When adoptees' Right to Know becomes a philosophical debate, adoptees lose

Diane Rehm

Birth mother privacy has been in the news of late, beginning with a Diane Rehm on NPR show that ostensibly was about DNA analysis that leads to connecting adopted people to their families. And that show came after a New York Times front page story about DNA analysis two days earlier. Sometimes it is third cousins who can connect, because they have also had their DNA decoded, but third cousins lead to second cousins and they lead to first...and a body might be able to connect the dots back to one's original mother.

Holy Cow! Uncles are shocked, children faint, husbands leave! Horrors! goes the collective gasp from the people who see all rights as equal competing against other rights. (One wonders what they would have done during the era of slavery, but never mind.) Competing-but-equal rights regarding human identity was the opinion of the self-styled expert, Kimberly Leighton, there to discuss adopted people's right to search-and-connect after DNA matches. Leighton says near the end of the show that she is an adoptee who searched and found, something I missed on first reading of the transcript.