Megan's story: An adoptee fills in the pieces

Megan and Jane at the old Courthouse in Bloomington, Ill 2018

For adoptees in closed adoptions like my daughter Megan, life is a puzzle. "Where did I come from? How did I land here? In a recent blog post, Megan, referred to in FMF posts as Rebecca the name I gave her when she was born, tells of assembling the pieces of her origins. These pieces constitute the borders, the frame for our relationship. We're still filling in the middle.

After searching for over ten years, she connected with me in 1997 when she was 31. Despite an ecstatic beginning, our relationship like so many others--including Lorraine's with her daughter--has been rocky at times. Like other first mothers newly in reunion, I asked myself over and over "Where do I fit in? What does she want." "Not a new family," I was assured. She told me she needed "to know" but surely I told myself it had to be more than that.

h♥le, cont.: Upon learning that birth records would be sealed--FOREVER

About to be swallowed up by the deep                             photo by Ken Robbins

“But we’ll be able to—find each other when he’s eighteen, right—or twenty one?” I ask matter-of-factly—it’s half a statement, half a question, surely that’s the case. I am talking to the social worker at Hillside Terrace, the euphemistically named adoption agency. Her first name is Helen, but to me, she is Mrs. Mura. She is in her thirties, not that much older than me. She is my confessor, my therapist, my authoritative conduit to adoption. Other than Patrick, and an occasional visit from my lone girlfriend in town, Christy, Mrs. Mura was my only outside contact for those last months. Christy works on the afternoon paper in town; she and I were both young, ambitious and from elsewhere when we landed in Rochester, but she’s busy with her own career, and I rarely hear from her.

I am holed up in my apartment, and don’t venture much beyond a nearby
grocery store, the pharmacy across the street, and the library a few blocks away.

'X' instead of a name on a birth certificate is just plain wrong

Lorraine and Jane at Rockefeller Center, 1982

A few days ago I read a story about Missouri adoptees born before 1941 being able to actually get their birth certificates, and dammit by the time I got to the end I was just furious that states are so slow to realize what sealed records have done to people!  Yes, they go about their lives and grow up, go the school, have jobs, get married, have children and all the rest, but in most states they still are unable to have that piece of paper that might unlock--most likely would unlock--the key to their identities: original birth certificates with the names of the parents.

ACLU: Right on Kaepernick, wrong on adoptee and first mother rights

Lorraine

"We support Colin Kaepernick and every other American who has defended an unpopular opinion." So tweets ACLU National. (And we do too, see our current sidebar.)

The ACLU National support 49ers quarterback Kaepernick's kneel-down during the singing of the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality, but they also support injustice against adoptees. They say they do this for those birth/first mothers who wish to remain secret from their children. Baloney. If that is their argument for being such a stand-up partner to adoptee injustice, they are ignoring what they actually support.

Indiana passes compromise OBC bill; MO in the wings

A Simple Piece of ORIGINAL Paper denied the adopted

Try as we might, clean bills with first birth parent vetoes are what states are taking up as a compromise between allowing adopted individuals the right to their own birth certificates and "protecting" (that damn word!) the privacy of birth parents from the dark ages of closed adoptions. That would include Jane and me. 

Indiana yesterday passed such a bill that now only awaits Gov. Mike Pence's signature, which is a expected, as he worked with Hoosiers for Equal Access to Records, according to Pam Kroskie, president. "Today marks a tremendous victory for hundreds of thousands of people adopted in Indiana," she said, "...regardless of the year they were born. The bill covers people who were adopted from 1941 through 1993, the group that was left out of previous legislation and had no access to their original records. 

UNJUST Sealed Birth Certificate Laws

My original birth certificate--everyone should have the same

As the legislative session wound down in New York, the Assembly passed a bill that allows natural birth parents not only a veto, but put in place a confidential intermediary system, those assuring that many more birth mothers will deny their children knowledge of their original identity. The bill (S5964) was referred to the Senate Rules committee but in the flurry of activity that engulfs the legislative chambers in the last hours of every session, it stayed in committee as the session ended.

