Adoptee (lawyer) argues for first (birth) mother's right to privacy

Lorraine

The amount of ignorance about adoptee rights can be downright staggering--even among adoptees themselves, but perhaps only among adoptees who have always had their birth certificates. At least it seemed that way to me this week.

I'm at a wake of a relative of my husband in New Jersey, and my husband's niece is also there. She is an attorney, and one of her friends who came is also an attorney has come by to pay his respects for her sake, and husband's niece knows that he is adopted and she thinks I ought to meet him. Though past experience has told me that is usually not a good idea because the most unlikely things can happen, she brings him over near the end of the evening and mentions that he's adopted and leaves. Okay, now what? But dumb me, I assumed that he had some knowledge of the NJ Adoptee Rights bill--he's an attorney and he's adopted, right?--and Gov. Christie's veto, and mention that.

He looks at me and I realize he doesn't have a clue what I am talking about.

CHRISTIE Vetoes Adoptee Rights in New Jersey and other legislative news

Lorraine

Deflated. That's how I felt when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's threw out the adoptee-rights bill (some 30 years in the making) with a massive, unconscionable, cave-to-the-closet statement on Thursday:

"The decision of any biological parent to seek adoptive parents for a child is an enormously complicated choice. The emotional struggle preceding any adoption is unlike any other step facing a parent, with ramifications for the mother, father and child that will endure throughout their lives."

OPEN RECORDS FOR ADOPTEE BILL PASSES IN NJ!

It's not over yet, but this afternoon New Jersey took one step closer to allowing people adopted as infants to obtain their original birth certificates, and with that the right to know their true identities.  We congratulate our friend Pam Hasegawa and Judy Foster and the others in New Jersey who have fought so hard and worked so long for passage of this bill--31 years.  We hope that the passage of this bill may lead to similar action in our neighboring state of New York. (See blog post of May 8.)