thinks that NCFA's prime mission is to shield original mothers from unwanted intrusions?  It is much more likely that NCFA's overriding mission is to protect its hefty bottom line and to shield its member agencies from accountability.

Groups working for transparency in adoption like PEAR and Ethica focus on integrity; NCFA focuses on perpetuating its business, no matter whose civil rights or interests are violated in the process.  On its website, PEAR writes: "We oppose the imposition of contact vetoes, court orders or third-party agency interference with an adoptee's right to access his or her original birth certificate."  And even more important -- "Adoption should be about the formation of a family for the benefit and best interests of children, not the destruction of identity."

Ethica likewise advocates for the right of adult adoptees to have access to their birth records.  To maintain its independence, it does not accept donations from any individual or agency that places children for adoption.  Contrast that to the operating model of NCFA, which depends on agency fees for its very existence.

Memo to the press and state legislators: The next time you need unbiased and accurate information on an adoption issue, please do not go to the NCFA.  It is a trade organization that represents the best interests of the adoption agencies it represents.  Go to an independent source where the only agenda is to promote integrity and transparency in adoption, and to represent the best interests of real human beings who are actually impacted by the practice.

Why I Oppose Confidential Intermediaries

Working with a confidential intermediary from the agency that facilitated my adoption was what transformed me from a rather tentative soul, usually respectful of authority, into a passionate advocate for adoption reform.  I signed up for the intermediary system because at that time, I didn't realize I had other alternatives, like going to a volunteer search angel or a private investigator for help.  I had no idea how working with an intermediary would make me feel.

As I've reported in other posts, my intermediary's first question was: "Why do you want to know?"  Closely behind that question was another: "What do you hope to gain from this?"  Immediately, I felt that my motives and my psychological competence were being questioned.  I shouldn't have to explain why I want to know my own personal history and who gave birth to me.  My history and my identity belong to me, and these things should never have been taken from me in the first place.  As an adult, I very much disliked placing my personal affairs into the hands of an unknown party whose competence I had no way of judging.

My intermediary made one phone call to my original mother, and in that one phone call, my original mother apparently said she wanted no contact.  The intermediary reported, "She is a tough nut to crack," or something along those lines.  I didn't know whether I could trust the intermediary's assessment or not.  All I knew is that I had no medical information, no personal history, nothing.  After much soul-searching, I decided to try to make contact on my own, through a compassionate and personal certified letter, and I did meet with success.  Perhaps the social worker scared my original mother off.  I know the agency personnel intimidated and infuriated me: their stance was so rigid, cold and bureaucratic.

My feelings on the intermediary system today are very clear.  It is unfair and unethical for two parties to sign a lifelong, binding contract over a third party who had no say in the matter.  As adults, we adoptees should have the same rights as any other citizen.  Confidential intermediaries are simply another barrier to our desires as adults to manage our own lives.  My original birth certificate -- the legal document recording my birth -- certainly belongs to me just as much, if not more so, than to my original mother.

Here are other reasons I strongly oppose the confidential intermediary "solution":

1.  The adoptee is expected to pay for the service, a reality that benefits the adoption agency financially.  Ten years ago, I paid my agency $400 for an ultimately unsuccessful search.

2.  Our searches are sometimes trivialized by agency personnel as "idle curiosities."  This is what my agency's attorney called my efforts when I tried to convince the agency to forward my personal letter to my original mother.

3.  Some agencies have a long history of opposing adoptee access.  How can they possibly facilitate contact without bias?

4.  Other agencies, according to search angels and investigators, have distorted birth records to suit their own purposes.  Once again, how can these agencies be expected to facilitate contact without bias?

5.  Confidential intermediary programs are costly and often slow.  When expressing their support for a NJ Adoptee Rights Bill in 1992, the directors of Maternity and Adoption Services for the Catholic Dioceses in NJ wrote, "We find this bill to be the most cost-efficient way to meet the needs of the people involved.  We are besieged with requests from adult adoptees and birthparents for intermediary search services."

6.  I am the victim of discrimination when I am forced to submit to the power of others concerning the most personal details of my life.  I am not a child, yet the intermediary process placed me in a child-like position.

I seriously doubt that those legislators who support a confidential intermediary system would tolerate a third, unknown party supervising their own, very personal affairs.  The bottom line is this: I have a right to my own history and identity.  And I am competent to manage my own personal business without the supervision of my government.  For what could be more personal than the relationship between me and my original mother?  It is no one's business except for hers and mine.

An Open Letter to Adoptive Parents

I would so like to see more adoptive parents supporting the state-by-state efforts to update archaic adoption laws and to enable adult adoptees to apply for and receive their original birth certificates.  You may think that the problem of sealed records has been solved since today, so many adoptions have some degree of openness.  But when adoptees continue to be treated like second-class citizens in much of the United States,  a heavy cloud still hangs over the institution of adoption.  As adults, adoptees should be able to receive their own birth certificates, just like any other US citizen.  When you fail to support reform, you are sending the message that treating adoptees differently than everyone else is acceptable.  And you are tacitly supporting the myth that adoptees are insensitive stalkers, intent on disrupting the lives of their original families.

