LilMtnCbn
06-15-2004, 05:22 AM
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpdus153850833jun15,0,2391454.story
?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Give adoptees the rights to their roots
BY LORRAINE DUSKY
Lorraine Dusky is the author of "Birthmark," a memoir about relinquishing a
daughter for adoption.
June 15, 2004
Letting adult adoptees obtain a copy of their original, unamended birth
certificates would seem to be a slam-dunk idea whose time has come, but
unfortunately that is not the case in New York.
Here adults-regardless of their age-who were adopted as infants are denied
their original birth certificates, unless they go to court and show "good
cause." Even then they might be turned down, as was a 65-year-old woman last
year in Nassau County who was looking for a medical history for both her and
her grandson. You can't find such a blatant usurpation of civil rights unless
you go back to slavery.
Although a bill has been moldering in the glue that passes for a state
Legislature in Albany for decades, getting the "Adoptees Bill of Rights" out of
the Judiciary Committee, where it's parked, is proving impossible. Chairwoman
Helene Weinstein (D-Brooklyn) opposes it, and she single-handedly has the power
to keep it under lock and key, just like the birth certificates of people
adopted more than 60 years ago.
As this session winds down, Assemb. Scott Stringer (D-Manhattan), whose name is
on the bill, is maneuvering to force the committee to consider it, but whether
he will succeed is far from certain. I'm not holding my breath. The reason for
keeping the records sealed always turns on the specter of the woman in the
closet, whose life will be "ruined" if she's outed. What if she never told her
husband? Or her kids?
But the real reason for the sealed records is so adoptive parents never have to
deal with the birth mothers-because most are desperate for a reunion with their
children someday. New York's records were sealed during the '30s at the urging
of Gov. Herbert Lehman, an adoptive father.
Even if secrecy was assumed, birth mothers were never promised perpetual
anonymity by the state.
How do I know? I write as a birth mother-now grandmother-who relinquished her
daughter in 1966 in Rochester. If you knew me then, you would assume I
anxiously feared ever being "found" and probably desired nothing so much as
protection from the state today. At the time I gave birth, I was young and felt
unable to care for my daughter, and I was so ashamed that I did not even tell
my family in Michigan.
But times change, and people change with them, and the world and I are far
different today. Yet the opposition to unsealing the records for adult adoptees
is fierce, fueled by buckets of money that adoption attorneys and agencies make
from the business of adoption.
Though it's a dirty little secret, they can charge more today when the adoption
is "sealed," i.e., when there is no easy way for the adoptees ever to trace
their roots, than when the adoption is "open" and all parties know each other
all along. They will do anything to keep their business plan intact. Even lie.
They make claims-which they know are false, because the data is in their own
records-that abortion rates will rise if states give adult adoptees their
original birth certificates.
What they want legislators to believe is that young women today will abort
rather than face the prospect of meeting their children decades later. That's a
lot of hooey, as anybody who lives in the real world immediately grasps. Few of
these young women spend six months in hiding today. They live at home. They go
to school and have jobs. The neighbors and relatives know. The birth is no
"secret."
Furthermore, the data proves the opposite of their lies: In Oregon, which has
had open records since 2000, abortions per capita have declined slightly since
then. In Alaska and Kansas, two states that have always had open records, both
states have substantially lower abortion rates than the country as a whole.
Compare Kansas to the four states immediately surrounding it, and you find a
lower abortion rate, and a higher per capita adoption rate.
As for the women like myself, now in their forties, fifties and sixties, all
the research to date shows that the overwhelming majority welcome a reunion
with the children we lost to adoption.
We sometimes initiate searches on our own, as I did. My daughter and I-and her
adoptive parents (God bless 'em)-were reunited in 1981. No more secrets.
New Hampshire passed an open-records bill with a huge margin (223-103) in its
assembly a few weeks ago. New Jersey last week just moved its open records bill
out of the state Senate committee where it had been parked for 24 years.
