Lobbying for adoptee rights--how to write to a legislator

Lorraine

In these last few weeks, First Mother Forum has focused somewhat on legislation, because now is the time when bills get passed. People sometimes ask how to write to a legislator because it seems to daunting the first time. But it shouldn't be. 

So how to begin? First, let the recipient know your connection to him, especially if you are writing your legislator--you vote for him, or her, she is going to pay attention to what you have to say. Sometimes this information may be obvious from the return address on the stationary, but in email you need to say it. 


Explain why you want this legislation passed: You are adopted, you are an adoptive parent, you are a first mother, or a relative or friend of any of the above, and there exists a need or deep desire that the sealed records thwarts.  In no more than a paragraph or two, tell your personal story. Imagine that in these few words you are able to convey why the unsealing of the records is important to you.  Don't get the reader lost in details that are not germane; summarize your story.

Know the number of the bill that is up for a vote. This is good, but if you can't find out, explain what the bill does.

If you have other data that you think might sway the person reading the letter, include, but normally, brevity is best. What counts is the number of inquiries and letters they receive from different people, because that indicates how much interest there is in fixing a bad law and giving adoptees their original birth certificates. However, if you have specialty information that the legislator may or may not know about or already have from other sources, include it. 

Keep the letter brief--one page is great, one and a half is not terrible. 

Letterhead stationary is great, but what matters most is that you send it. 

Some legislators have told us they actually prefer email to cut down on paper, but when there is time and you can do it, a letter in the mail is the best. Right now in New York, we need whatever you have time for. 

Now having said that, I am going to say that sometimes, but not always, when I write I do write long because of the information I carry around in my head about stinkeroo laws and adoption reform and because I can present myself as an expert, having written the first memoir about first mothers, back in 1979, and been called on to lobby in Albany as far back as 1977, and later in Washington, DC before a Senate subcommittee. So sometimes I do cram information in my letters. Other times I pare them down to a single page. I am going to share here an email I have been sending to New York assemblymen in whose district I do not live. My own assemblyman, Fred Thiele, signed onto the Adoptee Rights Bill several years ago.

LETTERS NEEDED FROM NEW YORK ADOPTEES, FIRST MOTHERS
The push is on in New York because it is just possible--we got some good news the other day--that our CLEAN bill--a contact preference, not a veto, may actually come to the floor of the New York Assembly this year. This would be huge, for while we have been working in New York for two decades to get a bill to the floor for a vote, we have encountered powerful opposition from a handful of legislators with a great deal of clout. New York's legislature is a pit of corruption, and oddly enough that might work for us this year as passing this bill as it would allow some good news to come out of Albany, rather than just another corruption/sex scandal. 

Unsealed Initiative, the group in New York spearheaded by first mother Joyce Bahr, has made three trips to Albany this session to speak to legislators and get them behind our bill. At last tally, we had 81 sponsors or co-sponsors on our bill in the Assembly, and 22 or so in the Senate, and we are busy contacting those who have doubts and may vote against us. Nothing is certain. If any readers have relinquished in New York, or were adopted in New York, or are connected to someone who is and believe all individuals should have the clear, unrestricted right to know why they are, please take the time to write to Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the Assembly; Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Sen. Dean Skelos, speaker of the Senate. (Contact information on right sidebar).  In New York, one house is Democrat; the other is Republican. We are equal opportunists! Since I have already written these people, over the Memorial Day weekend, I will be contacting a list of uncommitted Assemblymen and woman. If you live in New York, of course add your own assemblyperson and senator to the list. However, right now we are reaching out to all uncommitted people in the Assembly. List on request!  We need you: 

DATA TO SWAY HEARTS AND MINDS--AND VOTES
A sample email/letter from me:

I write to you as someone who passionately believes right is on the side of a bill which will not affect me personally. I refer to a bill that would give adopted individuals the right to their original birth certificates. I am a mother who relinquished a child many years ago, and I ask you to sign on as a co-sponsor of this bill, or at least, let it be known that you support its passage. 

The most common objection to unsealing the original birth certificates to the individuals to whom they most concern--the adoptee himself--is the supposed "promise" of anonymity made to the first mothers at the time of relinquishment. But look at the experience of a state that opened its records by referendum.

In Oregon, where the records have been available to the adopted since 2000, more than 10,500 adopted people applied for their birth certificates in the first decade after passage; 85 birth parents asked for “no contact,” a number which had been stable for the last few years of the decade. This is .008 percent of the birth parents when compared to the number of adoptees who asked for their original, unamended birth certificates. The law sustained court challenges; most of the early “no contact” preferences were filed immediately after the law passed by a small, united group of women. Mothers certainly have a right to do this, but note that the Oregon law did not prevent the release of the information, and thus no adopted individual was denied the truth of their origins as it is contained on a birth certificate. A good law. A909a would do the same. 

