Borrowed, he breaks it down.

An Individual Right to Identity?

This is currently an issue at the state level. However, that may soon change.

Do you have a right to your identity? For 100 years or more, states have kept records of births, marriages, and deaths. But do you have a legal right to access those records? While you may currently be granted access, not everyone has been afforded that privilege. It is not a right. With the federal government building a national identification database, Congress attempting to federally define marriage with its accompanying certificate, and the AMA lobbying to require all births to occur in a hospital setting where ‘professionals’ are granted access to each and every baby as it leaves the womb, it may be time for more people to question who owns their identity.

Adoption is a very difficult issue to discuss rationally. People can be extremely emotional and defensive. After all, it’s for the children. I have a great amount of respect for the honest emotions of those who are personally affected. I’m not so compassionate toward those who elicit an emotional response for political purposes.

Adoption is an issue that has been veiled in secrecy. It is considered a private family matter. Yet it is legislated, regulated, administered, adjudicated, and subsidized by the state. It is really not so private as it is surrounded by a government mandated iron curtain. Public documents are sealed. Records are hidden under the premise of confidentiality. Well-trained special interest groups on both the right and the left raise objections at every attempt to open records. Adult adoptees who have worked toward opening public records are accused of refusing to grow up and come to terms with the past. And after all, this was all done for our benefit. How dare we bite the hand that fed us! Anti-abortion groups suggest that open records will cause pregnant, hormonal women to kill their unborn children. The debate is sensationalism at its finest.

It is easiest for me to explain my view if I explain how I became personally familiar with the issue.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice, I am adopted. I was adopted at birth. My adopted parents were nice enough people. They put up with me as well as can be expected. I like them. I always knew I was adopted. They didn’t hide it. They wished that I would never look for my natural mother, but they understood that it was my choice and my right. There were Freemasons in the family. They weren’t reptilians participating in a plot for world domination. My adopted parents were simply childless and on a waiting list for several years.

Since I had no legal right to know anything about my past and lacked the patience to wait until I was 18, I discovered my natural identity by the use of a little calculated pressure. My adopted mother divulged the given name of my natural mother. My adopted father confessed her surname. The head of the adoption agency read to me my file—absent the name of my parents. This was not a small job. From start to finish, it took six years. But I was committed to the cause. I did find the information and, eventually, my natural parents.

The story should end there and remain private were it not for certain bits and pieces of information that were disturbing to say the least.

According to the records of the adoption agency, my father was in the military on the other side of the planet. My mother was seven months pregnant before she came to live at the maternity home because she hid her pregnancy. (In those days, unwed mothers were locked away until they gave birth.) Even then, she refused to relinquish me and made quite a fuss about it. Her objections were recorded and read back to me. (I don’t know why they were read to me, but they included some very private conversations.) According to the records of the Home, she did not sign a termination of parental rights. (The adoption decree claims that she did.) The agency stated that her signature was not required as she was six weeks away from being 18 years of age at the time of my birth. I was held in foster care by the adoption agency until I was 5 ½ months old (long after she was 18). Then I was placed in a permanent home based on family history information given by my natural mother and my adoptive parents. In other words, I was genetically matched as closely as possible with my adoptive parents.

When I met my mother many, many years ago, I didn’t tell her what I knew. I let her tell her story however she wished. She made no mention of her opposition to the adoption. She did tell me that I was taken immediately upon delivery, and she was not allowed to see me at all. She completed a birth certificate, and she was upset that my name had been changed. She did not understand that would happen. When she learned I left home in my early teens (I had important business to attend to and, again, no patience), she was upset that she wasn’t notified and given the opportunity reclaim me. She wondered why I had not contacted her the minute I turned 18. She had no idea the records were sealed. She showed no sign of having any real understanding of the adoption process. She wasn’t unintelligent or without personal resources. She was simply young, naive, and misinformed at the time of my birth. She also appeared to be fairly traumatized by the events, even years later.

Lacking the ability to leave well enough alone, I set out to understand how all this had transpired. First there was the research data, the nature vs nurture studies. Of course these studies claim that children were assigned to parents of similar backgrounds because the social norms of the 60’s just so happened to have allowed white middle-class children to be placed with white middle-class parents. They were placed with parents of similar genetic backgrounds just on-accounta-because that’s just the way it was. It was a total coincidence that practice just happened to aid researchers in being able to better understand which personality traits are learned vs which are genetic. Nothing more than completely convenient coincidence. (And maybe the occasional reference to Harlow’s monkey.)

