MINNESOTA: Opinion--Most Adoptees Welcome Reunion

ST, CLOUD TIMES,
December 18, 2007

Most adoptees welcome reunion
By Natalie Miller Rotunda


One of the most controversial aspects of adoption — access to birth records — was the subject of a recent news story. “Should adoptees see records?” It focused on a report released last month by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. They say yes, and have ample support for their stand.

At present, only eight states allow that type of access, and the institute would like to see every state make birth records available to adult adoptees who want to know who their birth parents are.

For those adults in the eight states who found birth parents, the Institute reports, “Outcomes appear to have been overwhelmingly positive for adult adopted persons and birth parents alike.”

Most birth parents actually welcome rather than fear contact with the children they gave up. My daughter Robin not only will welcome the day she sees her daughter in the flesh again; she yearns for it. By then, maybe Illinois will be another in a long list of states to accommodate records access.

More than 50 years ago, adoptions were closed. Birth parents and adoptive parents had little or no contact or information exchange, and adult adoptees consequently had no connection to their past. By the 1970s, a few alternatives became available. Total secrecy is rare now, and, thankfully, a growing number of professionals regard it as a poor practice for everyone involved.

Heart of the issue

Peel away the layers of closed versus open adoptions and the birth records controversies and what’s left? The heart of the issue — what’s best for those directly involved?

The institute uncovered information that helps us understand the benefits of openness in adoptions. It concluded that the best of all possible adoptive situations is an open one, where the birth mother meets, or at least helps choose, her baby’s new parents.

Mothers who place their children and have a hand in knowing where the child is have fewer grief issues. “Research on birth mothers who relinquished children for adoption in the era of total secrecy chronicles a negative, long-term impact of this experience on many areas of their lives, including triggering chronic, severe grief reactions and contributing to ongoing complications in future parenting and marriage relationships.”

Not knowing what happened to their children was the hardest reality with which they coped.

Living with adoption

When Robin made the gut-wrenching decision to give her baby up, she didn’t know much about the process. She did know she wanted some control over who would rear the baby. The caseworker at the Catholic adoption agency in Quincy emphasized repeatedly that, once she signed the papers, she would forever relinquish parental rights. Forewarned, she continued meeting with her caseworker in the months before the baby’s birth.

They called it a closed adoption. Yet, Robin looked through stacks of profiles of couples who desperately wanted to adopt a child, couples with no names, just stories describing their lives and why they wanted a baby.

The couple she chose must have seen their hopes crumble when they learned that Robin brought the baby home. But she hadn’t changed her mind. She wanted a week, just one week, before she gave her baby to the loving couple who would give her child the home she wasn’t able to give her at the time. For one week, she was the baby’s mom, and she crammed a lifetime of memories into each day.

Then came the cold January day when the caseworkers picked up the baby. We’d all written loving messages telling her we loved her, and tucked meaningful mementos into envelopes we hoped the new parents would someday give the baby.

Robin signed the papers that ended her parental rights. Would we meet again someday? We all hoped so.

Our family has lived with the realities of adoption. By the time Robin’s baby is an adult, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute may have achieved its goal — that all states will have legislated an open-door policy for adult adoptees who want to know their family roots.

This is the opinion of Natalie Miller Rotunda, president and co-founder of the Quincy, Ill., Writers Guild. She moved to Minnesota in 1995. Her column is published the third Tuesday of the month.


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MICHIGAN: Rules Limit Connection Between Kids and Biological Parents

WOOD-TV, Grand Rapids, December 18, 2007
Rules limit connection between kids and biological parents

By TONY TAGLIAVIA

GRAND RAPIDS -- Bonnie Baker Harris has witnessed some remarkable reunions, like the one between Steve Flaig and Chris Tallady.

"Sometimes it can get quite emotional," Harris said.

She is the post-adoption specialist for the Bethany Christian Services Adoption Agency. As part of that work, she helps adopted children and biological parents connect.

"I would say we get several calls every week," Harris told 24 Hour News 8.

