"I think alot of people defending this law have no idea of the impact that it would have. Sorry, but medical history shouldn't be a factor if someone knocks on your door one day and claims to be your son or daughter.Do you have ANY idea how that could wreck someone's life, family, home?There are things that are better off left private. We seem to have NO respect for people's privacy any more in jobs, the airport, any where..."
This was an article about birth certificate access. And somehow we go all the way from accessing the same document everyone else gets about themselves to adoptees wrecking people's lives. Nice!
"Cultural and social history are matters of upbringing and not of birth. The adoptive parents provide the child with a cultural and social history, and there are summer camps and other programs for adoptees from other countries to explore the heritage of their birth country."
Not only is this incorrect but I'm guessing we missed the part about the bill being about birth certificates for those born within the U.S.?
"I think that that is a dangerous road to go down. No one puts a child up for adoption or has an abortion because of good circumstances and conditions in their lives. There are many reasons and most of them are not good.
I too believe that there are some things that are better left private, unknown and undone.
Will it do a child more harm to find out that he or she is a child from incest or rape?
What if you found out your mother was 15 years old when she had you and put you up for adoption? She has since married with another family now but she has never told her husband. Is it fair for an adoptee to barge into her life?"
Now being able to have our own birth certificate is "dangerous" and is "barging" into someone eles' life? We're also not children, by the way. People need to stop using language that shames women who have been raped and individuals conceived of rape.
"My mother was adopted and I can see both sides of this. Adoption happens for a reason."
What does that have to do with birth certificates?
"Keep the birth certificate sealed until a fair bill is written. This is a punitive bill to those birth parents who were lead to believe that birth certificates would remain sealed...........While she is ill she may just get that surprise knock at the door or her family may and at 80 or 90 years she will be explaining what happened to her so many years ago. The very thing she worked so hard at keeping private. When she dies if she doesn't tell her family the whole mess will be dumped on her families lap when they get a knock at the door. Where's the opt out? What is the point? It's a delay.
Create a bill that is not punitive to birth parents who have no regrets with a choice that was availble at the time.
Your identity is in your genes nurtured by those who loved and cared for you. It is not a name on a piece of paper. No one is forced to give their history even to their own child. No one is forced to give medical history not even to their own child."
Adoptee = surprise door knocker and life ruiner? I'm so glad someone has what identity is all figured out; silly me.
"I think that upon adoption the original birth certificate should be destroyed, and a new certificate should be issued with the adoptive parents as the true parents.
People don't have access to sperm or egg donor identity. How is this not the same thing?
Biological Cultural history is totally unimportant and unlinked to genes. Your cultural history is the history with which you are raised.
Health risks can be determined via blood work and genetic testing. Adopting parents should be taking care of this before the child can even speak.
I think that it is really disgusting how much the people on this board are marginalizing adoptive parents. They are the real parents."
Forget that this person is completely wrong for a second. Adoptee = disgusting adoptive parent marginalizers? Are they my parents or my owners? It's laughable because the Adult Adoptee interviewed in the article is 69 years old and people are still compelled to remind her who her "rightful" parents are for goodness sakes.
Forget the fact that most of these comments are from opinions formed on bad information (do people really think there are these random genetic tests out there that insurance covers that actually make family medical history irrelevant?). There is no "report this comment" button intended for comments like these. If someone said the same things but based on a person's race, religion, sexual orientation, gender...so on and so forth, most websites would remove those comments. But ignorance about family status (another example, the resurgence of the use of the phrase "love child," which means "bastard," in the media) is common place and acceptable. Can't anyone imagine how that feels?
Open adoption and whatever else people think is better about adoption in recent decades has not fixed covert and overt adoptism (and the underlying themes of sexism and classism, to name a few, that adoptism is often based off of). I do not know very many Adoptee Rights Advocates who advocate for birth certificate access or adoptees who are open about their quest for reunion or to find more information about themselves who have not repeatedly heard comments like the ones above. And those comments on the aforementioned article are tame, believe me. Many of these stigmas were caused by closed records to begin with. As an adoptee open about my feelings on adoption as well as an Adoptee Rights Advocate, I have been called everything mentioned above to just plan "stupid woman." I do not want this oppression to continue on to the next generation of adoptees. Our children should not have to read/hear these things said about their mothers, fathers, and grandparents.
