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.

News Flash: Knowing Your Medical History Can Save Your Life--

Yet another proof that everyone should be able to have full and complete access to their real medical histories comes from a story out of New Jersey. Rebecca Raezer was found by her older sister, who was adopted, but the woman knew that she carried the gene for breast cancer, actually a mutation of a gene, BRCA 1, that normally suppresses cancer. But the mutation increases a person's risk of getting breast cancer.

According to the National Cancer Institute, studies have indicated that women who carry these gene mutations have a 60 percent or higher risk of developing breast cancer over the course of their lives. That's right, sixty percent. Now how would you, dear legislator, dear Helene Weinstein (to name one who is adamantly opposed to open records in New York) like to be walking around carrying that gene inside you and not know it?

Yet Ms.Weinstein (of Brooklyn)  and other legislators of her persuasion continue to block giving adopted adults their original birth records--the only way adoptees can realistically access their family medical histories. As it stands now, if you're adopted in 42 states, you're out of luck. The state claims that it is "protecting " women from being harassed by their children coming back and saying, Hello, can you tell me what I should be on the lookout for? Breast cancer in the family? Heart disease? Depression? PMDD? Oh, I'm not supposed to know anything because that might embarrass someone?

How anyone can justify keeping original birth records sealed--and preventing the six million adopted people from knowing their medical histories--is quite frankly beyond my comprehension. Given what we know about the importance of a medical history, keeping them from adopted people is a willful act of cruel and inhumane treatment. It is sacrificing the health and well-being of an entire class of people to protect the "privacy" of another--who, in all likelihood knows all the details of their family medical history.

Legislators who oppose open records (because it's going to bust apart their vision of the happy adopted family somewhere in their OWN family) hide behind the skirts of women who gave up their children. Instead of admitting they are looking out for the adoptive parents who support sealed records forever! they say that we first/birth mothers want to be, and thus must be, "protected" from our children. In fact, most of us desperately want to know the children we lost to adoption. 

Apparently the legislators have not read the data (which we give them) that now overwhelmingly supports birth mothers in favor of open records. I'm looking at a draft of a study that may come out of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute soon, and the first item notes that "In one study, 82 percent of birth parents said they would be interested in meeting their children." In Tennessee, which has open records, 99 percent of the women were found to have welcomed contact from the children they surrendered for adoption. In other states with corresponding date (Arizona, New Jersey, North Carolina, New Mexico and Washington) 95 percent of the women share this view.

That's why this whole business of keeping the records sealed because of the promised secrecy is so bleepin' phony. If the legislators actually looked at the facts and figures of who wants to know what happened to their children and how they are, and who is going to drive their car into the river if the records are open, and balance some outrageous claim against the good that would come from giving adoptees access to the information of their birth, the records would be open in all 50 states tomorrow.

I'd like to strap Ms.Weinstein and a few other jokers in Albany (any any state capital) who oppose opening the records to a chair and make them watch back-to-back-to back episodes of The Locator where birth mothers are reunited with their children.

As for Ms. Raezer, she discovered a lump in her breast, and her doctor blew it off originally, but because she knew she had the mutated gene, she insisted on getting further testing, and indeed, what was thought to be a harmless cyst turned out to be malignant. She, along with her sister who was adopted, had both breasts removed. And today Ms. Raezer is the contented mother of a one-year-old. Her sister's name was not revealed because her adoptive parents do not know she searched and found her first biological genetic real family. Maybe they are friends of some legislator who votes against open records. But I digress.

How important is knowing your medical history? From the AOL story:

Carrie Zabel, MS, a genetic counselor with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says the story of Raezer and her sister is not surprising. Even though Raezer doesn't carry a mutation of one of the BRCA genes, it's possible there are other gene mutations carried in families that scientists haven't discovered yet. "For most families, these gene mutations are inherited," she says. "Therefore, looking at your family history is important." In a case like Raezer's it's especially important. "Being a young age at diagnosis is a red flag to a genetic predisposition," Zabel adds.

"Know your family history, and remember your dad's relatives are important, too," advised Zabel. She recommends that women begin performing monthly self breast exams at age 18 and that they make sure to receive a clinical breast exam from their doctor every year as well. While the standard recommendation for the general population is to start getting annual mammograms at age 40, Zabel says that even if you have a family history or a genetic marker, that doesn't necessarily mean starting mammograms earlier. In fact, a recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute suggests that the radiation from mammograms can actually put women with damaged DNA at even greater risk for cancer.

