"Just 'Cause"

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One of my adoptee friends said something SO profound to a Judge when he was smugly reminded he must have "just cause" to release his obc ~

His answer? "How about JUST 'CAUSE I want to know!"

Adoptees should have unconditional access to their original birth certificate JUST 'CAUSE they are ADULTS.
JUST 'CAUSE they should have equal standing with every other American citizen, who takes that right for granted.
JUST 'CAUSE it is RIGHT.

"Achieving Equal Access to Records" by L. Anne Babb, Ph.D.

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Usually the people who oppose open records are adoptive parents and lawmakers. The majority of our opponents are Caucasian, and most of them are men. Many have personal and profit-based connections to adoption and have reasons on that basis for opposing adoptee access to the original birth certificate.
How are we to achieve equality in records access when we have to deal with wrong-headed folks who are so powerful and who have so many compelling reasons to oppose open records? I think there are four things that adoption reform activists can do to achieve equal access even when wrong-headed people with destructive mindsets oppose us:
1. Help people see open records as an issue of justice.
The first thing you can do to achieve equal access to records is to help people see open records as an issue of justice. There are universal principles of right and wrong that transcend culture, race, time, religion, and space. They are eternal principles, and one of them is the principle of justice. You don't just take what isn't yours; you treat people fairly; you don't take away from others rights that you yourself possess. In the Bible's book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 10, it says, "Woe to those who enact evil statutes, and to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of My people of their rights, in order that... they may plunder the orphans. "Woe to those who enact evil statutes," and to those who help them do it. But not everyone understands open records as an issue of justice. We talk about "civil rights for adoptees," but when people think of civil rights, they think of the civil rights movement for African Americans, about Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks.
They can't really see how your civil rights are being abrogated because you're Caucasian and you're smart and you even seem privileged.
Because adoption has developed along parallel racial lines in America, most of the people complaining about closed records and fighting to open them are European American. People of color in this country haven't trusted our adoption system and have most often adopted informally, as part of the process preserving the birth heritage of the children so adopted.
Thus, my son-in-law, an African American adoptee, knows his birth and adoptive families and has from the time he was a very little boy. He has relationships with both and doesn't differentiate between his siblings by birth and those by adoption, or his aunts, uncles, and cousins by birth and those by adoption. He grew up with the name given to him by his original mother at birth. No one ever had to seal his birth certificate. No one wanted to.
To the average-thinking person, the sealed birth certificate is a stupid idea. My own children scoff at it in discussion since they all know who they are, what their names at birth were, and who their parents-all of them-are. Those in relationship with their birth parents aren't confused about who their "real" parents are. As one of our adopted kids recently said, "When somebody asks me, 'What about your real parents?,' I say 'Which ones?"' That's what people will naturally tend to do in adoption if we let them be. if we let them think for themselves.
Unfortunately, many Americans have had some help thinking about adoption, and they've had help from the wrong people. They don't readily recognize open records as an issue of justice at its foundation. Those who "get it" as an ethical issue of justice don't need to be appealed to: they're already with us, on the same page. But those who don't get it need to be appealed to.
So the second step to achieving equal access to records is
2. Appeal to those who can be appealed to.
As I said, those who don't "get" equal access to records as an issue of justice are wrong-headed because they've either had a wrong-headed person feeding them bad information, or because they themselves are wrong-hearted.
Adolf Hitler recognized the power of lies and emotion. He said that he used emotion to sway the many and reserved reason for the few. In Mein Kampf, he wrote, "By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell-and hell, heaven... The greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed." About wrong-hearted people with destructive mindsets, the Apostle Peter wrote,"... in their greed they will exploit you with false words." As Doe v. Sundquist proved, judges and lawmakers can be appealed to through the use of facts. We counter the lie that open records increases abortions by pointing to statistics in Alaska, Kansas, Great Britain, and New South Wales that show just the opposite. We counter the lie that birth mothers don't want to be found by showing that the vast majority do not oppose birth certificate access.
We dispense with these same old, tired arguments and then we come in and we teach people about justice. Because we must never; ever forget to simply refute the lies. We have to do more than just play defense. We have to bring our offense out if we want to score. We have to show people who can be appealed to that this is an issue of justice. We have to show people, as Martin Luther King did, that "passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil."