Not undoing the law that dates from 1935 when the birth certificates of the adopted were sealed keeps in place a law that in many respects is akin to slavery. The adopted were never asked if they agree to having their true identities wiped clean in return for being adopted, yet that is what the law does.

When I relinquished my daughter in 1966 in Rochester, the sealed records statute was forced upon me. Though desperate to keep my pregnancy secret, I rebelled against never being able to know her eventually. My social worker finally said, if you insist on knowing her one day, we can't help you. With nowhere else to turn, I submitted to this heinous law that became a yoke around my heart as much as a vise would be. It felt like further punishment. However, the law never “promised” me anonymity, as the records were not sealed until she was adopted, and thus there could be no legal guarantee of secrecy.  To allow birth mothers the right of refusal about this is to value the supposed rights of a small group of individuals over the rights of the adopted. That is patently inequitable as well as morally wrong.

SEALED RECORDS MAY LEAD TO CORRUPTION

In 1981 I paid someone more than three months’ rent and within days had my daughter's name, her parents' names, their address and phone number. Obviously sealed records allow for rampant corruption. My daughter and I had a relationship for more than a quarter of a century until her death in 2007. I miss her dearly, but the pain of losing her a second time was not as great as losing her to an unknown future and total strangers as when I relinquished her.

Consider what the law does: The adopted can never have complete and fully up-to-date medical information, cannot know their true family history, or know their siblings, or anyone who looks like them, all facets of life that the rest of the world takes for granted. Is one Jewish? Or Catholic? Irish or Polish? Did my mother ever love me? Who is my father? Why was I given up? Who am I?

At the time the law passed in New York at the behest of (adoptive father) Gov. Herbert H. Lehman, the head of the New York Foundling Home at the time, Sister Dominica Maria, wrote to Lehman asking that the records not be permanently sealed. Her reasons:

“(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)” Any special provision for illegitimate children which will single them out from the group of legitimate children is bound to be a cause of embarrassment to them in later years…. Sister Dominica Maria, Superintendent, New York Foundling Hospital. April 25^th, 1935” 

All that she wrote is true today. No one should be denied his identity because it will embarrass someone. 

In 1980, after holding numerous hearings of relinquishing mothers, social workers, adoptees and other experts around the country, the then U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare crafted a Model Adoption Act that contained these words:

“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.” -- It did not pass Congress. Its main opponent in the Senate was John Tower of Texas, an adoptive father. Yet today surveys of adoptive parents show that they overwhelmingly support the release of this information to their adopted children. The chief sponsor of such a bill in New Hampshire that passed in 2004 was adoptive father Lou D’Allesandro.

Let New York join the seven other states that have given adopted individuals the clear and unrestricted right to obtain their original birth certificates. With this bill, birth parents who do not want to be contacted can let this be known. There is no vehicle for this now; the understaffed and unpublicized registry for adoptees and first parents is largely useless to most. Time is running out for the adoptees and first mothers who will die before another session is held, and time is running out on this session. In the Assembly, we have 81 sponsors, co-sponsors and supporters. A909a may be on the agenda before the session is out. The chief sponsor is David Weprin. In the Senate Andrew Lanza is the chief sponsor. With your help, this is doable this year, and I ask that you join the right side of history on this and co-sponsor this bill. My Assemblyman Fred Thiele is a co-sponsor.  

S2490A and A909 Summary:
Enacts Bill of Adoptee Rights clarifying language and procedures for obtaining birth certificates and medical histories of adoptees; allows adopted adults to learn who their birth parents are when they reach the age of 18, subject to a contact preference filed by the birth parents. (This kind of safeguard for first mothers in the closet has worked without incident in other states.)

If you have any questions, or would like more information, please do not hesitate to call me. I write an active blog with another women, First Mother Forum, and am a former state representative of the American Adoption Congress. I am also the author of numerous magazine articles on sealed adoption records, as well as the first memoir from a woman who relinquished a child, Birthmark. (When I write a short letter, I cut this last graph past...please call on me.)

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

Cordially, 
Lorraine Dusky
___________________________

 
 From FMF
Opening birth records: States of fame (OR, OH) and shame (WA)
Opening court records to adoptees and first parents
UPDATE: NY Adoptee Rights

The Adoption Reader: Birth Mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories  "Adoption has always been a woman's issue. With eloquence and conviction, more than 30 diverse birth mothers, adoptive mothers and adoptees tell their adoption stories and explore what is a deeply emotional, sometimes controversial, and always compelling experience that affects millions of families and individuals."--Amazon