The Changing Face of Adoption

by Gail Jerson

According to research by Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and data from the Child Welfare League of America the number of adoptions from other countries had hovered around 20,000 per year for about a decade ending several years ago; it has been falling ever since and was around 12,000 last year. The number of domestic infant adoptions has been around 14,000 or so annually for a long time and remains there. The number of adoptions from foster care (i.e., also domestic) has been rising steadily and has been the biggest type of adoption throughout this period; last year, it was at about 60,000.

Foreign adoptions have been on the decline, especially from countries such as Guatemala, China and most recently, Ethiopia, which was the number two source country for children adopted by Americans, (2,513 Ethiopian children were adopted by Americans in 2010). The number of foreign children adopted by Americans fell by 13 percent last year, reaching the lowest level since 1995 due in large part to a virtual halt to adoptions from Guatemala because of corruption problems.
Ethiopia just implemented changes that could reduce the number of foreign adoptions by up to 90 percent. According to the State Department, Ethiopia's new policy calls for its Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs to process no more than five adoption cases per day — about 10 percent of the caseload it had been handling.
China has already tightened rules for adoption, barring people who are single, obese, older than 50 or who fail to meet certain benchmarks in financial, physical or psychological health, from adopting Chinese children, according to adoption agencies in the United States.
Guatemala has suspended the adoption process since 2008 in order to create a Central Authority to process adoptions, which will make Guatemala Hague Compliant.

As a result of the above decrease in foreign adoptions, and the availability of more babies in this country, domestic adoptions have increased. People are choosing open instead of closed adoptions, married couples are opting for open adoptions, and there are more open-adoption agencies. Many adoption agencies report that open adoption is being embraced by pregnant women who previously might have been reluctant to consider giving up a baby if it meant no chance of contact later in life. Also Christian social workers have been conducting outreach programs throughout the country and have been suggesting adoption over abortions, thus making more babies available.

Open Record states with contact preference laws such as Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire and Maine have had not problems since enacting legislation to open records. Delaware, Massachusetts and Tennessee also have opened record without incident. Kansas and Alaska never closed records. Illinois, the most recent state to open records, has had thousands of adoptees who have gotten their records already. All adoptees in Illinois will eventually be able to get their original birth certificate. New York must be the next state to give adoptees the right to know.

Searching helps first mothers heal

by Joyce Bahr

When they surrendered their babies, first mothers were never given a right to privacy. They were never informed that adoption is a loss, bringing with it postponed grief and mourning. Under current law, first mothers have no right to identifying information on the child they placed for adoption. But first mothers do have a right to be contacted by a searching adoptee and a right to heal. Searching for our lost children, being found by them, helps to heal an old wound,, and lessens severe grief so many thousands like me have experienced since relinquishment.

Some first mothers were empowered to search by the women’s movement of the 1970’s. Some were empowered by friends, adoptees, adoption agencies or the television media. Searching proved cathartic, relieving years of suppressed emotions surrounding birth and surrender. For example, many of us were finally able to address the anger issues we had struggled with for years. We could finally acknowledge our children after keeping unhealthy secrets for so many years. Although the words we were told at the time of surrender, “no longer think of this child as yours” and “forget this” were etched into our minds, we no longer believed them. We could also let go of another word drilled into our hearts, “disrupt.” “Do not disrupt the adoptive family.”

We have been liberated and healed by reunions. Whether or not a reunion is ultimately successful, through it a first mother is finally able to heal and move forward. Many of us are still angry because of the counseling we received at a time of personal crisis, counseling which later proved harmful and misinformed. Even today in 2010 birth mothers are being mistreated by outdated policies and attitudes.

Searching has helped many first mothers and adoptees heal. The New York State Adoption policy that no one should search is unhealthy and inhumane. The sealed records law violates the adoptee’s basic human right to know the facts of his birth, his birthright. It’s past time to give adoptees this foundational human right and to acknowledge the positive aspects of searching for both adoptees and first mothers. None of the old myths about birth mothers are true. In those states which have opened their records, the overwhelming majority of birth mothers have expressed their desire to have contact with their children. The secrecy surrounding adoption is a product of the twentieth century when the closed adoption system took root and spread. It has been shown that the records were sealed not to protect the birth mother or the adoptee but rather to protect the adopting parents from any interference from the birth mother. Secrecy also seemed to be necessitated by the mores of the times which saw illegitimacy as a terrible social stigma.

