The Myth of "Two Sides" in the Adoption Issue ... and a Thank You

This post (again, from Jenn, Susan's daughter) is a thank-you letter to all those who have listened, or will listen, to those who have lived adoption. Those who do so with an open heart and mind are hard-pressed not to be moved, but at the same time I recognize how difficult it is to change one’s own beliefs, especially if those beliefs are deeply held and reinforced by cultural myths perpetuated in movies, TV shows, magazines … in short, almost everywhere.  I also recognize just how busy with their own important affairs people are, and how hard this issue can be to understand (at first). So thank you, those who have listened, or will listen. Please bring your questions, your doubts, your fears …   but also your open heart. Prepare for an awakening. I know that’s how it felt for me, as I spoke with my mom and thought deeply about adoption for the first time.  

This photo, of my mom and my son Joseph, is from February 6th, after my mom, dad, and I had just had a good laugh as I attempted to color and style her hair, and almost turned it red. Going to the salon was just not possible at this point. I know now that my mom asked me to do her hair to create a memory (she certainly didn't ask me for my skills). I love her, and thank her, for that.

I especially want to thank Senator Diane Allen, who has tirelessly championed the Adoptees Birthright Bill (S873/A1259) in New Jersey and carefully listened to hours of testimony from original (birth) parents, adoptees, and adoptive parents for over 10 years. I am hoping that in the next month I will be able to thank New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who despite previously opposing this bill and calling for intermediaries (they don’t work, and are insulting to adoptees), will listen to Senator Allen  and hear her compelling case for why this bill should be signed into law. Though many, many others have worked for years, even decades, for adult adoptees’ access to their original birth certificates, in my heart if this law passes in NJ I will consider it “Susan’s Law,” after my mom, who first got me to listen, and to reconsider my own views.

I also want to thank my dear brother-in-law, Harry. This past February I was at my nephew’s (his son’s) 12^th birthday party, and as we served ourselves dinner from the dining room table buffet, he said, “That was an interesting article on your mom, Jenn.” He was referring to the front page February 23^rd Philadelphia Inquirer article, Bills in Pa., N.J.. would open adoption records, which featured a picture of me, my mom, and my daughter Grace (http://articles.philly.com/2014-02-23/news/47607101_1_adoption-records-adoptees-original-birth-certificates ). The article covers all the reasons that advocates have been fighting for adoptees’ access to their original birth certificates, but it also includes a few quotes from those who oppose this access, namely Mary Tasy from NJ Right to Life and Patrick Brannigan from the NJ Catholic Conference. Though the article mentions that the NJ Bar Association and the NJ ACLU also oppose the law, nobody from these organizations spoke out. Harry, who I respect immensely and always love talking to, because he is thoughtful, well-read, educated, and open, went on, “I guess there are some really interesting points on both sides.”

At that point, I froze. My mom, who passed away April 7^th, was at that time gravely ill, in part because of a lack of access to her full medical history, and the issue was just so personal. But I took a deep breath, explained the issue as calmly as I could, and Harry simply said, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I guess I just never thought about any of this before.” Most people who haven’t lived adoption are in the same boat. I am always glad when these people ask questions, or engage on the issue.

My sister Kate, my mom, and her sisters, Carol and Jo, having lunch at my parents' house in December. Those arguing for adoption reform: Adoptees, original families, and adoptive parents. They are the only "side" that should be considered.

Many times over the past two months I have come back to my brother-in-law’s comment, though, because if he (a well-educated, highly intelligent, deeply compassionate person, not to mention a psychologist with a PHD) could so easily be misinformed, how could others not be? “It seems like there are compelling arguments on both sides of the issue,” he said.

Yes, those who just read the press coverage of this and don’t deeply engage might be left with that impression but, let me state clearly, there are not two sides to this issue, any more than there were “two sides” to the issues of abolishing slavery, giving women the right to vote, or desegregating schools. A sampling of those who spoke out in favor of those injustices:   

Some defenders of slavery (and there were many) argued “that the institution was divine, and that it brought Christianity to the heathen from across the ocean, Slavery was, according to the argument, good for the enslaved” (www.ushistory.org).

Those who opposed giving women the right to vote were also, for years, given a voice in the debate (and they, of course, had the louder voice). “You do not need a ballot to clean out your sink spout!” read a pamphlet put out by the National Association Opposed to Women Suffrage in the 1910s, which also offered housecleaning tips.  Another reason given: “For it is unwise to risk the good that we have for the evil which might occur.”

(http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/vote-no-on-womens-suffrage-bizarre-reasons-for-not-letting-women-vote/264639/)

Finally, those who fought against desegregation came up with all kinds of arguments to support their case. One of the most prominent lawyers to defend segregation, James Lindsay Almond Jr., the state attorney general of Virginia, claimed that segregation was just because “with the help and sympathy and the love and respect of the white people of the South, the colored man has risen...to a place of eminence and respect throughout the nation.” (www.si.edu.brown/history/5-decision/defenders )

In their day, all of these points were considered debate-worthy, and these issues were considered highly controversial, just as adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates is sometimes presented as a “controversial issue” in the press today. But it is not. The arguments of all those who oppose this law are just as myth-filled, fear-based, and flat out wrong as the arguments listed above.

