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.)

NJ Bill Voted out of committee to full Assembly. At bleeping last.

The adoption-reform bill in New Jersey was voted out of the Assembly Human Services committee last night: Six Democrats voted to send the bill to the entire Assembly; four Republicans abstained from casting a vote. (WTF is wrong with all of them? Or is it just a matter of, this is a Dem bill, we don't want to vote for it or any human rights that Dems support?) But I digress.

The testimony ran on for hours, and the hearing lasted from just after 2 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. What I heard (had to leave at 6:30) was incredibly powerful, at least from our side of the fence. Longtime reform activist Pam Hasegawa pointed out--by quoting the actual law--that the legislation from the Forties does not indicate anywhere that it was meant to guarantee secrecy and anonymity from one's own child; an African American woman spoke powerfully about her need to know, despite that she found her first mother but has respected the woman's desire for no contact; another spoke of not being able to get a passport because amended birth certificates stamped more than a year after their birth prevent you from doing so since 9/11; others talked about the serious health risks of not knowing your actual, FIRST FAMILY medical history--your real medical history, that is, as your adoptive family's medical history has nothing to do with you and is meaningless to a doctor; another spoke of treatment options for herself and her children that are frequently determined by what runs in the family. Your biological family. One woman who did not learn she was adopted at 41 said that she realized she had been giving doctors false information all her life. I thought: and her "loving" but not real mother, her adoptive mother, let her do so. What is "loving" and "caring" about that? That woman put "her" daughter's life in danger for 41 years.

Even I can forget how tragic and stupid and deeply emotional it is sometimes to not have your birth certificate, the information about your biological, birth, original, natural, real first family. But it was all there yesterday in strong, irrefutable language. As I listened on the computer, I both cheered and got glassy-eyed. Our heroine, adoptee activist Elaine Penn, did speak, in clear, forceful language even though her first mother is someone...who's somewhat deranged. First-mother activist Judy Foster was great too, her voice breaking when she got caught up by the emotions of the moment. One adoptive mother, also a NJ legislator, spoke in favor of the bill. Hooray for her!

I had to leave when another adoptive mother was speaking against the bill in a cheerful, chirpy voice. Damn her, I thought, she's never been without her birth certificate, she's never wondered whom she is, who she was when she was born, whom her real parents are.                                      

I also heard an adoptee testify against the bill; I can not for the life of me understand why the woman just can't let it be. If she doesn't want her non-fake birth records, fine. But why deny the thousands who do? What is so fearful to her that she has to actively work to punish others who want to know the truth of their identities? She's like a house slave speaking out against the end of slavery because she might lose her home if all slaves are emancipated, and the Masta can't provide any longer. 

Some of the antis were clearly rattled by the emotional, powerful testimony, but still they droned on, talking about how changing the law will increase abortions, while we have the statistics to prove them wrong. Here's the summary from American Adoption Congress:

"The data reveals that if access has had any effect on adoptions and abortions, it has been to increase adoptions and decrease abortions."(For a state by state breakdown see here: Abortion and Adoption Data from States Who Have Enacted Access)

But still the anti-choice crowd (I hate Right to Life as their appellation, I'm right to life too, I'm against the death penalty) lie and repeat this falsehood as if it were written in the Bible. It must be because they have imprinted in their minds the defeated and weary women at the point they surrender their children, days or weeks after giving birth. Hell, I was obsessed that the birth of my daughter not be posted in The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle where I had been a reporter back in 1966; but I never wanted her not to know who I was. I always hoped for and planned for a reunion, no matter how. That was the saddest truth of relinquishment: that the damn surrender papers stipulated that I never be informed, no matter what happened to her, whether she was in need or not. And she was in need, desperate need, as regular readers know. Now tell me, dear legislators opposed to this bill, how in the hell this makes the old legislation in the "best interest of the child? It does not.