And in order to appeal to those who can be appealed to, we have to take the high road. We can't fight lies with lies; we can't fight soft-mindedness by being soft-minded ourselves. We can't fight compromise by compromising. No compromise: that has to be our stance.
The third thing you can do to achieve equal access to records is to
3. Reprove those who can't be appealed to.
Why? Why do we need to reprove and correct those who can't be appealed to? We're talking about the wrong-headed people who are that way because they're wrong-hearted. You can give them all the information in the world about justice, right and wrong, civil rights, and appeal to every human value and emotion you want to, and they will remain unmoved. They are closed-minded because their hearts are closed to you. You couldn't pry their hearts open with a crowbar and you can't do it no matter how eloquent or true your appeals. So why reprove those who can't be appealed to?
Because it's the right thing to do. The Prophet Isaiah, adviser to King Hezekiah about 739 B.C. said, "Learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the ruthless; defend the orphan, plead for the widow."
If we keep quiet about the injustices being done--even if they are done by powerful people--we're enabling it to continue. In a sense, we're hiding the shame of our society and of our adoptive parents, and of the lawmakers, agency people, and attorneys who have helped them to perpetuate the lie that it's OK to compromise someone else's rights. The Prophet Ezekiel reproved his wicked countrymen by saying, "you have injured your neighbor for gain by oppression." That's calling a spade, a spade.
The fourth thing you can do to achieve equal access to records is
4. Stick together and increase your ranks.
They say there is strength in numbers. We know that there is also stupidity in numbers. Martin Luther King said that everyone seems to crave the anaesthetizing security of being identified with the majority."
Make people want to be a part of your majority, as activists have done in Oregon. You know, when Rosa Parks first decided to take the responsibility for her personal justice into her own hands, I'm sure there wasn't a rush of White folks or Black ones to sit beside her and around her on that bus in a show of strength and solidarity of number. But I am equally sure, and history confirms, that people standing up for what's right because it is right eventually wins out. Like water over a rock, people together doing the right thing wears down those who are doing the wrong.
The fifth thing you can do to achieve equal access to records is
5. Pray.
Proverbs 23:10 says, Do not move the ancient boundary, or go into the fields of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is strong; He will plead their case against you.
Exodus 22:22-23 says, You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. if you afflict him at all, and if he does cry out to me, I will surely hear his cry; and My anger will be kindled...
And then, the Prophet Jeremiah, who lived from 626 B.C. to 587 B.C., had a lot to say about the interest of God in dealing with injustice. Jeremiah lived during the time of Israel's Babylonian exile. The Assyrian Empire had disintegrated after the fall if its capital, Ninevah, in 612 B.C. Babylon ruled the civilized world, and two political parties vied for control of the captive court at Jerusalem. The pro-Egyptian party believed that Egypt was reviving as a world power and should be relied upon by the Jews as a bulwark against Babylonian aggression. The pro-Babylonians urged submission to Babylon--compromise with them--as the price of continued national existence (sound familiar?).
The prophets of God counseled the nation to look neither to Egypt nor to Babylon, but to trust in God. So the prophet Jeremiah had this to say about the nation he lived in: Wicked men are found among My people, they watch like fowlers lying in wait; they set a trap; they catch men. Like a cage full of birds, so their houses are full of deceit; therefore they have become great and rich.
They are fat, they are sleek, they also excel in deeds of wickedness; they do not plead the cause, the cause of the orphan, that they may prosper; and they do not defend the rights of the poor. Shall I not punish for these things? declares the Lord, On a nation such as this shall I not avenge Myself?
I believe that it's not only emotionally and psychologically dangerous to have the destructive mind-sets I talked about earlier. I also believe that it is spiritually dangerous. I believe that in the long run, people tend to grow toward what expresses goodness, justice, and love, because I believe God is a God of goodness, justice and love. This is a God who can be appealed to through prayer.
As the Apostle James wrote, the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. So if you pray, pray for justice. Pray for Divine intervention, and ask God to throw open the records that men say they will never open. Jesus said that there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.
The God of the Bible is on the side of justice; He is on your side. If you pray, pray. Ask Him to help the cause of equal access to records, and ask Him to deal with our opponents.
And if you don't pray, or don't even believe in God, that's OK. Whether you pray or not, the outcome will be the same: Justice is coming because there's just no holding it back.
Advocate, activist, and author of "Ethics in American Adoption" and "Adopting and Advocating for the Special Needs Child", Mrs. Babb is the mother of 12 children, including six adopted with special needs, all either transracial or international. She is the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC), NAATRJN representative for Oklahoma, Executive Director of The Family Tree Adoption Advocacy Center and former President of the American Adoption Congress (AAC).
(This article first appeared in the Spring/Summer 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)
Copyright 1998 L. Anne BabbAll Rights Reserved.