After years of work on giving adoptees the right to know who they are--without any restriction, without a natural parent veto--this legislation was disappointing. Assemblyman David Weprin who has been the main sponsor and spark plug for this bill obviously felt that he could not get a clean bill--no restrictions, no confidential intermediaries--despite strong lobbying at the end to kill the bill. It passed 125-19. My own assemblyman Fred Thiele, who has been a staunch supporter of the original bill that had no restrictions, in the end joined those who voted for this bill.

Doctor tricks natural mother

Lorraine 

Nearly three decades ago, an infertile couple who wanted to adopt wrote up a resume about themselves and sent it to several obstetricians through friends of friends. Though they were not from New York, they got a call from a doctor in Brooklyn. His patient was an 18-year-old about to go to college, and she and her boyfriend were planning to give up their baby.

The mother-to-be chose the couple--from their letter--but though they wanted to meet her, she did not. She did agree to let the prospective parents have a photograph of her. But the prospective adoptive father wanted to meet her.

Emotional toll of searching for birth parents via sealed records

Lorraine

People today talk about the internet as a powerful tool in getting around sealed birth certificates and make it sound as if that pesky little problem of "sealed" doesn't really make a lot of difference. That is  true only for some. The current Beacon from the American Adoption Congress has the story of an Indiana woman, Elizabeth Boys, who found her biological family 36 hours after she posted her information on Facebook. That's got to be something like a record.

But it is unusual. At the recent public hearing for the bill (A909) in New York to allow adoptees the right to their original birth certificates, one of the more moving testimonies was about an arduous journey through the labyrinth of Catholic Charities, and the emotional toll it took on a bright, educated, adult

Opening Sealed Records for Adoptees: It is just, it is right, and it is time

My letter to the Speaker of the New York Assembly:
 
                      Box 968
                      Sag Harbor, NY 11963

Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly

Legislative Office Building 932
Albany, NY 12248

Dear Speaker Silver:

You are probably aware that there is a movement afoot to give adopted people the same rights as the rest of us: the right to know who they were at birth. Today there are two bills, one in the Assembly (A8410) and one in the Senate (S5269) which would restore equality to this class of people who were stripped of the right to know their original identities when they were born.

Time to Unseal Birth Records--New York Report

 Joyce Bahr, President of  Unsealed Initiative which works to open the records in New York State had the following letter in the Albany Times-Union on Sunday, November 1.

November is National Adoption Month and adoptees born in New York are much more hopeful for passage of legislation giving them the right to a noncertified copy of their original birth certificate and updated medical histories.

Bills A8410/S5269 give birth parents the option to file a contact preference. Some may not want to be contacted and others may want to be contacted directly by the adoptee or through an intermediary.

Adoptees are grateful to Republican sponsor Sen. Bill Larkin, an adoptive grandparent, and welcome a new Senate sponsor, Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, chairwoman of the Children and Families Committee. The Assembly sponsor, Assemblyman David Koon Rochester, continues the fight in that house. Birth parents who had no rights and no options presented to them signed surrender papers that terminated their parental rights, but did not provide confidentiality for them. Recent research by professor Elizabeth Samuels of the Baltimore School of Law concludes confidentiality was for the adoptive parents. 

A 2007 report by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute finds birth parents lives' are not ruined when they are discreetly contacted by adoptees.
No law prohibits adoptees from searching for their birth parents. It's time for a law unsealing birth certificates.

Senate Democrats and Republicans are in support of one, while the Assembly bill with 70 sponsors has been stalled in the Codes Committee since June 2006. Adoptees are saying out loud, "It's time for our rights."
Joyce Bahr
New York City
unsealedinitiative@nyc.rr.com

 If you have a adoption connection of any sort through New York,that is, you were adopted through New York, you relinquished a child in New York, you are a friend of or are related to someone who was adopted or relinquished her/his baby in New York, PLEASE do not sit on the sidelines but join us in trying to let adoptees breath free with the knowledge of their heritage. Write your state senator and assembly person, write the head of the Senate and Assembly, and contact Joyce. New York needs you. A life is waiting.