Even my own adoptive mother did not realize how severely compromised my civil rights really were.  When I experienced a serious medical problem and encountered problems as I tried to obtain up-to-date medical records from the agency that had arranged my adoption, she was genuinely surprised.  "But why can't you get them?" she asked.  "We were told that information would be available whenever we needed it."

"Well apparently, my original mother wants no contact," I replied.  "If she says she wants no contact, I have no way of getting up-to-date information."  Of course, I had to take the word of the "confidential intermediary" that my original mother indeed wanted no contact.  And I had to trust that the intermediary did ask for meaningful medical information, even though I didn't receive any.  Later, I was able to contact my original mother successfully on my own, and she did provide me with information that was helpful, both medically and emotionally.  But that's another story -- one that shows why a system that relies on confidential intermediaries is completely unfair to the grown adoptee.

My adoptive mother and I were products of the closed adoption system, and it was hard for her to even envisage another mother somewhere out in the world.  As she said to me during my communications with the agency, "I don't like to think there's another mother.  I like to think you came right from me."  That's a painfully honest assessment, and because she felt that way,  I didn't share much of my thinking on the matter.  I loved her dearly, and I didn't want to cause her any pain.

Of course I didn't really know my original mother, but I did feel a link there too.  She had carried me in her body for nine months and given birth to me, a rather profound process, to be sure, which I experienced myself two times.  I didn't want to cause my original mother any pain either, but I did feel as an autonomous adult that I had an absolute right to information that might help me to protect my own health, as well as the well-being of my children and grandchildren.  I approached her, after much thought, through a sensitive and carefully-worded certified letter.  I was fortunate that she responded.

Can you understand as an adoptive parent what a difficult position you are placing your child in when you feel threatened by the existence of the original family?  I completely forgive my adoptive mother for her limitations because she really didn't know any better.  The agency personnel were the experts, and she believed what they told her.  I forgive my original mother as well for not wishing to have a continuing relationship.  I believe denial was her way of coping with a closed adoption system, and I have to respect that.

It is the perpetuation of the closed system that upsets me the most.  It is so unfair to place a child into a situation in which she must be ultra sensitive about the adoptive parents' feelings, and ultra sensitive about the original families' feelings as well.  Why should the adopted child be the one who must put everyone else's feelings before her own?  Such a system -- which is still enshrined in law throughout much of the country -- is truly backwards, because it places the best interests of the child below the best interests of the adults involved.

I believe that as an adopted person, it took me a little longer to grow up than it should have.  It took me quite a few years to realize that it was acceptable for me to sometimes put my own feelings first.  It's not my job to protect everyone else's feelings and drive my own feelings underground.  It also took me quite a while to do what I needed to do to feel like a fully-empowered human being, just as capable as anyone else and in some cases more capable of handling my own personal affairs.

My wish as a 61-year-old adoptee, then, is that all adoptive parents in the next generation will come to understand that an adoptee's need to know her roots in no way diminishes her love for her adoptive parents.  As adults, we all know that life does not begin at adoption -- we adoptees carry different DNA in our veins, and that DNA has ramifications, sometimes emotionally, always medically.  An adoptive family can be just as loving as a biological family, of course, but it is a different kind of family, and we do no one any favors in not recognizing that fact.

Adoptees as adults have rights, and they should be treated just the same as the non-adopted.  In my case, not having ready access to my own birth record denied me the opportunity, when I had a health issue, to participate in a clinical trial.  Such blatant discrimination is simply not acceptable, and such discrimination, I believe, gives all of adoption a black eye.  Adoptive parents, please be assured that I couldn't have loved my adoptive mother and father more, yet a conversation with my original mother provided me with a sense of closure that was very helpful to me.  If you have loved your children well, you have nothing to fear from original families, and your children's love for you will be even stronger when you are able to validate their need to know the truth.

We need more of you adoptive parents to join the many adoptees and original parents who are lobbying to  reform archaic adoption laws.  Because you as adoptive parents finance the adoption industry, your voice tends to carry more weight than ours in the legislative arena.  Please join us!  Your children are precious, and they deserve to be treated just like all other citizens.


If you live in New Jersey, please join NJCARE, the New Jersey Coalition for Adoption Reform and Education.

You can find out how to help in your state by exploring the website of the American Adoption Congress.

Support the Adoptee Rights Coalition in its advocacy efforts for equal rights, equal access.

Support for Adoptee Rights Grows

The movement towards social justice for adoptees has been agonizingly slow these past 30 years, but there are a few hopeful signs on the horizon.  Both the NJ Senate and Assembly passed a decent Adoptee Rights Bill during the last legislative cycle, which would have become law had it not been for Gov. Chris Christie's unfortunate "conditional veto."  During the last five years, New Hampshire, Maine, and most recently, Rhode Island have passed laws that enable adult adoptees to apply for and secure their original birth certificates.  Such legislation already exists in Alaska, Kansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Oregon.
A handful of other states allow for partial access or conditional access with restrictions.