Archaic adoption laws such as those in New Jersey and Michigan and New York and 38 other states are in the supposed best interests of the affluent people who are the adopters, plain and simple. They were written by the adopting class, they were for the adopting class, and today they serve only those of the adopting class who are against open records for their children, no matter their age. As for the few women who hide from their children? The state has no such vested interest in protecting them; if that were the case, they would also "protect" putative fathers who do not want to be named. You have a baby; you owe that individual the right to know his or her identity, plain and simple. Your anonymity tramples the right of others. Your anonymity takes away that person's right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We need another court case to make its way to the Supremes; maybe the conservatives and libertarians on the current Supreme Court will see through the fallacy of sealed birth records, and how it applies law unequally to a whole class of people.

Back to New Jersey: The NJ Senate has passed the bill four times since 2004, the last in March. Yesterday was its first hearing in the Assembly. (Change of leadership, change of legislation.) Now the bill can at last move forward to the general Assembly for a vote.

I know this bill and all such bills that contain any restrictions--or give that handful of birth-comes-first mothers who are afraid of their children, afraid of contact, afraid of facing reality the opportunity to file a veto riles those who oppose any legislation that does not provide unfettered access to original birth certificates to all adopted people.

People, get real. This bill and the others like it pave the way for a shift in attitude in the mind of the adopters, the numskulls who apparently run the NJ ACLU, the legislators who will vote on these bills, the Catholic Church who typically oppose giving adoptees their original, unamended birth records. But once it becomes clear that no great harm occurs in the land, this cruel and unusual legislation will topple. Consider the Emancipation Proclamation. From Wikipedia:

"The Emancipation Proclamation was criticized at the time for freeing only the slaves over which the Union had no power. Although most slaves were not freed immediately, the Proclamation did free thousands of slaves the day it went into effect^[2] in parts of nine of the ten states to which it applied (Texas being the exception).^[3] In every Confederate state (except Tennessee and Texas), the Proclamation went into immediate effect in Union-occupied areas and at least 20,000 slaves^[2][3] were freed at once on January 1, 1863.

"Additionally, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the emancipation of nearly all four million slaves as the Union armies advanced, and committed the Union to ending slavery, which was a controversial decision even in the North. Hearing of the Proclamation, more slaves quickly escaped to Union lines as the Army units moved South. As the Union armies advanced through the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all (approximately 4 million, according to the 1860 census^[4]) were freed by July 1865.

Near the end of the war, abolitionists were concerned that while the Proclamation had freed most slaves as a war measure, it had not made slavery illegal. Several former slave states had already passed legislation prohibiting slavery; however, in a few states, slavery continued to be legal, and to exist, until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted."

Sometimes good work that upends old wrong ways takes time and happens in steps. --lorraine 
 _________________________
PS: To listen to the testimony, go to: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/MEDIA/OLS_MEDIA_PLAYER.HTM?wma=!{A}http://rmserver.njleg.state.nj.us/internet/2010/AHU/0614-0200PM-M0-1.wma!

PPS: I've posted one anonymous comment from those opposed; that's it. If the antis want to post here, they need to leave their real name and their url or email address. Then we will consider it.

PPPS: Both books above highly recommended: one is by photographer Jill Krementz How It Feels to Be Adopted and tells first-person stories of adolescent and teenage adoptees with pictures, great for young adoptees dealing with the issue; the second is a wonderful memoir of a birth/first mother, Margaret Moorman, Waiting to Forget: A Motherhood Lost and Found

Adoptee Rights: The Clock is Ticking in New Jersey

Although the New Jersey ICare asked that letters be sent yesterday, if you were too busy, please write and send a letter or a post card today. But time is running out. Corzine will soon leave office.  
This is the letter I sent yesterday to 

Assemblyman Joe Roberts
Speaker of the Assembly
Brooklawn Shopping Plaza
Rt. 130 South & Browning Road
Brooklawn, NJ 08030 
                  

Dear Speaker Roberts: 
I am writing to ask you to post the adoptees’ birthright bill (A-752) in the Assembly Human Services Committee and then released to the floor for a vote. Although I write from a neighboring state, I do so because sealed records have caused so much heartache and psychological stress—as well as physical—to so very many. 

