FACT:
Adoption records have been open in Scotland since 1930, in Great Britain
since 1975, in Australia since 1991, and in New Zealand since 1985.
FACT: Canada
is the LAST remaining Commonwealth nation keeping adoption records closed.
FACT: Nations
such as Finland, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Norway and Israel have NEVER
closed their adoption records.
FACT: In the
United States, adoption records are open to adoptees in Oregon, Tennessee,
Alaska, and Kansas, and lobbies are working to open records again in
several other states.
FACT: Natural
parents were NEVER promised confidentiality. It was not within the legal
rights of agencies to make this promise. No surrender agreement includes
this promise, and no legislation has ever implemented it.
FACT: Over 90%
of natural parents welcome contact with the children they had lost to
adoption. Fifty percent of those who initially reject contact change
their minds within a year.
FACT: Open adoption
records does NOT mean open to the public. It means that family members
separated by adoption may obtain the identifying information (legal
names) of those whom they were separated from. It does NOT means that
counsellor or hospital records are released.
FACT: Closed
adoption records are a 20th century phenomena (and as an aside, so is
infant adoption!)
FACT: Closed
adoption records systems violate several United Nations human rights
conventions.
THE CONFIDENTIALITY MYTH:
" In actual
practice, the identities of [natural] parents are routinely available
to adoptive parents. Adoption petitions, hospital records we are given,
social work and nursing records, and other documents passed from state
and private agencies to foster parents and on to we adoptive parents
often identify [natural] parents by name. Often we also find our children's
[natural] parents' social security numbers and addresses in our children's
records. To defend against wrongful adoption lawsuits, adoption agencies
and facilitators must disclose so much to adoptive parents that any
so-called "promise" of withholding identifying information
about [natural] parents can only be a myth. " - L. Anne Babb, PhD
(Psychology). Dr. Babb is an adoptive mother of twelve children, past-president
of the American Adoption Congress and author of "In Whose Best
Interest: Ethics in American Adoption." She is cited in the CUB
essay on the profit motive in adoption at http://www.cubirthparents.org/infant.pdf
"...The NCFA
uses [natural] parent privacy as a red herring, but in reality, they
care little about what [natural] parents want. Records are not sealed
at relinquishment, as they would be if [natural] parent 'privacy' were
an issue at all. They are sealed upon finalization of the adoption by
the adoptive family" - Shea Grimm,
quote courtesy of The
Center For Adoptee Rights
"Secrecy in
adoption probably has its roots in a desire to protect the child from
interference from the biological parents and to hide the often illegitimate
circumstances of the child's origins." - Ministry of Communications
and Social Services Report by the Committee on Record Disclosure to
Adoptees (1976)
"Legal adoption
in America only came into being starting in the second half of the 19th
century, and at first all adoption records were open to the public.
When they began to be closed, it was only to the general public, and
the intent was to protect adoptees from public scrutiny of the circumstances
of their birth. Later, as states began to close records to
the parties themselves, they did so not to provide lifelong
anonymity for birth mothers, but the other way around -- to protect
adoptive families from possible interference or harassment by birth
parents." - "How Adoption in America Grew Secret - Birth
Records Weren't Closed for the Reasons You Might Think", Washington
Post article by Professor Elizabeth J. Samuels, Baltimore School
of Law