A recent film, “Mother and Child” directed by Rodrigo Garcia, touches upon the issues of a mother forced to surrender and her path toward empowerment and healing. The fictional first mother in the film needs the support of others in order to reach out and search. When will our state adoption policies support mothers who desperately need to search for the children they were forced to surrender decades ago? The damage done to both first mothers and adoptees by the secrets and lies of the closed adoption system should be recognized by the state. New York should acknowledge search and reunion as the only means of healing for those the system so terribly ill treated.

David Phelps letter to Speaker Silver

Dear Speaker Silver,

My name is David Phelps. I am a New York adoptee. I was adopted in Rochester in 1960. I was placed through the North Haven agency. I am writing to you today in support of A8410/S5269 , the New York Adoption Records Reform bills. I feel that the time has come, indeed is long past, for New York to open its adoption records.

The question of opening New York’s adoption records is an important one for a number of reasons. First and foremost, there is the matter of basic human dignity. All human beings have a birthright, a right to know their origins, the circumstances of their birth. Happily, this is the case in Western Europe, Australia and six U.S. States.

Second, one must realize that not having vital information about oneself is actually harmful in many ways. May I tell you about my adoptive brother Doug? Doug passed away this summer. He died of a heart attack at the age of 51. This was the second heart attack he had had, the first coming in his early forties. At the time of his first heart attack, his doctors of course asked him if he had a family history of heart disease. What could he say? He was adopted. He had no legal right to any family medical history. All he could say was “I don’t know.” In fact the doctors told him that he must have had a family history of heart problems because he wouldn’t have suffered an attack at that age without a genetic predisposition. Now imagine if Doug had known this from an early age. Don’t you think he would have taken precautions? Don’t you think that knowledge would have made a profound impact on his medical treatment and lifestyle choices? I firmly believe that Doug would still be alive today if he had had this vital knowledge. Did the sealed records system kill him? Is that too strong a word? It certainly was at the very least an unnecessary obstacle to his health and well being.

Doug never searched for his birth family, though he wanted to. The sealed records system that we both grew up with conditioned us to think that searching was a sign of maladjustment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Only in the last few years was he becoming aware of the great injustice New York has foisted upon an entire class of its own citizens. Imagine if the state decreed tomorrow that all newborn females or minorities were forbidden to know their original identities. It sounds ridiculous, yet this is exactly what New York has done to those born out of wedlock and placed for adoption within its borders. Why?

In 2005, I searched for and found my original family and identity. No one has been harmed by my doing so. I have wonderful new relationships with my birth siblings, though my birthparents have both passed. These are relationships I should have had for decades. I have missed the chance of knowing by birth parents because New York has diligently maintained its closed adoption system of secrets and lies. I am sure that if the records had been open I would have searched much earlier. Try to imagine for one moment being prevented by law from knowing your own flesh and blood, the very people from whom you sprang. For the non adopted, as one adoptee has said, it is like asking the sighted to imagine the darkness of the blind.

So the cause is just. History is on our side. Just this month the state of Western Australia issued a public apology to birth mothers and adoptees for the harsh practices of the past. Indeed, I believe the closed records system is a barbarism of the 20^th century which sadly still lingers on in some places in the 21^st. Please support A8410/S5269 .

Sincerely,

David Phelps

70 year old adoptee demands right to know!

Adult adoptee 70 unable to obtain original birth certificate

I am an adoptee born and adopted in New York State. I have no access to my original birth certificate. My original birth record is sealed by the State of New York. Adoptees should be entitled to their original birth certificate and family medical history like other citizens of New York State. Assembly bill A 8410 and Senate bill S 5269 when passed will allow "adult" adoptees at age 18 to obtain their original birth certificate and medical history.

In the 21^st Century medical genetics have an important role in patient care and preventative medicine. The U.S. Surgeon General's Family History Imitative recognized that family medical history can be vitally important in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions and illnesses that are genetically based. Adoptees, their children and grandchild are not able to utilize this initiative. N.Y.S. Dept. of Health Adoption and Medical Information Registry will provide, on request to adoptees, non-identifying information. The information I received from N.Y.S. Adoption Registry was scant: age and race of my parents and no medical history.

It is an inherent right of a person to know their birth history, nationality and family religion. Sixty-nine years ago my birth parents and adoptive parents agreed to my adoption. The State sealed all records at that time to protect me, "the child". Now in 2009 they refuse to open the records, they state the need to protect the biological mother. As a 69-year-old adult adoptee I do not need anyone to protect me nor does anyone need protection from me.

