Open Adoption Isn't

Please read Vanessa's story at FirstMotherForum.com. "Open" adoption is rarely enforceable by anyone but the adopted parents, who can hightail it with the unknowing adoptee whenever they want. And do.

Adoption Voyeurism?

This is a follow-up to my recent blog about conditional legislation, in which I wrote:

The fact that so many outsiders want to "help" us is voyeuristic, don't you think?

I got to thinking about that. How much of the desire to "help" adoptees and birth relatives is some sick form of adoption voyeurism?

Let's face it, people love hearing stories about adoption. Betty Jean Lifton talks of the allure of mythic adoptees like Moses and Oedipus. I think of modern-day equivalents like Harry Potter. Everybody sobs when Harry looks in the Mirror of Erised ("desire") and sees only his parents, yet in the next breath those same people decry adult adoptees' right to know. Our society can't get enough of adoption because it is so traumatic, so life-changing and above all... so darn entertaining! Not too fun to live, though. If you were to ask Harry if he'd trade all his mighty wizard powers for the chance to be raised by his parents, the answer is obvious. Not so for real-life adoptees.

Witness celebrity adoptions; you can't go anywhere without hearing about them. I have to wonder if some people hoard children instead of animals. I'm sure many adoptive families are sick of being asked where they "got" their children and pressed for the intimate details of their infertility. On the flip side we have the same phenomenon when adult adoptees and birth mothers seek information. We're supposed to accept without question the idea that we require intermediaries, assistants, therapists, counselors to "facilitate" contact with each other--and that this method is the correct, indeed only, method of granting pseudo-access to records.

As an adoptee who's been through the process, it seems to me that having to expose your inner soul to a third party in order to gain information about yourself is like having to get undressed in front of a total stranger. It's a violation, and what does that stranger want to see for, anyway? Why is there such a teeming interest in "helping" us? What is actually gained by having so many people looking over adoptee and birth mom shoulders, except the titillation of strangers?

Many of us are seeking information, not relationships. I suppose snapshots of an adult adoptee hugging her original birth certificate isn't entertaining enough, never mind it might be more satisfying to the adoptee. (I sure as hell enjoyed this picture from Maine a few months ago.) But a tearful airport reunion between adoptee and birth mother, now that's material good enough for a whole slew of reality TV shows. We get offers from everyone: social workers, state legislators, neighbors, friends, random passers-by... everybody seems to know better than we do, so much so that mandatory intermediaries have been written into our laws.

I'm sure some adoption professionals are the soul of discretion and genuinely believe they are assisting the adoption community. I also know from personal experience that some make mistakes. And we all know in any population there will be the gimmes, the people who are only in it for themselves. How ironic that post-adoption programs rally around the battle cry of "confidentiality!" while simultaneously peering in on private relationships.

People are quick to judge adoptees and birth mothers, and it's made worse by the fact that some of us, myself included, feel compelled to share our private stories publicly because it's the only way to help others like ourselves. Most of us do so, not to be in the spotlight, but because if we don't others will tell our stories to their own ends. And I for one am tired of people claiming to speak for me.

It's time to allow adoptees and their families the dignity of managing their relationships without a bunch of Peeping Tom do-gooders peering through the windows.

The Plutocracy: Are Illinois Adoptees Lower Than A Chunk Of Rock?

Illinois lawmakers always seem too busy to listen to the need for equality in adoption records access. Of all the letters I have sent I can count the number of replies, including autoresponders, on one hand. Yet our Senate has time to tend to poor Pluto's demotion from planetary status.

I'm all for supporting a fellow bastard, be it person or planet, but this says to me that my legislators care more about some frozen chunk of rock's rights than mine. To say I am disgusted is an understatement. If they can make time for Pluto with everything (bleeping golden!) going on in our state government, they better make time to listen to ALL voices of adoption, not just those who happen to be well-connected.

Word on the street is that it's open season on Illinois adoption records access. Several bills have been filed including some from Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, the state's go-to person on adoption and also the creator of Illinois' conditional "leave 'em behind" legislation. If things go the way they did last year with the odious HB 4623, we won't find out what's truly in these bills until the chance for public comment is over. In fact, the Illinois House's Adoption Reform Committee--the people who flip the coin on Illinois adoptees--has already evaluated several records-related bills. Go over to www.ilga.gov and search for "adoption". What the committee approves, the rest of the legislature often follows, because the only voices they (choose to) hear are those of "professionals" who claim to speak for every single adoptee and birth relative in creation.

Consider this advance testimony from an Illinois citizen left behind. I call upon our lawmakers to restore the right of adult adoptees to access their original birth certificates without restriction or third-party interference. I want to go to the courthouse and plunk down my $15 like anybody else, and I want each and every one of my fellow adult adoptees to be able to do the same.