Those calls can result in a connection, especially for children whose biological parents ended their parental rights after September 1980. In those cases, as long as a parent hasn't asked not to be identified, his or her child can get the parent's name and last known address through the adoption agency.

For the children of parents whose rights were terminated before September 1980, information can only be released if a biological parent specifically allows it.

So what if there is no permission or denial on file?

"That is a very, very common outcome," Harris said. "The state has put into place what's called confidential intermediary services."

That person works as a go-between without telling either party who the other one is.

As Steve Flaig and Chris Tallady's story shows, sometimes an intermediary can be helpful, even when names and addresses are available. In their case, it led to a happy result.

"Best Christmas present ever," Chris Tallady said.

Her son's response?

"I can't wait to get to know each other better."


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IOWA: Letter--Open-records Group is not Anti-Adoption, December 15, 2007

DES MOINES REGISTER, December 15, 2007

Open-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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TENNESSEE: Tennessee Law Pioneered Adoption Records Access, December 12, 2007

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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CANADA/ONTARIO: New Legislation Would Provide Greater Openess in the Future, Protect Privacy for Past Adoptions, December 10, 2007

Ontario Ministry of Communications and Social Services, December 10, 2007








December 10, 2007 Attention News Editors: Ontario Moves Forward To Open Adoption Records New Legislation Would Provide Greater Openness In The Future, Protect Privacy For Past Adoptions


TORONTO, Dec. 10 /CNW/ - The Ontario government has introduced new legislation that will, if passed, help enshrine openness in future adoption records while providing a disclosure veto for people involved with past adoptions, Minister of Community and Social Services Madeleine Meilleur announced today. "We strongly believe that people should be able to learn about their own personal history," said Meilleur. "The legislation, if passed, will make open adoption records a cornerstone of Ontario's adoption laws. At the same time, it would safeguard the privacy of those involved in past adoptions."

The new legislation would, if passed, allow adult adoptees and birth parents, whose adoptions were registered in Ontario, to: Apply for copies of their adoption orders and birth registrations - Place a disclosure veto on their file if their adoption order is made in Ontario before September 1, 2008.

In addition, anyone who chooses to place a disclosure veto on their file would be asked to voluntarily provide their medical history so that birth relatives may be able to obtain personal health information.

Adult adoptees and birth parents may continue to place a no-contact notice on their file if they do not want to be contacted. They may also register a notice specifying a contact preference on how they prefer to be contacted.

Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian today applauded the government for including a privacy-protective disclosure veto in the new bill. "This disclosure veto will preserve the privacy of a number of deeply concerned birth parents and adoptees, while still allowing the vast majority of birth parents and adoptees to obtain the information they are seeking." The Commissioner is deeply grateful to the Government for making these important changes, allowing the Bill to strike the right balance. The legislation is consistent with the recent Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision of September 19, 2007 and the views of Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Wendy Rowney, president of Adoptions Search and Kinship and a member of the coordinating committee for the Coalition for Open Adoption Records, stresses the importance of this legislation for adult adoptees: "Finally, the vast majority of adult adoptees in Ontario will have access to a historically accurate birth certificate." "We believe that it is in everyone's best interest to move quickly with these changes," said Meilleur. "We are committed to helping adoptees and birth parents get as much information as possible - important information about their past."

Disponible en français www.mcss.gov.on.ca


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Backgrounder

ONTARIO'S NEW ADOPTION INFORMATION DISCLOSURE LEGISLATION

The Government of Ontario's new adoption information disclosure legislation would, if passed, allow for more openness in adoption records while allowing those involved with past adoptions to protect their privacy.

The proposed legislation amends the Vital Statistics Act and the Child and Family Services Act to allow: - Adoptees who are 18 years old or older to obtain copies of their original birth registrations that will provide them with their original birth name and may identify birth parents. - Adoptees who are 18 years old or older to obtain copies of their adoption orders that may provide information on where they were born and their given name at birth. - Birth parents to obtain information from their child's birth records and adoption orders if the adoptee is 19 years old or older. Information about the adoptive parents would be removed from the adoption records. Adult adoptees and birth parents will also be able to continue to place no-contact notices and contact preferences on their files.