So even though knowing your family history might save your life, Weinstein and her ilk still stand at the gate and keep the records sealed. Why? Because they can.

And while legislators are rethinking their dumb and unjust position on sealed records, they ought to go the whole mile and allow the women who surrendered their childre access to the names and addresses of the parents who adopted them. To tell me I agreed to the sealed records is friggen' poppycock. It was sealed records or "We can't help you." And it was not written down in the papers I signed.

But don't get me started on this.--lorraine
_______________________
We'd love to hear stories from anyone about what the lack of medical records has meant to them.

Dear President Obama: Open Sealed Records

Copyright Lorraine Dusky, 2009

Today there are approximately six million people in America who do not have the right to answer the question: Who am I? Who was I at birth? The state took that right from them when they were adopted as infants or toddlers. Only in eight states do they have the right to their original birth certificates. An active movement of adoptee-rights advocates is pressing for reform throughout the country, but the going is at a snail’s pace. At this rate, millions of people will die before the laws are changed, and changed they will be one day. Right is on our side.

Adopted people are not children all their lives. They grow up and need not only updated family medical information, but they need and desire to be whole and integrated individuals, and that includes having full knowledge of who they were at birth. As far back as 1971, the American Academy of Pediatrics stated in a position paper: Determining identity is a difficult process for someone brought up by his natural parents; it is more complex for the individual whose ancestry is unknown to him. Cicero said it this way: Not to have knowledge of what happened before you were born is to be condemned to live forever as a child.

I am a birth mother and journalist who has written extensively about this subject for numerous publications, from Parent’s magazine to The New York Times to Newsweek to USA Today, as well as others. I am also the author of Birthmark (1979), the first memoir to break the silence of women who gave up their children to adoption. I have testified for open records both in Albany and in Washington DC before legislative committees. I relinquished my daughter in 1966 in Rochester. I am the New York representative of the American Adoption Congress, but I write to you as a private citizen today.

The main objection to giving adoptees their original birth certificates is the supposed confidentiality “promised” to the women who relinquished their children in years past when great shame was attached to bearing a child out of wedlock. The vast majority of birth mothers welcome reunion with their children – even if that child is the product of rape or incest. This is only one example, but it speaks volumes. When Maine passed legislation opening its files as of January 1, one of the leaders of the reform was birth mother Bobbi Beavers, whose surrendered child was the product of a rape. She and her son have been reunited.

Yes, there are some who wish to remain unknown to their children. But their number is small. Various studies both in this country and abroad indicate that only between three and six percent wish to remain anonymous from their children. Yet the imagined specter of these women in the mind of legislators continues to block open records at the state level. This small group of women should not dictate public policy, a policy that so dramatically involves an entire class of people, individuals who were never asked what their preferences were. You have to go back to slavery to find a similar situation in which two parties – the state and an individual – make a bargain that forever seals the fate of a third person.

Despite the evidence, still the myth – that of the poor, woebegone “unwed mother” who has never told a soul, let alone her husband – persists. It is in her name that the National Council for Adoption, a coalition of adoption agencies opposed to open records, the Church of the Latter Day Saints, some adoption attorneys, argue to keep records sealed and sued in state courts. But the lawsuits, filed in both Tennessee and Oregon, have failed as the higher courts recognize the validity of adopted individuals seeking their identity papers.

The secrecy-seeking woman is a smoke screen, and obscures what these organizations really want, i.e., to cling to outdated closed adoptions—they can charge more for them! And they do. Despite what we know about the need to know, despite our best efforts to educate the public, despite what common sense dictates, some prospective parents still want closed adoptions and sealed records, and they are the ones who fund the organizations fighting to keep records sealed.

Yet the evidence is clear: no one is harmed by giving adopted people their original birth certificates. Oregon has had open records since May 30, 2000; according to the Oregon Center For Health Statistics website, as of May 31, 2007, 9366 unamended—i.e., original—birth certificates were requested, while 84 women have filed a “no-contact” preference, 79 of them filed when the records were first opened. That is fewer than one percent. Other states with open records are Alabama, Maine, New Hampshire. Tennessee and Delaware allow a mother to file a contact veto; Alaska and Kansas never sealed the birth records of adoptees. Open-record states report no problems due to this policy.