If you agree, post your comments here and write our lawmakers to let them know we declare NO COMPROMISE on the civil rights of Illinois adoptees. And you might want to add that it'd be nice if they gave us as least as much consideration as Pluto.

Letter To California: No Compromise On Adoptee Rights

Dear Assemblywoman Fiona Ma and other members of the California State Assembly,

I write to you concerning adoption records access in California. Bills are being considered that offer only conditional access to records. I urge you to enact laws that provide equal access to adoption records for all adult Californians.

Fellow adoptees from California have asked me to share my story with you. I am one of the tiny minority of adoptees left behind when Illinois and Ohio enacted laws similar to the conditional legislation you are considering. I am one of Ohio's "sandwich" adoptees: my birthday falls into the dates arbitrarily chosen by the state as having little to no access to records. To make matters worse I was born in another state (Illinois), so both states toss me to the other like refuse neither wants. I am also one of the have-nots; my birth mothers has filed the denial of contact, which under current Illinois law denies me access to my original birth certificate.

Conditional legislation creates classes of adoptees based solely upon arbitrary dates and parameters. On paper it may seem fair that the majority receive their information at the expense of a tiny minority. In reality that tiny number represents real people like myself, whose lives are devastated as we wonder what we have done to deserve being left behind.

Conditional legislation denies the voices of birth mothers as well. When you keep dividing a number by half you will never get to zero. You will end up dividing by half for infinity. The analogy in adoption is conditional legislation that takes up dozens of pages instead of one straightforward sentence. Do you want to legislate for each and every special case? Because there are no standard adoptions, no rules, just one great big hodgepodge of interstate and international adoptions. Since we cannot legislate for every single case, conditional legislation disregards those birth mothers who, like some adoptees, are locked out of the process.

There is only one way to treat all participants in all adoptions the same and that is to equalize access by restoring the right to access one's original birth certificate in an unrestricted manner.

For more information I encourage you to read the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute's report on records access, the Bastard Nation position paper on conditional legislation, my blog concerning my experiences, and the voices of your own California citizens.

Thank you for your time, and consideration of this matter.

Triona Guidry
Author, 73adoptee.blogspot.com

Compromise Legislation: Why Some Adoptees And Not Others?

Why is it we are seeing such a rash lately of people willing to compromise on adoption records access?

First, let me direct you to the primer: Bastard Nation's position paper on conditional access legislation. Read it. Love it. Hug it to your pillow. I've written about conditional legislation on this blog before, and it's like spitting into the hailstorm of adoption reform.

We've got the California situation, which I don't know much about except to say that if it's got BB Church out of retirement it must be important. I would also like to send a big shout-out to CalOpen for their declaration of no compromise. We have Indiana legislators disdaining adoptee rights, the National Cashgrabbers For Adoption spewing bile, and it seems like a lot of us are wondering the same thing: Why are some adoptees worthy and not others? Baby Love Child started thinking about Disney's Stitch and I started thinking about Stargate Command's motto: We never leave our people behind.

Not when we're tired. Not when we're ordered to. Not when our people turn out to be aliens hypnotizing us to think they're part of our team. Not even when we think our teammates are dead or Ascended or replicated into robots. We don't leave them behind. Ever.

Like Baby Love Child I am one of Ohio's "sandwich" adoptees: my birthday falls into the dates arbitrarily chosen by the state as having little to no access to records. To make matters worse I was born in another state (Illinois), so both states toss me to the other like refuse neither wants. I am also one of the have-nots; my birth mothers has filed the denial of contact, which under current Illinois law denies me access to my original birth certificate. But I do know an Illinois-born adoptee who, unlike me, has succeeded in getting her information. She's Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, the person who created the registry and mandatory intermediary programs. At the moment she's a little busy reaching for a promotion: now-Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel's congressional seat. Adoption has been a stepping stone to her success. How can an adoptee sleep at night knowing he or she has information at the cost of fellow adoptees' chance at the same?

After a few wakeful nights (hence not much blogging), I came up with a theory. Maybe even bastards need to bastardize someone.

Isn't that what conditional legislation does? Pits adoptees against one another, turns us (again!) into guinea pigs racing on the experimental wheel of adoption. The facts of our origins are dangled like tasty tidbits if we only sell out our fellow lab rats. I was under this spell when I thought getting the Illinois CI program to accept interstate adoptees was actually helping my fellow adoptees. Now I know what it's like to be left behind. Every society needs its lepers, its outcasts. Maybe bastardizing fellow bastards makes some adoptees feel good about themselves. It reaffirms their status as Good Adoptees, practiced players of the Adoption Game, in contrast to their Bad Adoptee counterparts, the ungrateful question-askers. I see a similar trend with our mothers. Good Birth Mothers make no waves. Bad ones dare think about their surrendered offspring or (egads!) search for them, and the REALLY bad ones have the audacity to voice their opinions on adoption themselves rather than letting people like the NCFA do it for them.