Who will stand with us and stand up for us?
Great post Amanda!
ReplyDeleteRobin W. here...having to post anon because of some blogger issues. Grrr
ReplyDeleteAgain, the adoptee is being treated like a threat and the Mother is being treated like a helpless wuss. Good responses to this idiotic piece of misinformed crap, Amanda.
Yup, Yup, Yup! I pity the person that believes that crappola! Talk about willful ignorance!
ReplyDeleteGlad you took this on...I read the piece and heard the same old stuff repeated. Will Gov. Christie sign the damn bill? and let's move on?
ReplyDeleteMy life was not wrecked when I FOUND MY DAUGHTER, WORLD; it was saved. And like Pam, I'm one of that generation that is supposed to be so fearful of our own children. If any adoptee is reading this and afraid to search for the reasons stated in that idiotic USAToday piece, think past them and begin your search. Many first/birth mothers are waiting. Not all, it is true, but many.
In the meantime, I'm being slammed for having the temerity to speak up over at Newsday.
Lorraine from First Mother Forum
This is so maddening, isn't it? This post is a great response to the idiotic comments always heard in the fight for equal rights.
ReplyDeleteI stand with you and stand up for all adoptees to have equal rights to their original birth certificates!
Thank you Amanda!
ReplyDeleteWe have been called selfish, heartless, and ungrateful. Other comments have been paternalistic and condescending - usually warning adopted "children" to be careful about what they wish for, "curiosity killed the cat" and all that. And everybody has a cousin who is adopted and is FINE. Well, I'm fine too - but I still want my OBC.
My favorite is still the one who insisted that the reason we want our OBCs is to hunt down our first parents and kill them.
On the first parent front, we have the "promise of privacy" issue and we also have the "real parent" tirade where the "adoptive parents' worst nightmare" is the first parent who "waltzes in after all the hard work of actually raising the child is done".
Yes, you wiped our butts and helped us with our homework. I am now capable of wiping my own butt (and those of my grandchildren!) and I'm a licensed CPA to boot. Can I have my OBC now?
"Can't anyone imagine how that feels?"
ReplyDeleteI think they could if they wanted to. People are afraid to put themselves in our shoes. Deep down, they don't want to imagine what it would be like to have no knowledge of their heritage, so they push it away. Deep down, they know adoption is tragic and a product of loss, and that's why they shovel so much sugar frosted bullshit over it.
To try to make someone feel guilty for wanting to know their history, to try to make them feel ungrateful at the least or dangerous at the best because they want to know or have what everyone takes for granted, is the act of someone so desperate to be validated as "real" that they need to diminsh everything else.
ReplyDeleteIt is beyond sad how many people by into these myths in a desperate attempt to soothe their own insecurities about the power of blood ties.
If in their hearts they didn't realize that it was important they would't feel the need to attack it. I wonder when they will look in the mirror and realize that they have the things they are trying to deny others?
So many opinions from so many who, in so many cases, take for granted the fact that they don't have their rights denied from them.
ReplyDeleteI firmly believe those who protest an adoptee's right to their OBC do so out of fear. Old belief and myths continue to rule their opinion and they are not brave enough, strong enough, or whatever, to step away from that and actually look at it in a more honest light.
But I paid a lot for this kid - and don't want it to search
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be interesting to find the political/religious views of those commenters? In my experience, there is a mindset which believes in a black and white world which MUST obey laws written and unwritten, that there is only one right and all else is wrong. I suspect most of those commenters fall into that category.
ReplyDeleteThen there are those who understand the world in shades of grey, who don't seek to impose their values opon everyone else. Most of the people I have encountered who are liberal in their politics or theology seem to be that kind. So the fight for open records often falls into a conservative/liberal pattern with one side saying "Why?" and the other side "Why not?"