In 1980, the then U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare came to a similar conclusion after holding numerous hearings of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers and other experts around the country. The Model Adoption Act the agency issued stated:

“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 other provisions of the act were passed, this provision died at the behest of a powerful senator from Texas, the late John Tower. He was an adoptive father.

But beyond the fact of the small numbers of women seeking anonymity from their own children, you will find no legal precedent written into law in any state of the country. The relinquishment papers birth mothers signed contain no promise of anonymity.

New York’s law is probably typical. Dating from 1935, and passed at the behest of the then governor, Herbert H. Lehman, it contains no promise of confidentiality given to the women who surrendered their children. In fact, many of us, including myself, argued with our social workers about this implied premise of the law when we were signing the surrender papers. We were told we had no choice, if we were to go ahead with an agency-sponsored adoption. In short, we simply capitulated as we had no power to do otherwise.

Worth noting is that Gov. Lehman was an adoptive father. Presumably, this outdated law was passed with good intentions – to assure that families formed by adoption bond, and it was thought then this was best done by severing ties to the past. Presumably, the intent of the law was in the best interests of the child. We now know this simplistic view of adoption doesn’t work.

And understand this, no matter how sorry a group we birth mothers were at the time we gave up our children, we and the times have changed. We are different now, and we deserve no special treatment, not when the state affords no such protection to any other group of people. Many people wish to bury their past and hide their previous marriages; men, including priests, do not wish to be named as fathers in paternity suits, yet the state does not take it upon itself to offer the protection of privacy to them; nor should the state be in the business of “protecting” a minute number of birth mothers from embarrassment, especially as it comes as the cost of trampling the rights of others.

Opponents of open-records often show up to testify and claim that adoptions will go down, and that abortions will go up if the records are unsealed. This is untrue. In the open-records states of Kansas and Alaska, adoptions are proportionally higher, and abortion rates lower, than the national average. Indeed, Kansas has significantly lower abortion rates than the four surrounding states – all with sealed records. Please note that the National Council for Adoption actually has collected these figures, but their spokesman frequently ignores what he knows and makes this specious statement when it testifies, simply because he can. He lies.

Opponents of open records also argue for registries matching parents and adoptees, rather than releasing birth data. But most registries were set up with enough restrictive provisions to make them largely ineffective, and that certainly is the case here. In New York more than 18,000 adoptees, birth parents and siblings have registered since December of 1983, but the “success” rate is fewer than four percent! Offering adoptees a registry is a poor excuse for denying them their original birth certificates. Being able to own that piece of paper surely would seem to be a right that the Constitution guarantees for everyone, once the plague of slavery was abolished.

However difficult it has been to change hearts and minds, change is coming. A 1994-95 Cornell University survey of adoptive parents in New York found that 78 percent actually favored open records. Enlightened adoptive parents and grandparents are sometimes our staunchest supporters in state legislatures. Adoptive father Sen. Lou D’Allesandro led the charge in the New Hampshire Senate in 2005 that opened the records in that state.

For myself, I went around the law. By going underground and paying some stranger $1,200 in 1981, I located my daughter nearly a quarter of a century ago, and enjoyed a relationship with her and her parents for 26 years. She died in 2007.

I ask you to let other adoptees have this same right and find a way to give adopted people the relief they seek. They want only to be treated like all other citizens: to have the right to the information of their birth. They were never asked what was in their best interests in this singular event of their lives. Birth mothers never were promised the secrecy and anonymity from our own children so many would continue to foist upon us. For the vast majority of us, the law as written only continues the cruel and harsh punishment that surrendering our children initially heaped upon us.

Bills to open the records have been around since the Seventies, but have been blocked for years. It is time to let the truth of one’s origins be everyone’s birth right. It is time to let adopted individuals—who never asked to be adopted, who were never asked what was in their best interests—to enjoy the same rights as the rest of us. You can right this wrong by pushing for federal legislation that gives all adopted persons the right to know the answers to life's most primal questions: Who am I? Who was I when I was born? What is my story?

Cordially,

Lorraine Dusky, first/birth/original mother