Disclosure veto
If passed, the new legislation will allow adoptees and birth parents to place a disclosure veto on their file if their adoption order is made in Ontario before September 1, 2008. If a disclosure veto has been placed on a file, copies of adoption orders or birth registrations will not be released. If a disclosure veto has been placed on a file, adoptees and birth parents can still apply for non-identifying information in their adoption records.

If there are concerns about a severe medical condition, adoptees and birth parents may also be eligible for a severe medical search to obtain or share information about their family medical history, for example, information needed for an organ transplant.

The legislation, if passed, would ask anyone who registers a disclosure veto on their file to voluntarily provide information about their family and medical history. This information can help a birth relative who needs to know about potential inherited medical conditions to make informed health care choices.

Regulatory change
The government has made an immediate regulatory change to restore the province's ability to give adult adoptees and adoptive parents copies of their adoption orders. Identifying information about birth parents will be removed from these documents. An adoptee may require a copy of their adoption order to obtain certain documents including a passport or travel visa. The province's ability to release these important documents has not been available since the recent Superior Court of Ontario decision regarding the Adoption Information Disclosure Act, 2005. The new legislation will apply to all adoptions registered in Ontario.

Media Contacts: Erika Botond Communications and Marketing Branch Members of the general public may call: or toll free at .

Disponible en français www.mcss.gov.on.ca

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NEW YORK: Commentary: My View--All Adoptees Deserve Access to Birth Records, December 7, 2007

BUFFALO NEWS
December 7, 2007

MY VIEW:

All adoptees deserve access to birth records

by Joan Wheeler

I am responding to the Nov. 12 article, “Should adult adoptees know who birth parent is? Report says yes.”

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York City issued a nationwide report, “For the Records: Restoring a Legal Right for Adult Adoptees,” indicating that only eight states give adoptees access to their birth records, with positive results. The report urges the rest of America to pass legislation to allow all adoptees the right to their birth records.

In a country that values personal freedom, it is appalling that an estimated 6 million to 7 million people don’t have the freedom to obtain certified copies of their true birth certificates.

Seventy-seven years ago, three men — one U.S. Children’s Bureau legal researcher and two registrars of vital statistics — decided that the “problem” of illegitimacy could be covered up by a fake paper trail.

Babies of illegitimate birth would be protected forever from knowing the horrible truth. When adopted, these babies would be issued an amended “birth” certificate. This idea was written in a national law. One by one, states voted to seal birth certificates and issue new ones for every adoptee, falsely naming the adopting parents as parents by birth. Even the time of birth was indicated and the hospital named.

But not every adoptee is illegitimate. Many are orphans, others are adopted by stepparents. Yet they are lumped together with “shameful” births and punished because of society’s discriminatory judgments. No matter what the circumstances of conception and birth, all American citizens deserve equal treatment under the law. No one needs to be ashamed of being born, or of giving birth.

Fifty-one years ago, I was the fifth child born to married parents. My mother died three months after my birth. There was no help to keep our family together. Our father was encouraged to relinquish me to two parents.

Keeping with the prevailing thought of the times, my adoptive parents didn’t want me to know the truth. Eighteen years later, my siblings found me. Upon learning that I would soon meet my first father, my adoptive father said, “I’m glad the secret is out.”

Today, I’m no longer an adopted child. I’m all grown up now, yet the law still treats me as a child. At age 51, I’m a captive of the sealedrecord law. My original birth certificate is still sealed by New York State. I am not free to obtain a certified copy of it, nor am I legally allowed to even look at it. I must give up my rights to the facts of my birth in favor of a perceived right to confidentiality of my natural parents, or my adoptive parents’ privacy.

My first father was never promised confidentiality. There was no signed contract of confidentiality, as is claimed by opponents of adoptees’ access to birth certificates. My first father was told by the court to stay away from my adoptive parents. He did.