Then I began to find testimonies of women who had identical situations as that of my mother. They did not voluntarily relinquish their children. They were told unwed pregnancy was a symptom of neurosis. They were told they became pregnant on purpose because they wanted to intentionally hurt their parents. They were told if they were allowed to keep the child, the child would have a horrible life because of their mental deficiencies. They were told their desire to parent was selfish. They were told to forget about their child, give it to responsible people, and immediately resume their own role as a child. They were ridiculed for wanting to take personal responsibility for their situation. They were not allowed to see their child at birth. Some of them did not sign the TPR papers, but termination was not difficult as the hospital recorded their ‘lack of interest’ in the baby. Some of them signed under threats or intimidation. A very high percentage of them never had children again. (My mother didn’t either.) They claimed they didn’t tell anyone they had a child because they were so ashamed of what had happened to them.

Opinions vary as to the root cause of the events of the ‘Baby Scoop Era’ which began after WWII and lasted through the very early ‘70’s. It’s an especially difficult issue due to the emotional trauma to all parties directly involved. Adoptees don’t want to betray their adopted parents. Adoptive parents don’t want to hear that their child was coerced from his or her mother. And mothers often times just don’t want to relive that particular part of their past. Additionally, there are the special interest groups associated with adoption and their love for psychodrama—and the children, of course. Let us not forget, it’s all about the children.

The conjecture begins.

Many believe these events occurred to meet a demand for children. Thus, some of the injured parties have jumped on the Progressive bandwagon hoping increased government regulation will right the wrongs. I suppose one could blame the scenario on a free market demand seeking a supply and thereby vilify infertile couples as the creative force behind the private maternity homes who acted as their henchmen. I don’t personally believe this to an adequate explanation. Government intervention into private, personal matters set the stage. The secrecy would not have been possible without the help of sealed birth certificates and court documents courtesy of the government. I personally tend to believe the general study of social engineering was the motive behind the madness. But, that’s just me. By the way, their studies indicate political and religious beliefs are learned traits—a convenient bit of knowledge if you’re attempting to change those beliefs.

Whatever the root cause, the practice of modern adoption helped institute such principles as the psychological parent, the best interest of the child, and the increased role of state in the affairs of the family. These principles have become the standard in family law.

As the identification issue moves from a state to a federal level, it may be wise for every individual who intends to pass their identity to their children to take a closer look at public records and the secrecy that is allowed to surround them. Contract laws and private property laws that once dictated the adoption process have evolved into social rights such as the right to adopt. (Who has a right to another person’s child? Honestly.) This issue may appear to be confined to poor, unwanted, neglected, or abused children who have nothing to lose and everything to gain through adoption, but astonishingly, it’s really not always just about the children. If one person can be legally denied access to his or her God-given identity by a court of law, all persons could potentially be denied the same access given the right circumstances.

IMO, IF the state keeps public records, they should be public. While privacy concerns may be a valid reason to restrict the access of birth records to the parties listed on the certificate, there is no valid reason to restrict access to those parties. Private contracts drawn by private individuals concerning private property such as the transfer of custody and inheritance rights of minor children should also be a matter of public record if they are approved by a government court. Any benefit closed records may provide is outweighed by the public’s right to scrutinize government activity financed by tax dollars and supported by votes. (Especially that part of the public who was a party to the proceedings as a minor child.)



Some of these links will lean toward Progressive political cures. I cite them for the facts they contain, not necessarily the solutions they offer. Case in point, one of the articles suggests that the state grants adoptees an amended birth certificate with which they can do all the things non adopted persons can do with their original birth certificate. This, however, is neither the point nor is it true. Lineage organizations such as DAR will not recognize amended birth certificates. And why should they? The certificates are fraudulent.

http://www.uoregon.edu/~adoption/topics/matching.html

http://www.progressiveu.org/052437-a...records-primer

http://www.bastards.org/

http://www.babyscoopera.com/

http://www.adoptingback.com/not_by_choice.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_scoop_era

Last edited by RockEnds; 08-05-2008 at 12:16 AM.