Keyword: Mom

8 September 1997

The Internet makes information easy to find - even information some people would rather you never found. The access to people, medical information, and government databases brought about by the information revolution is having profound effects on some sectors of society where secrecy is a covenant - like adoption.

Adoption records in the United States have been sealed since the 1930s. By sealing the records, social reformers hoped that they could simultaneously eliminate the birth mother's stigma of having an illegitimate child and the adopting couple's stigma of infertility. Closed adoption was a huge social experiment that involved every state of the nation except Kansas, where the records were never closed.

"I would call it the single most successful experiment in family history," says NCFA's spokesperson Patrick Purtill. "The adoptees that have been studied are doing fantastically."

But not everybody agrees, and the dissenters are taking their fight to the Net. The entire debate may be short-lived, though, because, as one adoption agency rep said, "The Internet is going to make confidentiality a joke."

A case study: For several years, Shea Grimm suffered from painful back problems. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with Grimm, but the pain continued. When physicians asked for her family medical history, Grimm, who was adopted, couldn't offer much. Finally Grimm spoke to her birth mother, and she learned that her mother had suffered from a back condition that can run in families.

"[My mother] had gone into weight training to strengthen her back muscles, on the advice of her doctors, to compensate for the weakness of her disk," says Grimm. "That's what I did. It became a big hobby of mine. And it made all of the difference in the world."

That was six years ago. Today, at age 31, Grimm seldom has back problems. Neither does her mother, aged 51. But for 25 years Shea Grimm couldn't give doctors a family medical history or ask her mother what to do about her ongoing back problems. Likewise, she didn't know if she had a family history of cancer, diabetes, or any other possibly inherited disease. Shortly after Shea was born, her mother, who was 20 years old at the time, put her up for adoption. A new birth certificate was issued for her, with the names of her birth mother and father changed to those of the people who had adopted her. Her original birth certificate was taken and sealed away.

Beyond sealing her genealogy, says Grimm, the court had sealed something else: her heritage. "I am half Native American Indian. I was denied the information that has allowed me to have my tribal membership. All of these things that people take for granted, that assist you in raising your family, I was denied."

Shea Grimm is also, not coincidentally, the legislative chair of Bastard Nation, a political-action organization that is fighting to reform the nation's adoption laws. Incorporated last October, Bastard Nation now claims 500 members and is growing fast - thanks, in part, to the power of the Internet to spread information and create special-interest communities. The group has consciously modeled itself on Queer Nation, a gay and lesbian political-action organization. Its agenda advocates open records for adult adoptees, search and reunion support, and freedom of expression regarding all aspects of the adoptee experience.

Grimm's opposition comes in the form of Bill Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption (NCFA). Pierce says the Net is encouraging a dangerous trend. Opening adoption records would compromise the privacy and perhaps ruin the lives of millions of Americans - people who are now in their 20s as well as people in their 70s. Changing adoption policy now just because technology facilitates it would obviate millions of guarantees of confidentiality, Pierce said.

The ideal of open and accessible information has dire consequences, Pierce says, with implications not only for privacy law and adoption policy, but for political lightning rods like abortion and child abandonment.

Opening records would cause a dramatic drop in the number of adoptions that take place each year, Pierce said. "Sweden changed its law, and no longer allowed people to be sperm donors anonymously. The number of people who were willing to be sperm donors fell precipitously, and Swedes who wanted to avail themselves of this medical technique had to go to Norway or Denmark to get donor insemination services."

According to NCFA, England experienced a drop of more than 66 percent in adoptions after it ended closed adoptions. Australia experienced a 51 percent decline after opening its books in 1988.

But a growing number of adoptees in the United States, including those at Bastard Nation, are voicing their anger at the secrecy and feel that the privacy of birth parents has come at the expense of their children. "They try to imply that they are protecting the birth mother's confidentiality," says Abigail Lovett, vice president of the American Adoption Congress, another adoptee-rights group. She argues that the privacy protected by existing adoption policy doesn't apply to the adoptees, and information is denied only to a select group of people.

Lovett was denied information about her adoption for years, although many members of her community knew more than she did. "Just after my adoptive mother died, the doctor who delivered me came into my store [and] asked for me by name," says Lovett. Apparently the doctor and the lawyer who had handled the adoption had been talking about her at a dinner party. "I grew up knowing that I was adopted. I knew the doctor who delivered me. Everybody in his office knew my story. The hospital and that staff knew my story. The attorney and his staff knew my story. And the court and their staff knew my story. All of these people within my community knew my story. They knew more about me than I knew. I was not allowed to know my story. I am not allowed to look at my birth records; I am not allowed to look at my court records."

Then again, say defenders of sealed records, finding birth parents isn't necessarily a glorious experience.

But, says Damsel Plum, the publications chair for Bastard Nation, the issue isn't reunions. "A lot of people aren't looking for family, they are simply looking for information. There are rights that are afforded every other adult citizen of this nation which you, as an adult adoptee, are denied, simply by virtue of your adopted status."

From a medical point of view, the fundamental problem with closed adoptions is that even after all of the paperwork is done and the records are sealed, there is still an essential genetic bond between the birth parents and the child. No matter what the forged birth certificate says, adopted children do not take on the genes of their adoptive parents.

"As we go into the next century, we are realizing how utterly important genetic information is," says Abigail Lovett. "We are realizing that breast cancer has genetic predispositions. If you grow up knowing that breast cancer is in your family, you will eat and treat yourself completely different."

Back at NCFA, president Bill Pierce says the medical issue is "largely a red herring." Pierce says that adoptees searching for their birth parents really just want the medical information so that they can find their parents' true identities. "In the same piece of legislation that we have recommended creating mutual consent registries, we have incorporated a provision which requires the collection, maintenance, and sharing of non-identifying medical, social, and genetic information. We even include a form for the collection."

Unfortunately, mutual consent registries don't work in the case where they are needed the most - when a birth parent dies of a hereditary disease after having given a child up for adoption. The child might have a genetic time bomb ticking, with no warning signs.

Pierce isn't moved. "The medical people that I have talked to basically say, 'Bill, we can treat kids without a scrap of medical background. We do it all the time with kids who come from Korea. We can also, through genetic testing and through DNA testing, determine what we need to determine.'"

That's a losing argument. "Let me ask you a question: Do you like needles?" asks Lovett. "I hate needles. The thought that I would have to go in and be randomly tested for everything is unfair - and an incredible expense on the health insurance companies."

Furthermore, such testing may be asking for trouble, as there are many documented cases of insurance discrimination against people who tested positive for genetic diseases.

Ultimately, the growing availability of online information may render the controversy moot. At the Bastard Nation Web site, there are detailed instructions on how to go about searching for birth parents. And there are links to other online information sources - sources like the Social Security Death Indices, genealogical databases, and traditional Internet search engines like Four11.

"The Internet is going to make confidentiality a joke, in terms of the ability of people to find each other," says Dawn Smith-Pliner, who runs a Vermont adoption agency. "In fact, we already use [the Net] for that purpose here at the agency. If somebody wants to find someone definitely enough, they are going to be able to do it online."

Whether by legislation or by technological fiat, she sees an end to closed adoptions and an opening of all adoption records within the next 20 years. "Adults are going to have to recognize the importance of an adoptee's connection to their birth families. I think that is beginning to happen on a national basis."

. . . .

Should adoption records be accessible on the Net?