More and more people are learning the truth about why birth records were sealed in the first place.  They are recognizing that most original families do not desire anonymity, and that those institutions that oppose adoptee rights are usually more concerned about their personal ideologies or their monetary self-interest than they are about the people who are actually touched by the realities of adoption.

Some of the most outspoken opponents to adoptee rights have been Right-to-Life chapters and the State Conferences of Catholic Bishops.  But attitudes towards the Bishops' rigid stance on social issues are changing, as the recent pushback against the Vatican's rebuke of its nuns shows.  As I have written in other posts, many members of Catholic Charities have advocated for adoptee rights -- in 1992, the directors of Maternity and Adoption Services in all five of the Dioceses in NJ unanimously supported an adoptee rights bill, citing that "it is a human right to have access to the knowledge of who gave birth to you."  While the directors' position was quickly dismissed by the Catholic Charities Board as the "opinions of a few workers," their opinions do, in fact, exist in writing.

The pushback against the hierarchy can also be seen in an opinion piece published today in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled "Church's sexism is a scandal,"  by Catholic priest Roy Bourgeois.
Bourgeois supports the ordination of women and likens their treatment to the treatment of blacks during his early years in Louisiana.  "I and others did not ask why the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews during Mass or why our schools were segregated," he writes.

At one time, such separate treatment was simply accepted as the "way things are," in much the same way that the church hierarchy sees male priesthood as "the way things are," and in much the same way that some legislators and decision-makers see the separate treatment of adoptees as just "the way things are."

Transforming "the way things are"  into "the way things should be" takes a great deal of effort from a great number of people.  The first, difficult step is always speaking out, even when it is unpopular and risky to do so.  As Bourgeois writes, "I often think about our silence in the days when the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews.  As a priest, I have learned that our silence in the presence of such injustices is the voice of complicity.  Sexism, like racism, is a sin.  And no matter how we try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is not the way of God."

While many within the church are starting to speak out when they feel their Bishops are behaving in discriminatory ways, the media, also, is finally beginning to question some of the darker sides of adoption.  On May 1, Dan Rather aired an investigative piece on HDNet, "Adopted or Abducted," that gave a voice to many original mothers who were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption because they were young and unmarried.  They suffered terribly at the hands of the personnel running homes for unwed mothers and unscrupulous agencies.  Later, when they tried to contact the offspring they had never forgotten to see how they had fared in life, they were rebuffed by a sealed record system that in most states, remains intact to this day.

While I wish that Rather had made the obvious link between adoption abuses and the sealing of records, his program was at least a start in giving a national voice to those original mothers so harmed by past adoption practices.  And in my mind, it shows the absolute necessity for unsealing birth records for adults.  Here are two recent comments to the program, one by an original mother and one by an adoptee:

1. • •  When I watched it, it rocked me to my core. I had believed all of this time that there were only a few stories like mine.I realized I am among the many not the few.I have been searching for my son for many years and it is as if he fell off the face of the earth. I dont know anything.The only proof I have that he was born are my medical records,prenatal,labor and delivery from F.C.H. No I did not know that FCH has a reunion registry. I guess it must be about the only one I dont belong to. To Yonkers54,you are so right!!!I am adamant about adoptees rights. Every one has the right to know their genetic make up and their hermitage. You also have the right to your original birth certificate.I believe the things they did back then were to keep both sets of parents from knowing each other and knowing the truth. The truth will always come to light.I have lived long enough to see it happen time after time. To me this one of the worst kinds of bigotry there is.

       
       
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   All I can say is that it’s nice to know I have company!

   I was born on March 19, 1954 in Yonkers, NY. and adopted as an infant in Connecticut.

   My feelings on this topic are quite simple…while I can appreciate that a surprise visit from a child given up for adoption years ago can, in some cases, cause problems, I don’t believe that the child should be made to carry that burden.

   My biological mom and dad whom I’d love to meet do not have a a right to secrecy that surpasses my right to know who I am, my background, inherited traits, both medical and personal as well as the wealth of information about how I connect to the rest of the world…countries of origin, religion, family members, for that matter even my name!

   Can we stop punishing the children in order to protect the parents, please?

The movement towards social justice for adoptees will proceed faster as more people speak out and join the effort.  Adoptees, original parents, and adoptive parents -- please advocate for equal rights and equal access for adult adoptees.  Whether adoptions are open or not, a system that still amends and seals the legal records of adoptees routinely -- for life -- is not an equitable system, and it does not serve the best interests of the people it purports to help.

If you live in New Jersey, please join NJCARE, the New Jersey Coalition for Adoption Reform and Education.

The American Adoption Congress can keep you up to date on state-by-state legislative efforts.

The Adoptee Rights Coalition is growing and needs our help in its advocacy efforts.

Th