April 6, 2004
Testimony before the
Children and Family Law Committee of the New Hampshire House of Representative,
on Senate Bill 335, by Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Evan B.
Donaldson Adoption Institute
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Good morning and thank you for providing me the
opportunity to testify on SB335, permitting adult adoptees access to their original birth
certificates. The issue you are
examining today is far more important than most people perceive it to be, both
in practical terms for the tens of millions of Americans that it stigmatizes –
and I mean both birth parents and adopted people – and symbolically, because we
keep secrets about things we are ashamed of or embarrassed about. So, when we
seal birth certificates, we send the clear signal that adoption is somehow a
lesser way of forming a family, because it has something to hide from the very
start. Thank God, we are emerging from the period of our history in which
people actually believed that was true, a period in which adoption was a
shadowy secret, a period in which we denigrated nearly everyone touched by this
wondrous institution, a period in which we even turned the words “you’re
adopted” into an insult. My children are not an insult, and neither are anyone
else’s, regardless of how they came into a family or why they left one. But
some remnants of those dark days remain, and sealed birth certificates are one
of those remnants.
It is also difficult to learn much about secrets. As
a result, many myths, misconceptions and stereotypes have come to be widely
accepted – even by some professionals in the adoption field. The Evan B.
Donaldson Adoption Institute, which I am proud to head, has no formal ties with
any interest group or segment of the adoption community. It is an independent
research and education organization that was created for just one reason: to
provide accurate, research-based information for practitioners, policymakers,
journalists and others so that we, as a society, can shape better laws,
policies and practices to improve the lives of everyone touched by adoption,
especially children.
I will try not to take up too much of your time. So
I’ve boiled down the rest of my testimony into bullet points about research
that applies specifically to the issue of sealed birth certificates. I will
steer away from any disputed findings, and will stick to only those confirmed
by hard data, widely accepted studies, or pervasive experience. I will submit
footnotes and supporting materials for the record:
First, as you have already heard, it is a
historical fact that adoption-related records – in New Hampshire and across the
United States – were closed to protect adopted children from the stigma and
shame of illegitimacy, and biological mothers from the stigma and shame of
unwed motherhood. The clear legislative and professional intent was to prevent
access to those records by the public, not by the parties to an adoption
themselves. Historically, the notion that birth certificates were sealed to
ensure the anonymity of birth mothers is simply untrue, irrespective of whether
providing anonymity is a good idea or not.
Second, it needs to be stressed that adopted people
are not stalkers or ingrates or children in search of new mommies and daddies.
They are simply adults who want the same information the rest of us receive as
a birthright. In his book “Roots,” Alex Haley wrote: “In all of us there is a
hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have
come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning; no
matter what our attainments in life, there is the most disquieting loneliness.”
Research, experience and instinct all
affirm Haley’s eloquent observation. And adopted people are not exempt from the
laws of nature. They love their parents – that is, their adoptive parents –
just as much and are just as loyal as if they had been born to them. But a
growing majority wants to know who they are and where they came from.
Statistically, most do not form relationships with
their biological kin or even make contact; for them, just having the most basic
information about themselves is enough; it makes them feel they are treated
equally, and it makes them feel whole. The fact is that access to their
documents has become an issue that is separate from the question of “search”
anyway. That is because, as a result of the Internet and other modern-day
resources, many if not most adoptees who want to find their birth relatives can
do so with or without their original birth certificates. One other detail
relating to adoptees: They are wrong when they complain that they are the only
Americans whose records are automatically sealed, and cannot be opened without
court approval. In fact, the same process applies to people placed in the
Federal Witness Protection Program.
Third, the notion that a lack of anonymity leads
women to have abortions rather than place their children for adoption is
pure fiction. It may sound correct intuitively but, in fact, just the
opposite is true in practice; the research indicates that women are at least as
likely to carry their babies to term and place them into adoptive homes if they
believe they will have ongoing knowledge about what happened to those children.
The evidence is in the growing number of states where adoption records have most recently been
unsealed, and it extends much further and for much longer: In Kansas and
Alaska, the only two states in which records have never been closed, there have
consistently been fewer abortions and more adoptions than in states that border
them or in the country as a whole.
Fourth, on the critically important question of the
birth mothers’ desires, the research is unambiguous: Every study I have seen or
am aware of relating to whether they want anonymity clearly shows that the vast
majority do not – and that applies to those who were verbally assured of
anonymity as well as those who were verbally assured they would one day have
contact with the children they bore; yes, many women were promised exactly the
opposite of anonymity, but those promises are seldom publicly discussed. Back
to the numbers: Depending on the study, between 80 and 95 percent of birth
mothers do indeed want some level of information or contact with the lives they
created. That doesn’t mean they want to give up their privacy, but there’s a
huge difference between privacy and secrecy. And it doesn’t mean they
necessarily want the information or contact right away – some only want it
years later, when they’ve had enough time to deal with the personal and
emotional consequences of their action or, increasingly often, when they
discover they have genetic or medical information they want to share.
Even among those who genuinely thought they wanted
anonymity at the time of placement, the majority eventually changes their
minds. Life is not a snapshot, after all, and few of us would want to live
forever with the decisions we made at the age of 17, or even 25. Yet the core
argument against unsealing birth records is predicated on the mistaken belief
that birth mothers are of one mind – and it will never change. This is not only
a fundamental misunderstanding of research and experience, on a human level it
assumes a woman can carry a child within her and then part with that child and
just “move on,” as though she has given away an old record player. That view –
essentially relegating women to the role of baby-making machines – pervaded
adoption for generations. Thank God, it is changing radically and adoption practices
are being reshaped in comprehensive, historic ways as a result. The bottom line
is that birth certificates remain sealed in most of our country today because
of lingering myths and mistaken stereotypes.
Finally, keeping birth
certificates sealed contradicts the stated desires of almost everyone directly
affected, and it flies in the face of majority opinion throughout the United
States. That applies to birth mothers, who seldom choose not to be
contacted in states where they can state a preference; it applies to adopted
people who – once they are adults – favor access to their records by margins of
about 4 to 1; it applies to a large and growing number of adoptive parents, a clear majority of whom
have already told their children about their origins anyway; and, according to
a recent study, it applies to the American public as a whole. The study, which
had a 3 percent margin of error, asked this question: “Should adopted children
be granted full access to their adoption records when they become adults?”
Eighty-four percent responded, “yes.”
I respectfully ask the members of this committee to
put aside the aberrational anecdotes, emotional appeals, and corrosive myths on
which too much public policy relating to adoption has been based for far too
long. Instead, please examine the research. I believe that, after you do, you
will come to the same conclusion as that 84 percent. Again, thank you very
much.
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