Three Destructive Mindsets of Adoptive Parents

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Adoptive Parents: Fables, Facts, Fears by L. Anne Babb, Ph.D.

Three Destructive Mindsets of Adoptive Parents
The three destructive mindsets that make powerful adoptive parents scary adoptive parents are, in Biblical parlance:
Saving one's life
What I fear has come upon me
Give me children, lest I die.

Saving One's life vs. Letting Go of It
Often, when adoptive parents oppose adoptee access to the original birth certificate, they say "We're protecting the birth mother, who wanted and was promised confidentiality." But what they really mean is, "We are protecting ourselves, who wanted and were promised confidentiality." They are protecting themselves, guarding the goods, hanging on instead of letting go. They are doing what Jesus called "saving one's life," as opposed to losing it (Matthew 16:25-26). Paradoxically, when adoptive parents try and hang onto their power over their own lives and those of the children they have adopted, even far past the time when they need to exert power over the adopted person because he or she has grown up, they are doing the very thing that is certain to cause them to lose power and influence in the lives of adoptees. I told you earlier that many adoptive parents don't understand how parents can give up their rights to a child, even if they themselves encourage birth parents to give the children up and tell them how noble it is to do so. Some adoptive parents ask one another "How could she have given this child up?" privately, and then publicly they laud the birth mother for making such a right, good, and generous choice. They know what treasures their adopted children are because they can't produce treasures of their own. They stand in judgment of people who seem to have so little regard for such a great treasure. Though they publicly talk and write about the noble choice of the birth mother, in their hearts they often judge the birth mother, branding her and punishing her by never giving her access to that child again. Why should they? She gave the child away. The child needs to be protected from someone like that, they reason. What they really mean is that they need to be protected from someone like that. They need to be protected from the threat of childlessness ever rearing its ugly head again. Saving one's life instead of losing it for the beloved is about protecting the goods. It comes from the scarcity mentality, which teaches that there isn't enough to go around. There's not enough reproductive capability. There aren't enough adoptable children; not the kind most adoptive parents want. There isn't enough money to adopt. There isn't enough safety. There isn't enough love. Adoptive parents say, "We love our adopted child and want what's best for him." What they really mean is, "We love our adopted child and want what's best for him, except when what's best for him conflicts with what's best for us: whatever makes us feel comfortable, in control, and safe." They don't want to lose their lives. They don't want to let go. Adoptive parents say, "If our adopted daughter got her original birth certificate, she might search for and find her birth parents, and then might be rejected again, and might be hurt. We really want to protect her from being hurt." What they really mean is, "If our adopted daughter got her original birth certificate, she might search for and find her birth parents, and then we might be rejected and might be hurt. We really want to protect ourselves from being hurt. "Some people accuse the old-school reformers of making open records an issue of search and reunion. It isn't just the old-school reformers who are doing that. Adoptive parents are also making it about search and reunion, because that's what they most fear. FEAR. Yes, many adoptive parents are fearful people, even though they are powerful. It is fear, in fact, that makes them hang onto their own lives and souls instead of losing them, opening them up relaxing, and letting go.

