THE TENNESSEAN,December 12, 2007
Tennessee law pioneered adoption records access
New report says birth parents, children benefit from knowledge
By JANELL ROSS
Staff Writer
Tracey van der Spuy can't remember a time when she didn't know she was adopted.
The word has always been a part of what van der Spuy — who was handed over to a Tennessee couple at 6 weeks old — calls her "story." But in 1991, when van der Spuy felt the first of her three children moving inside her, that stopped being enough.
"It's hard for me to explain," van der Spuy said. "But for the first time in my life, I really needed something more. I needed to know where I came from, I needed to know about me."
A groundbreaking report released last month, a compilation of long-term studies on adoption, says birth parents who give up their children benefit psychologically from finding adoption records, as do those children. Because of long-standing beliefs about the value of secrecy in adoption, adults who were adopted as children are the only individuals in the United States who, as a group, do not have routine access to their birth certificates.
That's something Tennessee lawmakers changed more than a decade ago. It took a massive 1996 rewrite of Tennessee's adoption laws, a pair of civil suits and a state Supreme Court ruling, but Tennessee became the first state in the nation with a broad, court-tested adoption records access law.
In 1997, van der Spuy became one of the first Tennesseans to receive a copy of just about every document pertaining to her birth and adoption. Lawsuits filed soon after delayed other requests.
Since then, about 5,000 adopted adults have made similar requests. Nearly 2,500 have received requested information. Children who are the product of rape or incest or whose parents' rights were terminated because of abuse or neglect can't access the records.
"Tennessee was a precedent setter," said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the Boston-based research organization that released last month's report. "It set the standard for a law that protects the interest of everyone involved — birth parents and those who have been adopted alike."
Laws hide history
In 1917, Minnesota passed the nation's first law limiting access to any records related to an adoption. The idea: Children made available for adoption were often born outside marriage. Public access to that sort of information might affect the child's adoption prospects and later life.
Later laws in all but two states — Kansas and Alaska — sealed original birth records from the view of even those who were parties to the adoption. Secrecy was an essential marketing tool used by baby brokers to appeal to infertile prospective adoptive parents, said Caprice East, a Nashville interior decorator and adoptee who led the charge to change Tennessee's law in the 1990s.
East, a dark-haired woman with dimples, grew up in a Tennessee family of fair-haired freckle- faced children born to her adoptive parents. As a child, East was often asked about the origins of her dimples.
"They would pat my head, and all I could really do is smile," she said. "In reality I had no idea. It may sound silly, but I wanted to know where those dimples came from. I wanted to know where I came from and why I was given away. But that secrecy was in the way."
In 1951, the Tennessee legislature passed a law sealing birth records. The bill was sponsored by a legislator who had adopted children.
In 1996, the law changed after East's tireless campaigning to get her own records, but the struggle for records access wasn't over.
A collective of unidentified birth parents, an adoptive parent and Nashville-area adoption agency A Small World filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee's more open law.
After a series of appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case and a similar suit was filed in state court. The battle over adoption records in Tennessee became fodder for national news. In 1999, The Tennessee Supreme Court ultimately upheld the new law and opened a floodgate of adoption record requests.
Tom Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption, a nonprofit group that lobbies on behalf of adoption agencies, including A Small World, said his group doesn't oppose openness."But we don't believe that birth parents that have been promised privacy and who expect privacy should have that right stripped from them unilaterally."
He said some are concerned that Tennessee's law and others like it might "degrade" adoption, making it a less attractive for some than abortion.
Court records and federal health data reveal a different picture.
In most states where adoption records have become more accessible, adoption has increased and abortions have decreased, the Donaldson institute's study found.
Tennessee abortions dropped from 17,989 in 1996 to 14,175 in 2004, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data available.
'Is that child OK?'
Birth parents need to be sure a decision made as teens will not permanently bar knowledge of their children's well-being, said the institute's Pertman, an adoptive father.
Holly Spann, a Nashville resident who surrendered a child at age 17, agrees. Spann refers to herself as a "girl who was sent away," because as a teen, she moved to an Alabama home for unwed mothers, where she gave birth to her only child, a daughter.
"What I needed to know, what virtually every birth parent needs to know is, is that child OK?" Spann said.
She said she hired an agency to find her daughter, and they spoke on the telephone in 1995. The daughter didn't want to pursue a relationship.
Van der Spuy's story was different. Under the law parents have a right to bar their birth children from making contact. In 2000, van der Spuy learned that her mother did.
"You know, that's OK," van der Spuy said. "It has to be OK. The law guarantees me information about myself, information I wanted and needed, information for which I am grateful. It does not guarantee me a relationship."
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