Most professions in the field of adoption agree that access to birth and or adoption information is to the benefit of adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents.

Joan Morgan, Vice-President, New York Statewide Adoption Reform's Unsealed Initiative

Adoptees should be able to get birth certificates

First published in print: Sunday, May 18, 2008 in the Albany Times Union

As a citizen of New Yorks state, I can serve in the armed forces, vote, drive, own property, get married and raise my own children, but I can not get my own birth certificate. The current law in New York state, which was enacted 73 years ago, denies adult adoptees this basic human right that every other citizen takes for granted.

Because of this archaic and discriminatory law, adult adoptees are legally denied their medical and psychiatric histories, as well as their identities and heritage. They are unable to pass on this information to their children and grandchildren who then also suffer from this lack of knowledge.

In states where adoption records and birth certificates are open, the data show that the vast majority of biological mothers want to know their adult children. And in cases where birth parents did not want contact, there were no instances of stalking. Adult adoptees are adults and they are not looking for new "mommies or daddies."

The proposed adoptee rights legislation strikes a balance between an adoptee's right to know and the confidentiality concerns some may have regarding the biological parents. To learn more about this issue, go to http://www.unsealedinitiative.org and http://www.adoptioninstitute.org.

Please contact your state senator urging support of bill S235 and your assemblyman of bill A2277.

CHERYL HORNING

From Greenwich New York, Cheryl Horning is the Albany area Coordinator for New York Statewide Adoption Reform's Unsealed Initiative

Adoptees deserve access to family health histories

By Adam Pertman

Originally published February 14, 2005 in the Baltimore Sun

THE U.S. SURGEON General, Richard H. Carmona, has embarked on an admirable quest. Citing the obvious fact that many diseases are inherited, he has created a national campaign that encourages all American families to learn more about their health histories.

To make this important task easier to accomplish, Dr. Carmona's office has created software that all of us can download at no cost to help track medical information about our parents, grandparents and other relatives. And to underscore how serious the surgeon general is about getting us all to act, he designated an annual National Family Health History Day to coincide with Thanksgiving.

For tens of millions of people, though, this well-intentioned initiative is nothing more than a mirage, an enticing glimpse of water in the desert that they know they cannot reach. Because all of the Americans to whom Dr. Carmona refers do not include the vast majority of those who were adopted, rather than born, into their families.

Adoption in the United States has made enormous strides in the last few decades, moving out of the shadows and becoming an increasingly conventional, normal way of forming a family; that's especially good news for children who need permanent, loving homes.

But progress has been uneven. One way in which adoption has not yet entered the 21st century is the anachronistic reality that most states still prohibit adoptees, even after they reach adulthood, from obtaining their birth certificates or other documents that would enable them to follow the surgeon general's sage advice.

Proponents of keeping these records sealed assert it's a necessary measure to maintain the anonymity that was guaranteed to birth mothers at the time their children were placed for adoption. That argument, unfortunately, is based on cultural myths and faulty stereotypes.

In fact, nearly every shred of research and experience over the last 20 years shows that none of these women was given legal assurance of anonymity; at least 90 percent of them want some level of contact with or knowledge about the lives they created, regardless of what they might or might not have been told verbally; and adopted people are not stalkers or ingrates but simply human beings who want the most basic information about themselves.

The good news is that we have learned an enormous amount about adoption and its participants as the institution has steadily moved into the mainstream, and many positive changes are occurring as a result. Among them are that parents adopting domestically and an increasing number who adopt from abroad routinely receive medical information about their sons and daughters at the outset and - because relationships with birth families are becoming increasingly commonplace - on an ongoing basis as their children grow up. Indeed, providing such information is now a widely accepted "best practice" for adoption practitioners.

Some states have changed their laws to permit adopted people, once they become adults, to gain access to their records. And there has been no hint, anywhere, that the recipients of those records are violating their birth mothers' privacy or otherwise disrupting their lives.

It is a wonderful coincidence that Dr. Carmona's potentially life-saving effort coincides with the recent unsealing of birth records in New Hampshire, the latest state to take such action. It's a propitious time for the surgeon general to use his influence to help break down the legal barriers across our country that for far too long have relegated adoptees to a special, less-privileged class of citizenship.