New York is past overdue to join the list where all individuals can know the
truth of their origins, not just those of us who were not adopted. I'm thankful
I'm not waiting for the Legislature to act, but a 65-year-old woman in Nassau
County is.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Give adoptees the rights to their roots
BY LORRAINE DUSKY
Lorraine Dusky is the author of "Birthmark," a memoir about relinquishing a
daughter for adoption.
June 15, 2004
Letting adult adoptees obtain a copy of their original, unamended birth
certificates would seem to be a slam-dunk idea whose time has come, but
unfortunately that is not the case in New York.
Here adults-regardless of their age-who were adopted as infants are denied
their original birth certificates, unless they go to court and show "good
cause." Even then they might be turned down, as was a 65-year-old woman last
year in Nassau County who was looking for a medical history for both her and
her grandson. You can't find such a blatant usurpation of civil rights unless
you go back to slavery.
Although a bill has been moldering in the glue that passes for a state
Legislature in Albany for decades, getting the "Adoptees Bill of Rights" out of
the Judiciary Committee, where it's parked, is proving impossible. Chairwoman
Helene Weinstein (D-Brooklyn) opposes it, and she single-handedly has the power
to keep it under lock and key, just like the birth certificates of people
adopted more than 60 years ago.
As this session winds down, Assemb. Scott Stringer (D-Manhattan), whose name is
on the bill, is maneuvering to force the committee to consider it, but whether
he will succeed is far from certain. I'm not holding my breath. The reason for
keeping the records sealed always turns on the specter of the woman in the
closet, whose life will be "ruined" if she's outed. What if she never told her
husband? Or her kids?
But the real reason for the sealed records is so adoptive parents never have to
deal with the birth mothers-because most are desperate for a reunion with their
children someday. New York's records were sealed during the '30s at the urging
of Gov. Herbert Lehman, an adoptive father.
Even if secrecy was assumed, birth mothers were never promised perpetual
anonymity by the state.
How do I know? I write as a birth mother-now grandmother-who relinquished her
daughter in 1966 in Rochester. If you knew me then, you would assume I
anxiously feared ever being "found" and probably desired nothing so much as
protection from the state today. At the time I gave birth, I was young and felt
unable to care for my daughter, and I was so ashamed that I did not even tell
my family in Michigan.
But times change, and people change with them, and the world and I are far
different today. Yet the opposition to unsealing the records for adult adoptees
is fierce, fueled by buckets of money that adoption attorneys and agencies make
from the business of adoption.
Though it's a dirty little secret, they can charge more today when the adoption
is "sealed," i.e., when there is no easy way for the adoptees ever to trace
their roots, than when the adoption is "open" and all parties know each other
all along. They will do anything to keep their business plan intact. Even lie.
They make claims-which they know are false, because the data is in their own
records-that abortion rates will rise if states give adult adoptees their
original birth certificates.
What they want legislators to believe is that young women today will abort
rather than face the prospect of meeting their children decades later. That's a
lot of hooey, as anybody who lives in the real world immediately grasps. Few of
these young women spend six months in hiding today. They live at home. They go
to school and have jobs. The neighbors and relatives know. The birth is no
"secret."
Furthermore, the data proves the opposite of their lies: In Oregon, which has
had open records since 2000, abortions per capita have declined slightly since
then. In Alaska and Kansas, two states that have always had open records, both
states have substantially lower abortion rates than the country as a whole.
Compare Kansas to the four states immediately surrounding it, and you find a
lower abortion rate, and a higher per capita adoption rate.
As for the women like myself, now in their forties, fifties and sixties, all
the research to date shows that the overwhelming majority welcome a reunion
with the children we lost to adoption.
We sometimes initiate searches on our own, as I did. My daughter and I-and her
adoptive parents (God bless 'em)-were reunited in 1981. No more secrets.
New Hampshire passed an open-records bill with a huge margin (223-103) in its
assembly a few weeks ago. New Jersey last week just moved its open records bill
out of the state Senate committee where it had been parked for 24 years.
New York is past overdue to join the list where all individuals can know the
truth of their origins, not just those of us who were not adopted. I'm thankful
I'm not waiting for the Legislature to act, but a 65-year-old woman in Nassau
County is.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
