When one thinks of the civil rights movement, certain images come to mind: James Meredith being escorted to the University of Mississippi by U.S. Marshals, dogs and fire hoses being turned on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King standing at the Lincoln Memorial telling the world about his dream of racial equity. There are images of another civil rights movement, however, that the public does not see: young women in maternity wards or legal offices with tears streaming down their faces, adoptees standing on courthouse steps shaking with rage and frustration because their request for a copy of their original birth certificate has been denied simply because they were adopted, parents bowing their heads in shame on seeing how the state treats their adopted sons and daughters. While many think of those who struggled for racial equality as heroes, those who struggle for birth records equality are viewed as curious at best and ingrates at worst.
The civil rights movement for racial equality began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a bus to a white man. The civil rights movement for birth records equality began a year earlier when Jean Paton published The Adopted Break Silence. Paton’s book was the first ever to compile interviews with adoptees that questioned the legitimacy of sealed birth records for adoptees. She subsequently formed Orphan Voyage, an adoptee group that gave adoptees access to each other.
The movement lay largely dormant, however, for two decades. In 1971 Florence Fisher founded the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA) and published her landmark book Searching for Anna Fisher two tears later. Using the impetus of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, the Adoption Rights Movement (ARM) gained strength throughout the 70s and 80s and continues to the present day.
Hurdles to Overcome
Notwithstanding the fact that this civil rights movement has existed for nearly three decades now, little progress has been made in the area of equality of birth records. There are several reasons for this lack of progress.
One obstacle that the ARM faces is the fact that adoption is an issue dealt with at the state level. Unlike the movement for racial equality, it is difficult to form a national coalition because each state has varying laws and can only be changed by the state legislatures. There is no constitutional provision allowing Congress to regulate intrastate adoption on a national level. Thus, instead of presenting its case to the nation as a whole, the ARM has to organize, lobby and educate at a state level. If a victory is won in a single state (as has been recently done in Oregon and Tennessee) proponents of adoption rights have to start over from scratch in another state. The legislatures of different states are not bound by what another state legislature has done and therefore the ARM faces an uphill battle every time it tries to reform state law.
Another obstacle that those concerned with adoption rights have to overcome is the very secrecy they are trying to do away with. Because so many states have attached a legislative stigma to adoptees as bastards whose past must be hidden from them, it is difficult to reach other members of the adoption triad of adoptees-birth families-adoptive families. Adoption is thought to touch very few Americans, although a recent study showed that 58% of Americans had first hand experience with adoption. Even though a majority of Americans have this experience, it is difficult to find members of the adoption triad in the states that seal records.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle that those concerned with adoption rights have to overcome is the attitude that adoption records are a personal, family reunion issue rather than a civil rights issue. This attitude fails to grasp the basic tenets of the ARM.
Adoptees are treated as a separate class of citizens from children raised by their biological parents. When I was 18, I called my local courthouse and requested a copy of my original birth certificate. I was asked if my parents were married when I was born. I told them they were not and asked what difference it made. I was told that the original birth certificates of children whose parents were not married at the time of birth were not kept at the courthouse with everyone else’s, but were sent and stored in the state capital. I was further informed that if I was adopted I would not be given access to the records without a court order.
Obviously this law was based on my "illegitimate" birth status. Laws that segregate "illegitimate" children from "legitimate" children continue to be upheld in the majority of states. These laws are upheld notwithstanding Supreme Court decisions stating explicitly that "illegitimate" children may not be punished for their birth status.
In the 50s and 60s, most white Americans took it for granted that they had access to the front of the bus, lunch counters and other public facilities throughout the nation. Today, Americans of all races who were raised by their biological parents take it for granted that they can access their own original birth certificate for a nominal fee anytime they want. Only the insular minority of adoptees faces a legal obstacle to such basic information.
If any other segment of society wants to contact its biological relatives or do genealogical research it faces no legal obstacles. When adoptees want access to their own birth certificates or biological relatives they are forced to wend their way through the cumbersome legal system, or hire private investigators to sneak around and lie to obtain the information.
All Americans have a right to free speech that includes the right to "receive, the right to read... and freedom of inquiry." (Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 482, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 1680 (1965).) They have the right to form "the self". All Americans, that is, except adoptees. Adoptees often have to show "good cause" to prove that they are entitled to the information other Americans take for granted.
More than Just Adoptees Are Affected
So far, I have talked about the rights of adoptees, but the ARM encompasses more people than adoptees. The movement is also concerned with the rights of biological parents (the overwhelming majority of whom do not object to being found) and adoptive parents.
The prevalence of sealed records in America hinders the rights of biological parents to contact their offspring, even if their motives are altruistic. (See Adoption of Baby S., 308 N.J. Super 207, 705 A.2d 822 (1997) (holding that a biological mother who wanted the record opened so she could meet her son and bequeath her estate to him failed to show good cause to open the record ).) Countless birth parents are placed at the mercy of a legal regime in which they had no say.
Adoptive parents are also the victims of the shroud of secrecy placed on adoption. Just as unscrupulous "baby farmers" used confidentiality in the 1930s to obtain more infants for adoption, adoption agencies often hide behind the veil and pass off children with special needs as perfectly healthy. (See Marci J. Blank, Adoption Nightmares Prompt Judicial Recognition of the Tort of Wrongful Adoption: Will New York Follow Suit?, 15 Cardozo L. Rev. 1687 (1994), (telling of an adoptive family who learned when their son was 28 years old that his biological mother suffered from psychological problems and had a frontal lobotomy prior to giving birth as well as the fact that between 1983-1987, sixty-nine adoptions were nullified in California because the physical and mental conditions of the adoptees were fraudulently misrepresented by adoption agencies).) These practices can cause adoptive parents to incur financial and emotional burdens that they would otherwise not have to bear.
The adoption rights movement is not a movement pushing for reunion. It is a movement about human dignity and equal treatment under the law. In other words, it is a civil rights movement.
