How angry would you be if the government had personal information about you -- but wouldn't let you see it? Many adult adoptees can relate to this experience -- forty states still withhold their original birth certificates from them. The secrets inherent in closed adoptions can create a lifetime of frustration and feelings of being second-class citizens -- and can also create absurd dilemmas.
Gay Ellen Brown is a 51-year-old Illinois adoptee who was raised in New Jersey. In 2009, she was diagnosed with several pre-cancerous breast lesions. After these were surgically removed, her doctor requested she have a BRCA DNA test to see if she carried the gene for breast and ovarian cancer. If she did carry the gene, it would guide many decisions about her future treatment and would be important for her children and grandchildren to know.
But Gay Ellen's insurance company refused to pay for the test, citing a company policy that only allowed coverage if there was a demonstrated family history of breast or ovarian cancer. Since Gay Ellen had no way of knowing her family's medical background, she could not prove the need for the genetic analysis. The BRCA test cost over $3,000, and Gay Ellen was unable to personally afford it.
"It's always in the back of my mind," she says. "Am I carrying this gene? I have three daughters and a granddaughter. What about them? The insurance company knows I'm adopted but it makes no difference."
As a last resort, Gay Ellen petitioned the court in Illinois where she was adopted to release her records. The judge denied her request. He indicated he might be more willing if she had stage four cancer or needed a transplant.
"Why should I have to wait until I have stage four cancer?" Gay Ellen asks. "If I had the BRCA test and learned I had the gene, my daughters would be able to have earlier mammography screening. Should the fact that I was adopted be something that dooms my own kids?"
The debate about whether adoptees should have access to their own birth certificate has been ongoing in many states, most notably in New Jersey where it has been a legislative issue for over thirty years. Birth parent privacy is the central argument from those who oppose access. Groups from churches, bar associations, and even the ACLU have argued that birthmothers were promised confidentiality. Yet there is no statutory guarantee of privacy nor is there evidence that birthmothers as a whole seek anonymity from the child they bore.
An examination of the outcomes of access legislation in the states where sealed records laws have been reversed suggests that while birthmothers desired privacy from their neighbors and communities and even families, most do not seek privacy from the adult son or daughter they bore. Oregon, New Hampshire and Maine allow birthparents to file 'no consent' forms where they can stipulate their desires regarding contact. The number of birthparents who file such documents is infinitesimal. For example, in New Hampshire, where adoptees have had access since 2005, with over 24,000 sealed records on file only 12 birthparents have requested 'no contact'.
Birthmothers have become pawns in the New Jersey debate, with opposition groups saying they are speaking for them. Birthparents who have testified have all supported the bill. There certainly are birthparents who want and need privacy -- and the New Jersey bill allows them to have their names removed from the birth certificate. The bill would actually empower NJ birthmothers for the very first time by giving them an opportunity to privately communicate their wishes with their son or daughter.
As Elizabeth Cooper Allen, an adoptee has said, "It would be far better to hear that I can't have my original birth certificate from the woman who gave birth to me, rather than from a state clerk. This matter is between me and the family I came from. It's not for the state of New Jersey to decide this for us."
At the heart of the debate is the lifelong effect the secrets of closed adoption impose upon adopted citizens. Gay Ellen Brown may soon have some of the answers she seeks. In May of this year, Illinois passed a complicated adoption reform bill which will allow her to apply for her original birth certificate on November 15, 2011, exactly a year from now. As long as her birthmother or birthfather haven't chosen to remain anonymous, Gay Ellen may finally be able to contact her family of origin, and learn about her family's medical history. All she has to do is live long enough...
Jean Strauss is an author and filmmaker from Washington state. Her feature film, ADOPTED: for the life of me, illuminates the impact lifelong secrecy has on adoptees, and encourages a discussion on the issue of access to information. The film will be airing on public television stations this fall and winter.
Hundreds of families came together on National Adoption Day in November to finalize adoptions from the foster care system. These celebrations rightfully honored adoptive families and supported the placement of some of the 115,00 children awaiting placement. National media paid ample attention to these events.
But the story that the media does not adequately cover is that roughly six million adult adoptees are denied the right to information about their own identities through the archaic laws that exist in most states. Adoption reform organizations such as the American Adoption Congress support legislation that gives adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates without restrictions or limitations. Who among us would want to have the most intimate knowledge about our origins withheld from us? Knowing you who are and where you have come from is a basic human need and an essential civil right.
The adoption community that is made up of public and private agencies, attorneys and social workers, frequently relate to adoptive parents as their primary stakeholders. But alongside that community, in what often seems like a parallel universe, are the interests of adult adoptees. Their voices that need to be heard, for surely they are the central stakeholders in adoption. Let’s encourage a national conversation that privileges all corners of the adoption triangle: the adoptive parents, the birth parents and the adoptees themselves.
Micky Duxbury, author of Making Room in Our Hearts: Keeping Family Ties Through Open Adoption
www.mickyduxbury
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We were naive after OR and AL.. (Why is AL left out of the blog?) We thought other states would fall in line. Instead, deformers took over. If OR and AL (and later NH and ME,) can go all the way, then certainly my state can move a little bit. Deformers internalize adoptee shame and adoption secrecy by accepting disclosure and contact vetoes, white-outs, anything to get obcs for some. They segregate the adopted class into haves and have nots. Deformers accept adoption industry and special interest arguments as their own paradigm, instead of using obcs for all as the standard. They don't question the basic premise of adoption secrecy. They embrace it.