There's good reason to think he will do it. After all, he did say his medical advice applied to all Americans.

Adam Pertman is the executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and the author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America.

Adoptee Melinda Warshaw New York Adoptee Rights Activist Speaks

BABY BOOMERS JOIN THE FIGHT TO UNSEAL ADOPTION RECORDS

By Melinda Warshaw

Many New York adopted persons from the baby boom generation are at work contacting state legislators for passage of a bill that will give them the right to a copy of their original birth certificate and updated medical histories. The old sealed record law from the 1930's creates an obstacle for an adopted person's knowledge of his or her own true heritage and birth. Adoptees and biological parents have been searching since the 1970's and have resorted to paying searchers thousands of dollars, a process that could be eliminated with passage of the Bill of Adoptees Rights sponsored by Senator William Larkin from New Windsor and Assembly Member David Koon from Rochester.

This adoptee rights legislation would also give birth or natural parents the option of filing a contact preference; New Hampshire, Oregon and Alabama currently have similar laws. The birth or natural parent could choose contact, no contact or contract through an intermediary. The adopted person would get a copy of his birth certificate regardless of the contact preference. If the birth or natural parent chose no contact the adoptee would know that contact by them was not welcomed. The norm in today's society is for birth or natural parents to welcome contact, and data proving this has been published on Department of Vital statistics web sites in Oregon and New Hampshire. Kansas and Alaska never closed their records and other states have recently opened records because laws never existed in any states assuring confidentiality to birth or natural parents. Advocates believe that the right of the adoptee trumps the right of the birth or natural parent because the adoptee was not privy to the surrender paper signed by the birth or natural parent.

I was born and adopted in 1947, a time when only married heterosexual couples could legally adopt. I began thinking about my natural mother while in high school but did not speak openly about my adoption until I was twenty-one. In 1980, at the age of thirty-three,I found her and was eager to establish a relationship. I wanted to know my mother, but she was ridden with shame and feared what friends, family and community would think. After several conversations with her and hearing her cold-hearted words of rejection, I ended my attempts to truly be her daughter. My mother was of a time when sex outside of marriage was a cardinal sin and guilt weighed heavily upon women's souls. Unmarried women had no other option than to give the baby up for adoption as children born out-of-wedlock had no voice and no say in the matter. Her rejection was earth-shattering for me and my grief unbearable.

It wasn't until the mid 90's that I realized I was not alone. I discovered audio tapes on adoptees issues available from the Council for Equal Rights in Adoption and began reading books such as Journey of the Adopted Self by Betty Jean Lifton and Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier.Recently after finding a web site, www.TheAdoptionShow.com, covering a myriad of adoption issues, I began to fight for change. The web site, www.UnsealedInitiative.org, educated me on the Bill of Adoptee Rights now stalled in the Assembly Codes Committee. the Codes Committee is aslo known as Hell, Where Bills go to Die!

Adoptee Hal Aigner, San Francisco journalist, editor and author of Adoption in America,Coming of Age and Faint Trials, was luckier that I was and found his natural mother living in a nursing home six blocks from his apartment. It was 1980 and his elderly mother had no problems with secrecy or confidentiality from her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Her first words to Hal were, "I always knew that any son of mine would oneday come lookingfor me." Hal found a loving mother, and his important message to readers is that love was his foremost motivation to search.

Legislation to unseal records would have adoptees pay a small fee to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate. Currently, adoptees in New York have no other recourse than to hire a searcher. One of them, who I'll call Patricia, was born in Rockland State Psychiatric Hospital in 1950. She was recently informed by a social worker at the New York City agency Louise Wise Services that her mother had been a paranoid schizophrenic.

Patricia was among many children taken from area mental institutions and placed for adoption under the premise that they would have a clean slate, that environment would outweigh genetics. Patricia gave birth to a daughter who has schizophrenia. Not long ago, Louise Wise Agency closed after two lawsuits stemming from their failure to inform adoptive parents of the natural parents' mental illness. Patricia is aware that a searcher may not be able to find her name at birth and learn her true identity, therefore she too is joining the effort to unseal adoption records in New York.

Thousands of adoptees like myself and Patricia will file for a copy of our birth certificate when records are open. We are asking New York State legislators to move bill A2277 to the assembly floor for a vote and for bill S235 to be voted on in Senate Health Committee.Our issue is one which has not been listened to. I insist the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and all legislators open their ears and listen, because our inalienable rights are being denied!