--- Excerpted from abolishadoption@yahoogroups.com, (lovemycat52@y...)
wrote:
"I am 51 years old and I was adopted at 18 months old. I was a
psychological mess by the time I graduated from high school. I was in
and out of two mental hospitals etc and I tried to shove it all under
the carpet and pretend it didn't happen because I didn't understand why
or how or what. I pretty much managed to do that and keep it there
too. It wasn't until a little over a week ago that I started looking
into adoption and adoption rights and I stumbled upon your site on the
internet and started reading and then started reading other sites too.
Now I realize I wasn't crazy and everything. "The Primal Wound", I
mean, Oh My God, that is exactly how it is. I have written a letter to
a judge in Washington requesting my records. ....Sometimes the grief and
anger threatens
to engulf me like an ocean. I used to say that I could never understand
how someone could be angry enough to kill someone but I have felt that
much anger lately. I have received what amounts to a life sentence
away from my family and for what? Something that happened in my
mothers life? ...It is the ultimate child abuse. Sometimes I feel like
it is too hard to bear."
Excerpts from How Adoption in America Grew Secret,
by Elizabeth J. Samuels, Associate Professor of Law at
Baltimore University School
of Law and published in the Washington Post, 10-20-01.
To view the entire article, go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24915-2001Oct20.html
Associate Professor Elizabeth J. Samuels' brief bio -
http://law.ubalt.edu/faculty/samuels.html
- The general public assumption seems to be that, from the
beginning, adoption records were closed in large part to protect the
birth mother's identity. But that isn't the case at all -- as I
discovered when I undertook to research a question arising from my own
family's experience.
- 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.
- The historical record suggests that birth mothers were in fact
seeking a measure of confidentiality. What the mothers wanted, however,
was not to prevent the adoptive parents and the children they had
surrendered from discovering their identities, but to prevent their
families and communities from learning of their situations. A powerful
reason for the earliest closings of birth records to adult adoptees may
simply have been that it was consistent with an emerging social idea
about adoption: that it was a perfect and complete substitute for
creating a family by childbirth, so the adopted child had no other
family and would never be interested in learning about any other family.
- As more state legislatures contemplate giving adult adoptees the
right to research their ancestry, they should understand that once it
was considered entirely natural and desirable to let adoptees learn who
their people were.
Published books on social issues, particularly
on closed systems in the United States--foster care, adoption and prison systems--(See
Links to book titles, below)
The following definition is based on the definition of "adoption" in
Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition, published by
Simon & Schuster:
o 140,000,000 Americans (1/2 the U.S. population) have an adoption
in their immediate family (AmFOR's estimate based on surveys
of adoptive families by adoption search and support umbrella organizations
in The Open Records Movement in the U.S., particularly Musser
Foundation, 1990 - using government's conservative estimate of 5-10,000,000
adoptees (or an estimated 7 million) & adding two sets of
parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts & uncles (not counting the adoptee's
children, cousins, etc);
o 13% of all adopted children were returned to state officials in
1989;
o 25% of all adopted children who are older or who have physical
or emotional problems were returned by their adopters in 1989; (Child Welfare
League of America)
o 50%-80% of ALL FOREIGN ADOPTIONS are terminated (agency & association
estimates quoted in "Foreign Adoption Sours; Risk Not Uncommon," Saginaw
News-MI, 2/24/91)
o $60,000 is the average cost of a private adoption,
1999-2000 (Amy Thurston, National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, Washington,
DC 1-888-251-0075);
o 4,500 genetically transmitted diseases and AIDS, when discovered
post-adoption, cannot be disclosed directly to the
family it concerns, in most states, just added to adoption agency's
file for possible disclosure years later; (FindLaw for statutes and "50-State
Survey of Opinions," American Society of Human Genetics);
o 3 out of 22 items of basic information about themselves
is all that is known to most adult adoptees surveyed ("Adoption-In-Search"
Newsletter, Autumn/Winter 1986 and confirmed by surveys of AmFOR & other
search/support groups,1990's);
o 4 states (Kansas, Alaska, Oregon, Tennessee) permit
adult adoptee access to their original birth certificates
in Y-2001; 9 states have no disclosure (See FindLaw);
o 98-99% of mothers wanted to be found (AmFOR, national
search/support groups & Winona Durbin, Riverside County/CA Dept.
of Social Services--who reported only one
mother refused contact in 18 years & thousands of contacts);
o 100% of adult adoptees wanted to be found (AmFOR & national
search groups);
o 93% of adoptees were pleased with the outcome of
their reunions with parents (Paul Sachdev, Professor,
Memorial University; also AmFOR & national searchers)
o $300-$3000 or more is price quoted for adoptee/parent identity
& whereabouts &/or contact by ($300-$500 by court appointed
"confidential intermediaries" in MI, WA state & most "CI"
states; $300-up for names from birth indexes; $1500-up for searches
to locate; $3000-up for "underground" search; $150 by
The Children's Center-CT & other "nonprofit" adoption
agencies; $100/hour for "non-identifying background information"
by Children's Home Society of Santa Ana & other "nonprofit"
adoption agencies--All fees are nonrefundable regardless of nonprovision
of information or contact);
o $5000 is the highest fine (CA) for unauthorized disclosure
from a sealed adoption record (exceeded only by former Soviet Union with
no public vital records); in Texas & some other states, the penalty
is greater than for unlicensed placement or babyselling;
o 99 years for sealing, plus felonizing with fine & imprisonment
for unauthorized disclosure from a sealed adoption file is recommended by
the National Uniform Adoption Act;
o 82% (641,015) of "Playgirl" magazine's readership
polled favored adoptees' "right to know" and seek out their natural
parents (Playgirl Reader's Poll, 1985);
o 77% said YES to Parenting Magazine Poll that asked "Should adoptees
be able to access their own birth records?"
(Parenting Magazine, August poll results, November 2000, p. 30)
o 57% (609,268) of Oregon voters voted to permit adult adoptees
access to their original birth certificate on the first such general ballot
(Measure 58, 1999);
o 60-85% of internees at Coldwater Canyon Center for Personal
Development, a psychiatric hospital, were adoptees; most were referrals
from Juvenile Probation Dept. (Dr. Lee Bloom, former Unit Diector, Coldwater
Canyon Hospital, Hollywood, CA, reported in "Growing Up Behind Locked
Doors," Rolling Stone magazine, 11/20/86);
o 20-30% of adolescents and chldren in psychiatric in-patient
unites are adoptees (Lincoln Caplan, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, in "An
Open Adoption" cited also in "Bottom Line" financial newsletter,
9/15/90)
o 45% of all "602's" (felonies committed by juveniles)
are by adoptees (Interstate Compact on Children, reported by June Idler,
Juvenile Compact, Riverside County Juvenile Probation
Dept., 1988);
o 50% of the world's and 76% of serial killers in the U.S.
are adoptees (For complete listing from excerpted newsclips &
sources, see "Chosen Children" by Lori Carangelo);
o 1,000 relinquishing mothers surveyed
subsequently chose abortion over the pain of relinquishing another
child to secret adoption (AmFOR surveys, 1990's)
(*) For MORE Statistics of Adoption on this
website, CLICK HERE.