 Are you here to listen, to learn, to consider your own previously held beliefs? Then I welcome you, and I thank you. Do you not yet see how this is a clear-cut issue of social justice, one that does not have two sides? Then I ask for your comments, and your questions. I (or perhaps someone even better informed than I am from the adoption community) would love to address them. I consider it a way to honor my mom, Susan Perry, who didn’t get to live to see this change come, but who fought so hard to see that it did.

Listening to Adult Adoptee Voices

One of my favorite blogs is Rebecca Hawkes' Love is Not a Pie.  Rebecca is an articulate and insightful adoptee and adoptive mother who has a talent for summing up the complexities of adoption in just a few words.  In a recent post, she explained why she speaks out against the institution of adoption as it is currently practiced, and I'd like to share her wise words here, as I write and speak out for exactly the same reason.

"I speak out ... because I still see a huge discrepancy between the primarily positive way the adoption system is presented -- both to expectant parents and to members of the broader culture -- and the more complex reality as many of us have lived it."

Rebecca goes on to say that "the mathematical simplicity of the adoption equation fails to take into account some core issues of biology and human nature."  A perceptive commenter to her post adds, "Adoption seems simple to everyone BUT the people who have to live with it every day."

How frustrating it is that the experienced voices of those who have actually lived adoption are so often dismissed by legislative entities and by the culture at large!  As a 62-year-old adoptee, I commend all of the following adoptee comments, which were recently written on-line in response to a New York Times Motherlode article entitled "Adoption, Destiny and Magical Thinking."

"Adoptees are eternal children.  (The system represents) a huge imbalance of power; the adoption agencies and adoption lawyers are controlling affairs in which they have no personal stake."

"It is the facts of my birth, my life that I am denied simply because I'm adopted.  Good, bad or indifferent, I want and need to know my heritage and medical information."

"I want my rights, knowledge of my full ID, and I don't want to feel guilty for that."

"It's unfair to expect adoptees to somehow, as a group, pretend that culture, biology and ancestry aren't allowed to matter to us when they matter to so many others."

"Because adoption has become more about finding babies for couples wanting to adopt instead of finding families for children truly in need, we have come to the point where the concern is centered more on adoptive parents than children."

"The sad thing is that the adoptee is the one most impacted by the choices of birth parents, social workers, adoptive parents, etc., and they have the least control, the fewest choices of anyone."

The New York Times article generated 202 responses, most of them critical of the adoption system as it is now practiced and so often portrayed in the media.  The question is: Why doesn't the Times follow up and do an in-depth article on the adoption reform movement?  Or the history of sealing adoptee birth records, a practice that persists throughout the United States to this day?  And why do letters about adoption from adult adoptees so rarely see the light of day in the actual newspaper?

The New York Times is not the only paper to ignore adoptee voices.  I have written multiple responses to articles about adoption in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Each time, I get a response: "We are considering your letter for publication."  Each time, the letter fails to appear.  Many of my colleagues in the adoption reform movement have had the same experience.  That's why so many of us are blogging -- the mainstream media doesn't seem interested in exploring the nuances of adoption.

One begins to wonder just what is going on here.  Many people try to dismiss the adoptee voice by insisting that negative sentiments are expressed by just a few "angry adoptees."  Thus we often see comments like this one, in response to the Destiny and Magical Thinking article:  "Looks like this article got picked up by a listserv or message board serving aggrieved adult adoptees."  Rather than acknowledge that many adoptees might share a common experience, this reader would rather believe that the comments are the result of some kind of internet conspiracy.

Then there is this type of remark: "Sure do wish we could see more comments from adult adoptees who have had unequivocally or largely good experiences." Granted, some adoptees who wrote in had not had good experiences.  But past experience had little to do with many of the thoughts expressed.  For example, what, in any of the comments I cited, suggests that these adoptees had had unhappy homes?  Many of us love or loved our adoptive parents deeply, yet we resent the fact that our original identities were unnecessarily hidden from us.  And we deeply resent the fact that the industry today refuses to learn from our experiences.

Adoptee voices are sometimes diminished by comments like this:  "The people who are happy about adopting or being adopted have no axe to grind, so they're mostly off living their lives instead of commenting here."

For the record, I'd like to say that I and many of the outspoken adoptees I know have extremely busy lives.  We are mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, professionals.  We write and appear before legislative committees because we want to make the institution of adoption better for the people it most directly affects -- vulnerable children.  The system of adoption, which affects some of the most vulnerable people on earth, should be driven by sound research and experience, not by free market forces.

The truth is that adoption is complicated.  It is neither all good nor all bad, but it does present certain parenting challenges that must be addressed.  And in far too many cases, the adoption industry is not addressing those challenges.  Consider this insightful comment from another grown adoptee:

"My adoptive mother never gave my first mother a second thought the whole time I was being raised.  It never even entered her radar screen that my first mother and I lost something through the adoption.  She was so blissfully happy that she couldn't be there for me emotionally when I needed to work through my own issues inherent in adoption."

In this case, I cannot blame the adoptive mother for her oversight, as she was probably not prepared for the complexities and nuances of adoption.  I know my adoptive mother was not.  How could she be when the industry to this day continues to present adoption as a simple win-win enterprise for all concerned?

Adult adoptees have so much wisdom to offer because they know how it feels to grow up being adopted.  It is way past time for the industry, the media and legislators to acknowledge their voices without insulting their motives.

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