DES MOINES REGISTER, December 15, 2007Open-records group is not anti-adoption
Regarding the Iowa View "Advocates of Opening Records Pursue an Anti-Adoption Agenda," Dec. 3:
The authors allege that Bastard Nation (BN) is anti-adoption. Incorrect. BN's mission is to let adult adoptees have open access to government documents about themselves. BN has never implied "an end to adoption for all but extreme cases of abuse and neglect," and the authors cite nothing to support that allegation.
The authors next assert that because birth parents were promised confidentiality, only a mutual-consent registry can balance the "privacy questions" posed by opening records.
The authors do not establish that all parties to adoption have equal privacy rights, and cite nothing showing that secrecy from the adoptee was ever "promised." Nor do they explain who promised it or why any promise would prevent legislatures from amending records' laws to allow access.
And though the article calls BN a "search group," nothing in BN's mission statement implies a need for search registries. Even if no adoptees ever searched for their birth parents, or the law prevented search, BN would still stand for the access of adoption records to the adult adoptee for their own sake.
Lastly, the authors state that mutual-consent registries and safe-haven laws are good policy, but offer no basis for how safe-haven laws enhance adoption or mutual-consent registries. Anonymous safe-haven desertion would seem to thwart mutually consenting searchers from ever finding each other.
- Erik L. Smith,
member,
Bastard Nation,
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