NEW JERSEY: Editorial--Reject Adoptee Rights Bill, March 6, 2008

Comments

NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
March 6, 2008

Editorial: Reject Adoptee Rights Bill

The adoptee rights bill -- a measure that would open records sealed decades ago -- was a bad idea when it was considered in prior legislative sessions and it's a bad idea now. Nothing has changed.

The bill, which passed the Senate earlier this week and now goes to the Assembly for consideration, should get no further.

Proponents of the measure have spent nearly 30 years pushing legislation that is fundamentally unfair to women who, in good faith at a very vulnerable time in their lives, surrendered babies for adoption with the clear understanding that their decision would be kept confidential. The bill (S611) would open those records to adoptees who are 18 years or older, clearing the way for them to search for their birth parents.

Supporters of the bill argue that adoptees need this information to gain access to their biological parents' medical records. They insist that their right to birth records trumps the privacy rights of birth parents. Nonsense.

First, there is no guarantee that once a parent is found she will supply detailed information about her medical history. Even in an intact family, adult children do not have a right to a parent's medical records.

While it's understandable that adoptees want to be reunited with their biological parents, that can be accomplished through a registry that would bring birth parents and adoptees together through mutual agreement. For reasons that are absolutely confounding, adoption rights advocates have refused to compromise and accept a law that creates a registry or some other go-between. They want the records open. Period.

The bill voted out of the Senate reflects that unbending attitude. It says information would automatically be turned over to adoptees unless birth parents file notarized "no contact" letters saying they wish to remain anonymous, no matter how long ago the adoption took place. Imagine that a woman in her 80s now forfeits her right to privacy because she didn't realize she had to file a form in Trenton.

Even then, the bill would require both birth parents to fill out a medical and cultural history form every 10 years until a parent is 40 and every five years thereafter or forfeit their anonymity. Will it be up to the mother to announce who the father is so that he, too, can be hunted down? And if he doesn't comply, are all bets off and the request for no contact void?

Why not take the more reasonable approach of changing the law going forward? At least birth mothers would understand the ground rules when they relinquish a child. Changing the law retroactively is just plain wrong.


Link to article