The President of the American Adoption Congress answers Examiner questions during Adoption Awareness Month. This is the third of four parts.
In the friction between expectation-of-privacy by birthparents and right-to-original-birth-
Adoptees never agreed to the sealing of their birth certificates, and no one had the right to forbid them access to the key document that is available to all other citizens. The AAC does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate, because they relinquished all parental rights, including the right to control the birth certificate access. The appropriate balance is the one enacted in Oregon, New Hampshire, and Maine - the birthparent can file a contact preference form, to indicate a willingness for contact. Our data indicates that 1 in 2000 birthparents file a non contact preference. At the minimum, birthparents should provide an updated medical history.
Is there any room for compromise on the issue of open records?
This is a hotly debated issue within the reform community. There are some who say that all adoptees deserve access at the same time, and others that support an incremental change. The AAC believes that the decision to compromise must be made at the state level, depending on the assessment of local advocacy groups.
Next: adoption reform and 2010 events
Related article: Best Practices of adoption agencies
Related interviews:
Mary Robinson, CEO/President of the National Council for Adoption
Patricia Cimino, 20-year case worker in open adoption
Comments
It sounds like the system is changing. I like the policies of birth parents being able to give their preference of whether or not they would like to be contacted. It seems to balance the rights between the adopted child having access to his or her birth certificate and the birth parents' needs for privacy.
What a different world it would be if the secrecy around adoption were lifted! Watching this issue with great interest, as changes to adoption laws have recently been proposed here in Quebec. This is a jurisdiction where adult adoptees have faced significant barriers to locating important medical information, and many never have the chance to be reunited with biological family. Sadly, it would seem that here it is now the adoptive parents who seek closed adoption and restrictions on contact. Hopefully legislation will be in the best interests of the children.
Hello, Kyla.
That is my hope, too. That both sets of parents can resolve their fears and open records for adoptees.
Unfortunately, Ms. McQuade' statements contradict each other.
While the AAC in theory "does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate.” in practice it supports and promotes legislation, inside and outside its organization, that includes restrictions such as disclosure vetoes (DV) white-outs, and prospective measures that leave large groups of people behind.
The AAC opposed Bastard Nation's successful ballot initiative in Oregon saying we would turn the clock back 20 years. Yet in 20 years they had been in operation at that time, they had not gotten passed one single unrestricted access bill, though they’d gotten discriminatory restricted bills in place.
Compromise on access remains the strategy of choice, ease, and frustration. Once compromised law is in place it is virtually if not literally impossible to come back and fix it, no matter what the AAC or other reformists claim.
Not one state—ever-- has fixed any compromised l
I'm having more difficulty with the question, which pre-supposes the existence of an expectation of privacy in the part of birthparents, than with the response. It's past time to put that horse to pasture.
Leaving the issue to local advocacy groups sounds like a recipe for more of the same old same old to me: ineffectual efforts at compromise which result in laws parsing rights by date of birth, authorizing disclosure or contact vetoes or, in one state, criminalizing contact. Meanwhile, adoptees age and die, waiting for the rest of us to do no more than grant them the same rights the rest of us always have had.
There is no such thing as privacy and the "system" isn't changing because there are too many people still profiting off of adoption and sealed records. All humans need to know who they are biologically related to. I'm an adoptee and at age 37 I discovered I work with a blood relative. I also discovered my kids attend the same school district as nearly 12 biological relatives...now where does secrecy superscede the prevention of incest?
I frankly don't understand the reasoning behind compromise legislation based on local assessment. Either a person has a basic human right to knowledge of their own heritage, or they do not. Since they do have such a right, splitting adoptees into the cans and the cannots is nothing less than discrimination. Instead of caving in to the opposition, why doesn't the AAC promote the truth?
>Access to adoption records does not increase abortion rates.
>Most parents who relinquished want to know what happened to their children and welcome contact.
>Records are NOT sealed upon relinquishment, they are sealed upon adoption.
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