Give the Gift of Life: Help give back your child's true identity

Lorraine

You know how when birth/first mothers lobby so that our children can learn the truth of their origins, and yes, locate us, legislators say, but you were promised anonymity? 

Makes me crazy, this does.

We were not promised anything! And if your social worker did tell you that once having relinquished the goods (that is, your baby) you could live a life under a rock and pretend that you did not have a child, she was lying! Cotton growers in the South
thought they were promised that they could have slaves forever too--the state said they could, right?--but that turned out to be so massively unjust that it came to an end one day, just like sealed records for adoptees will be one day. 

Now why would the state guarantee that they would strip an infant of his true heritage and tell us that we would go on our merry way without wondering what happened to our child? Why would they say this when common sense makes this a bunch of malarky?

Because they can. While they hide behind first mothers' skirts, they are really acting in the "supposed" interests of adoptive parents for whom the law was written. Here is one example: In New York the law was written and promulgated (that is, pushed through the legislature) at the behest of the then governor, Herbert H. Lehman, adoptive father of three.

The trouble is, the legislators don't seem to get it that in almost every instance we can find, we couldn't be promised anonymity because the records of the individual were only sealed when they were adopted. No adoption; no sealed record. And secondly, we were not so much "promised" anonymity as it was forced upon us.

After I discovered that surrendering my daughter meant anonymity for life, I rebelled and argued with Helen Mura, my social worker at Northaven Terrace, the bland name for the local adoption agency in Rochester, New York, about this nefarious aspect of the law. She finally said: If you insist on one day being able to know her, we can't help you. In other words, all the mothers who surrendered children through the system after 1935 had no say in whether they wanted their children's records sealed or not. It just happened. Period.

Open adoptions have changed this somewhat, but what about all the adoptees in those years adopted under this unjust system? It is 75 years later, and we still have these archaic laws on the books, robbing generations of people who were adopted of the most basic information about themselves. You would think that this would be a no-brainer today--with all the stories about finding one roots on television and in magazines--but New York's moribund legislature is still stuck in time, robbing new generations of people of their identity.

Ladies, we need to disprove this and show them that we do not wish to be anonymous. Let us stand up and be counted. In New York, we have lots and lots of supporters in the legislature (check out Unsealed Initiative's website for more) but still the gatekeepers of our bill are recalcitrant, hiding behind our skirts. How annoying is that? Very! We needs support now in the form of letters to those gatekeepers.  Though you could not nurture your child, give him or her the priceless gift of identity. Please write a letter today, or tomorrow, and do two things with it: send it to your own state assemblyman and senator, and send it to one or, better yet, all of these folks in New York:

Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the Assembly

LOB 932
Albany, NY 12248

He is against our bill and is very powerful. Holds the keys to getting the bill on the floor, where it would likely pass. This is how one person can stop legislation. 

Joseph R. Lentol [chair of the Codes Committee, where our bill, A841, languishes]

LOB 632
Albany, NY 12248

Note: Helene Weinstein is also on the committee and she is a sworn enemy of open records. FYI, she is not an adoptive mother, but a powerful force in the Assembly. 

Richard Gottfried, Chair of the Health Committee
LOB 822
Albany, NY 12248

FYI: Gottfired supports our bill and needs to be encouraged to work harder for it. In the Seventies, he sponsored a bill that would have opened the records, but only from that time forward. We thought we would win in the courts, but did not. Gottfried should be a much stronger supporter of our bill, and needs to hear from us, as he has said he mainly hears from adoptive parents. So any adoptive parents reading who support giving your children the right to their true identities, please write him.

Please write! Ask them to move A8410 to the Assembly floor for a vote. Tell them it has never been against the law to search and the state adoption policy is unfair and unjust, outdated and discriminates against a while class of people. Tell them  you could not have been "promised" anonymity, even if it was indicated, because the law does not support that. Tell them your own story in your own language and hold nothing back. And be sure to include your postal address and phone number with area code. This is to ensure the legislative members that you are who I say you are.

In closing, here is a quote from a letter opposing the law: 

"1) It legalizes the falsification of permanent public records.

 2)  It nullifies the inalienable right of a person to know the actual facts of his birth.

 3)  And special provision for illegitimate children which will single them out from the group of     legitimate children is bound to be cause of embarrassment to them in later years." 

                                                                                  --Sister Dominica Maria, April 25, 1935

Sister Dominica was the superintendent of New York Foundling Hospital. May she rest in peace with the angels. --lorraine
_____________________________

Do not forget to include your name, address and phone number--this is important for your letter to be taken seriously. And then please let us know that you wrote, include as much of your letter here in comments that you care to share. And yes, thought I much prefer comments that are not anonymous, you can be anonymous here, as this is a public forum.

PS: Though I'm not a fan of Desperate Housewives tonight's show has one of the women surprisingly turning out to be a birth mother who searches for her child. Tune in and let's see how this is played for yuks.

                   

Jane here.
My letter to the New York Legislature:
In November, 1966 I gave birth to a daughter whom I surrendered for adoption. I was not promised confidentiality and did I want it. We reunited 31 years later. Since our reunion, I have felt much more complete. It is indeed true that the truth will set you free.

I live in Oregon. On November 3, 1998, Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 58 with 57 percent of the vote. This measure allowed adults adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates. Opponents immediately challenged Ballot Measure 58 in the courts as violating birth mother privacy. The Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the law and the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The Measure became effective May 31, 2000.

While opponents of the law claimed that birth mothers did not want their children to know their identities, birth mothers said something quite different. Two days before the election, over 500 birth mothers including me placed their names in a full page ad in Oregon’s largest newspaper, the Portland Oregonian, supporting the measure.

Over 10,000 Oregon-born adoptees have received their original birth certificates since 2000. The Oregonian which opposed Ballot Measure 58 has continued to follow the Measure. Neither the Oregonian nor any other media has reported a single case of a birth mother who became upset over being contacted by her child. I have met birth mothers and birth fathers from all over the country. I have never heard any regret reuniting with their child regardless of how the reunion turned out.