The same flawed logic used by secretkeepers to attack adoption reformers is also used by compromisers against those who won't leave their teammates behind:

• We fail to understand the political climate of [insert state].
  Actually we understand it fine. What works in Maine and Oregon can work elsewhere. There is no reason to settle for less, unless the primary objective is to make money off post-adoption services or otherwise support the highly corrupt and financially flailing adoption industry. Is that the real reason some people are okay with conditional access? If adult adoptees were treated equally, we would pay our small sum to the secretary of state like everyone else instead of pouring hundreds and thousands in the coffers of intermediaries and attorneys.
  
• We don't understand that small steps have to be taken.
  To quote the Fourth Doctor, a little patience goes a long way; too much patience goes absolutely nowhere. Or if you prefer: When you keep dividing a number by half you will never get to zero. You will end up dividing by half for infinity. The analogy in adoption is conditional legislation that takes up dozens of pages instead of one straightforward sentence. Do you want to legislate for each and every special case? Because there are no standard adoptions, no rules, just one great big hodgepodge of interstate and international adoptions. Keep trying if you want, Sisyphus, but it's pointless. There is only one way to treat all participants in all adoptions the same and that is to equalize access.
  
• Our birth mothers want privacy.
  How many times do we have to say it? There was NEVER any written guarantee of birth mother privacy. As the EBD said in For The Records:
  

  There has been scant evidence that birthmothers were explicitly promised anonymity from the children they relinquished for adoption. Relinquishment documents provided to courts that have heard challenges to states’ new “open records” laws do not contain any such promises. To the extent that adoption professionals might have verbally made such statements, courts have found that they were contrary to state law and cannot be considered legally binding.

  No one has EVER been able to find documented proof of this so-called promise. The EBD couldn't find it. The NCFA can't find it, because if they had you know they would be trotting it out at every opportunity. Yet people talk about "birth mother privacy" as if it's chiseled in stone. It's the adoptive families and adoption agencies who want privacy. Our birth moms were treated like dirt and told if they breathed a word about the deplorable treatment they received, God would smite them down in their shameful unwed shoes.
  
  We are all adults and perfectly capable of discussing matters between ourselves without a bunch of therapists, lawyers and politicians peeping over our shoulders. To be honest it really isn't anyone's business unless they are directly involved, adoptee or family. The fact that so many outsiders want to "help" us is voyeuristic, don't you think?
  
• We're selfish.
  This is bastardizing bastards at its core: You Are Not Worthy. Why is it selfish to want the same thing everyone else has: unrestricted access to one's unaltered birth certificate? Why is it selfish to stand up for oneself and others? That seems to be especially true when you're adopted, and doubly so when you're one of the denied. The usual reaction people have when they find out my birth mother requested no contact is, "Then why are you still searching?" Um, because I still have no answers? Because I'm still treated like a second-class citizen of the state in which I was born? Because my amended birth certificate is a bald-faced lie? My right to my information is completely separate and apart from any relationship my mother and I may or may not choose to pursue. But apparently once the state tells me she said "no" (I have only their word for it) I am supposed to crawl back to my bastard lair or become the penultimate pariah in our adoption-happy society. Even the lowliest SG teams are worthy of rescue by the great SG-1; we don't leave our people behind just because they're not bigwigs or pals with General Hammond's favorite golfing buddy. That's how adoption records access currently works (sadly, it's also how adoption works).
  
• We're playing the "victim card."
  A corollary to the Selfish Theorem. Adoptees had no say in the matters that shaped their lives. This is a fact, not a whine for sympathy. There really are victims of adoption, anyone who thinks otherwise has blinders on. In fact I would submit that we are all victims of adoption in one way or another, those of us involved and society as a whole.
  
• We need therapy.
  Corollary #2. This is a convenient way to dismiss the subject, push it under the rug, hand recalcitrant adoptees off to highly paid specialists and wash one's hands of the entire matter. It does not address an adult adoptee's right to access his or her original birth certificate.

If you are an adoptee who has original birth certificate access, find out what laws in your state allow you to do so. Do those laws deny the rights of your fellow adoptees? How does that make you feel? And if you support conditional legislation, either deliberately or because you haven't really thought about it, ask yourself why. Why is it okay for some adoptees to have access and not others? What makes a person born on this date better than someone born on that one? Why are adoptees in one state more deserving than those in another?

Are you willing to leave people behind? What if you turn out to be one of them?