It would be equally easy to paint cyber naysayers as being desirous of keeping records sealed. Lets face it - it's been three decades. Anyone who thinks that waiting for a 'clean bill' in NJ is the proper course is most certainly condemning those adopted citizens who could get their records if this bill should pass to probably never having access in their lifetimes.
The reality is, this inner divide serves little purpose except to illuminate the damage done by these laws and secrecy. The dialogue here would have you believe the enemy is from within. It would appear that the 'absurd dilemmas caused by secrets in closed adoptions' (the title of this article) should include attacks by triad members upon those working to provide access as if those involved in legislative action were somehow responsible for the complicated nature of social change.
You've read the comments in this article so please do the public a favor and address the issues not just the people who held your feet to the fire.
You Ms. Strauss are in a perfect position in life as a woman, as an accomplished film maker and as a writer to represent this issue with integrity and accuracy. I personally will not sit back while "advocates" and/or elected officials further strip the civil and human rights of adult adopted citizens.
We look forward to your next post in which you amend portions of this article.
So I ordered a copy of her death certificate citing I wanted the public record for genealogy purposes. I knew not to mention I was adopted because the state would refuse my request.
The certificate arrived and both cancers were listed on her death certificate with ovarian being the primary cancer and breast as secondary cause of death.
Then I checked with a specialist who told me I would not be a candidate for the BRCA DNA test because I had no surviving blood relatives who would be available to be tested with me as a family group which I took to mean that I alone could not be tested for the BRCA.
That said, using medical as the core reason to restore all adult adoptees their original birth certificates hasn't worked. Furthermore, legislators know when we pander to their emotions using medical as a reason ------ even when it may be a life or death issue for some adoptees.
The original birth certificate is the lexus to the amended birth certificate and vice-versa. Without unrestricted access to our own obc and adoption decree we adopted citizens cannot know whether or not our adoptions were legal or illegal.
In my case, my adoption was closed not to protect me or my natural parents but to protect the court and adoption agency.
Since the article and a comment note that "0.05% (half of 1%) of birth mothers wanted NO contact. So, 99.5% DO want contact... So, who are we protecting again?" I think the answer must be original fathers.
Members of various churches, including Catholic priests; individuals who are now prominent (or not so prominent) members of their communities; sexual assaulters; and house-and-garden cowards. Regardless of the fear factor of either of our original parents, we adopted adults have the right to basic information about ourselves. For governments, courts, and other institutions to withhold this information is nothing short of barbaric. Mark my words, I will live to see the day that adoption secrecy is a thing of the past, like the Berlin Wall, South African aparteid, and the Soviet Union. NicoleJBurton.com - Swimming Up the Sun: A Memoir of Adoption
"I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot County, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.
By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood.
The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege.
I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old."
"Not to know what happened before you were born is to be condemned to live forever as a child." -Cicero
Be honest with your children. Who is adoption about being in the best interest of? The parents? Or the children?
My children are my children. They don't need anything else.
These were very expensive adoptions. Our children have gone to the best schools and gained admission to fine universities. Their mothers could not have done well for them, as the poor girls had no impulse control and could not even name the fathers.
Medical History is not needed. I know this as a nurse. I worked for the doctor who delivered all my children and their mothers were healthy.
In adoption and reproductive "adoption" it is probably permissible to allow non-genetic parents a certain period of sanctity from interference from genetic parents but when a child reaches adulthood, and has autonomy from parental controls, then he or she must have the unrestricted liberty to learn the identity of his ancestors and at least the right to attempt contact with them.
Formal contracts with adoption agencies or the private agreements with infertility clinics that deny identity rights are inherently unfair to the children who have no voice in the decision.
All of us share the property of our genetic codes, our genealogical heritage with our ancestors. It is a property that cannot be denied or stolen through contracts of anonymity by the government, society or even by our ancestors. In a sense, they belong to us as much as we belong to them. No human law or private policy can abrogate that natural relationship. We may have rights of privacy that protect us from the public but not from our family.
My name is Jan.. and I'm a birth mother. The first thing I'd like to point out is that the label 'birth mother' is very offensive to me. It reduces myself and other 'first mothers' to be viewed as human incubators.. and we are not! We were coerced into relinquishing our first born.. for profit.. and profit alone. The adoption agency's and the states in which our children were born.. had a mission.. to shame us into feeling as if we were 'unworthy' of being mothers because we were big money in a multi-billion dollar industry.. which sadly is still going on to this day!
OK.. to get to the issue at hand.. I was a victim of this corrupt scheme back in 1970.. and was refused help that I literally BEGGED for.. and was told that I would be given information as to where to find my daughter on the day she turned 18. That was a hideous lie that I didn't find out until it was too late.
Now.. we in the adoption community are screaming for this barbaric system be changed nation wide. All people have a right to know who they are! And.. many of those are in desperate situations in which their lives.. and the lives of their children are being denied because of these laws!
This needs to STOP NOW!
Please help us!
jan