In more progressive countries, such as the Netherlands and Australia, the adoptee — who was a minor when the adoption contract was signed — has rights to the truth that trump either set of parents’ perceived rights to anonymity. To know one’s personal history and ancestry are basic, human questions.

As for natural parents who don’t want to be found, they have the right to say no to personal contact. However, natural and adoptive parents have the responsibility to tell the truth. Each one of us is a product of our genes and our environment. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

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IOWA: Commentary--Advocates of Opening Records Pursue an Anti-Adoption Agenda, December 3, 2007

DES MOINES REGISTER,

December 3, 2007

Advocates of opening records pursue an anti-adoption agenda

Susan Bowland and Cynthia Latcham • December 3, 2007

As an adult adoptee and an adoptive parent respectively, we are concerned about the Register's publication of yet another adoption "open-records" editorial without acknowledgment of the underlying anti-adoption agenda being inadvertently advanced.

Every year during November, which is National Adoption Month, search groups and open-records advocates such as Concerned United Birthparents, Bastard Nation and the American Adoption Congress solicit the sympathetic ear of the media to initiate stories of the alleged identity confusion that they claim is the legacy of adoption. These groups have been lobbying Congress and the state legislatures for more than 25 years. Their stated agenda includes opening previously confidential adoption records and furthering an end to adoption for all but extreme cases of abuse and neglect.

The campaign of these groups has been relatively unsuccessful with legislative bodies, with good reason. After hearing all the arguments through five years of drafting a model adoption code, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws rightly concluded that only a mutual consent registry, such as Iowa's, protects all parties. This means that when an adult adoptee and a birth parent both register, there can be a meeting.

The mutual consent registry is the only way to balance the difficult privacy questions that the states must answer such as: 1) Should the government open previously confidential adoption records? 2) If they are opened, how will the privacy rights once promised or implied be protected? 3) Given that some people desire to shed the confidentiality and some do not, how will the state balance the interests of both? One way to understand this balancing is to substitute "abortion decision" for "adoption decision" and imagine the outrage over opening those confidential records without consent.

Such mutual consent registries are a thorn in the sides of search activists in that they frustrate the desire of one party's unilateral access to search, contact or even pressure the other into a relationship they may not want. The term open records has the ring of progress, candor, lack of secrecy and other noble, forward-thinking values about it. But opening records without voluntary consent becomes an invasion of privacy, a violation of promises of confidentiality - an "outing," so to speak.

Media sensationalism has led many to conclude that all parties in adoption are searching. Yet statistics in states with registries tell the opposite story. A study out of the Annenberg School of Communications found that the media exaggerated by 18 times the number of actual "searchers."

The anti-adoption forces have enjoyed far greater success on the social/media front due to the unwillingness of reporters to dig beneath the surface and explore the agenda of these search advocacy groups. The one notable exception is Lucinda Franks in her New Yorker article around the time of the "Baby Jessica" case, when she exposed the role of these groups in the case. In addition, stories emphasizing grief, loss and pathology due to so-called identity confusion make far more interesting copy than those of content, secure adoptive families.

Search groups such as Bastard Nation promote the portrayal of adoption as a deceptive, hurtful and even pathological institution. The emphasis on adoption as setting in motion a lifetime of grief and loss has had a profound effect on adoptive placement in the United States. Today, fewer than 1 percent of young women experiencing problem pregnancies place for adoption. About half parent and half abort.

The persuasive emphasis on the centrality of search and reunion overemphasizes the loss, grief and emotional turmoil and underemphasizes the positive. Moreover, it promotes the agenda of a small, vocal, radical minority at the expense of our nation's children.

It also promotes poor public policy. Both the Safe Haven Acts and the Mutual Consent Registry (opposed by Bastard Nation, etc.) are good laws. They should be enhanced, not dismantled.

SUSAN BOWLAND, an adoptive parent, and CYNTHIA LATCHAM, an adult adoptee, are members of Adoption Advocates of Iowa.

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