I am a 67-year-old grandmother who relinquished a child for adoption in 1966. I was happily reunited with my daughter in 1981, with the blessing of her adoptive parents. For more than a quarter of a century we had a relationship that was sometimes up, sometimes down--but knowing where the other person was/who that person was made for a great sense of calm in both of our lives. My daughter had epilepsy and its attendant physical and emotional problems; she committed suicide in December of 2007. 

During my pregnancy I was misdiagnosed, and prescribed birth control pills for the first several months, with the obvious result of Vitamin B6 being leeched out of my body, a well-documented side effect of birth control pills. The amount of hormones in those early pills was up to ten times greater than today’s dosage. It is now suspected that a lack of B6 in the developing fetus leads to epilepsy, just as a lack of folic acid leads to spina bifida. 

When my daughter was six, she had her first grand mal seizure. Her physician contacted the adoption agency in hopes of obtaining updated medical history from me. Around this same time, I wrote to the agency myself and informed them of the birth control pills. Though I had not taken DES, its ill effects on the fetus and later the individual was much in the news at the time. The adoption agency did not even bother respond to her doctor’s letter. As for me, I was informed that she was fine and happy in her family. 

Yet years later, after my daughter and I were reunited, her adoptive parents and I jointly wrote to the agency, Northaven Terrace in Rochester, New York. The responses we received casually referred to the physician's earlier letter, sent a decade earlier. We will never know what might anything have changed if her physician, her adoptive parents, and I had been in contact, but surely her psychological stress—a trigger for seizures—could have been lessened for years. She was a girl who had to wear a hockey helmet to school because she fell down so frequently. She was a girl who needed all the love and reassurance she could get, wherever she could get it. Her parents unquestioningly understood this, and my husband and I became a part of their lives. 

Issues just such as this were considered by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare nearly three decades ago, when, after holding numerous hearings o the issue around the country, the agency included these words in a proposed Model Adoption Act in 1980:  

 “There can be no legally protected interest in keeping one’s identity secret from one’s biological offspring; parents and child are considered co-owners of the information regarding the event of birth….The birth parents’ interest in reputation is not alone deserving of constitutional protection.” 

While some provisions of the act were promulgated, the late Sen. John Tower of Texas, an adoptive father, led the opposition to this provision in the bill. He succeeded. He was on the wrong side of history. 

The time to correct this is long overdue. It is time for bold action.  Please release the adoptee’s birthright bill for a vote, and join other the states (Alabama, Alaska,  Oregon, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, Tennessee), all which have corrected legislation made in a different era that has become cruel and unusual punishment in this day. Kansas, in its wisdom, never sealed birth records from individuals adopted as children. 

People who were adopted as infants were never asked what was in their best interest, and women like myself were never given a choice regarding anonymity from our offspring. I did not seek it at the time; I did not ever. Confidentiality, then, was in effect forced upon me if I were to place my child for adoption, and at the time, I did not feel I had an option.

The time is long overdue to give adoptees the right that the rest of us take for granted, that is, the answer to the question: Who Am I? Identity is many things, but surely it begins with the knowledge of one’s true origins—the real names, the accurate date and place of birth, information that is contained on an original birth certificate. To say that it is inconsequential is to deny reality. One can not imagine what it is like to spend a lifetime wondering where he or she came from, and what is the story of one’s birth. Adopted individuals deserve to have the same rights as the rest of us--the right to one's own true history--and the state should not be in the business of protecting the very few birth mothers who seek anonymity from their children. You do not similarly protect fathers named in paternity suits. 

The bill that would give adopted individuals the same right as the rest of us, A-752, has been passed by the New Jersey Senate in a 31-7 vote and has the support of 50+ member of the Assembly. Gov. John Corzine has said he will sign the bill, but time is running out. 

It is your time to be on the right side of history. It is time to shepherd this bill to the floor for a vote. As Martin Luther King has said: Justice delayed is justice denied.

Sincerely, 

Lorraine Dusky