"What I fear has come upon me."
Adoptive parents say "We don't want these birth mothers, who surrendered their babies and went on with their lives, to have their lives disrupted when adoptees come knocking at their door." But what they really mean is, "We don't want our lives disrupted when adoptees go knocking at their birth mothers' doors." They also mean, "We don't want to have our lives disrupted by a birth mother knocking at our door." Adoptive parents are afraid of birth parents. They're afraid of the power of the genetic bond between parents and children, because although they have many different bonds with their adopted children: bonds of love, bonds of shared experiences, bonds of memory, bonds of familiarity, one bond they don't have with the adopted child is the genetic or biological bond. They fear it because they don't have it, don't understand it, or have no means of understanding it. Adoptive parents talk about protecting the adoptee from hurt, and they talk about protecting the birth mother from shame, but they are really protecting themselves because they're afraid. They say that they don't want the promises made to birth mothers broken, but they are really afraid that the promises made to them as adoptive parents will be broken. Promises are made to adoptive parents. Adoptive parents are promised confidentiality, privacy, and protection through the adoption decrees the courts give us. The adoption decrees of my children, for example, say that their natural parents are forever barred "possession of the child. "This is how adoptees come to be perpetual children. Though they grow up, their natural parents are forever barred from them, even when the adoptee stops being a minor. Most American adoptees are perpetual minors in the eyes of the law. When you have to get permission from mommy and daddy to see your own birth certificate, as in Oklahoma and other states, you're a minor whether you're 14 or40. It is always the adoptive parent who is most protected. American adoption is not and has not historically been about protection for the child, unless you understand that all adopted persons need to be protected from the sorts of people who would give their children upor have them taken away. And since adoptive parents want to believe that their children are completely their own, they have to forever banish the thought that their adopted children are inextricably connected to these people who would so wantonly give them up in the first place. Otherwise, the child of the wanton abandoner might grow up and become a wanton abandoner, too-and wantonly abandon the adoptive parents! See how that works? Adoptive parents are afraid of being abandoned. The Apostle John, in the book of 1 John, wrote, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out ... The one who fears is not made perfect in love." Adoptive parents who live in fear haven't been perfected in love. They're greedy--they want all the love, all the control, all the relationship, all the loyalty, all the good stuff that comes from being parents. And this brings us to the third destructive mindset of adoptive parents who hurt our cause with their power: covetousness.

"Give me children, lest I die"
How many times have you heard or read the adoptive parent line that sounds kind of like this: "We're the real parents who wiped these babies' butts, walked the floors with them at night when they were sick, paid for the braces on their teeth, and gave them that college education. We cheered them on at ball games, attended numerous recitals, and sat up nights waiting for them as teenagers." Lots of times, I know. I hear this all the time. "We're the real parents..."Do you know what adoptive parents really mean by that? What theyreally mean is, "We're not real parents, and if our child searches for and finds her birth parents, she will abandon us and we will be what we were before we adopted: childless. "People who have to assert who they really are don't know who they really are. And in my experience as a parent by birth and by adoption, those adoptive parents whose children have not searched, or who have had no opportunity to search for and meet their birthparents--whether they've taken it or not--don't really know that they are real parents. They don't know that truth about themselves. And sometimes the only truth they have is an ugly one: they coveted and got someone else's child to raise and have lived with fear ever since. MI because of infertility, because Lord knows if they could have had children most of them would have.
Infertility is seen as a reproach in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and is often felt as one today, whether a person is religious or not. In the Bible we read many tales of infertility, of people longing for children, and of miraculous answers to prayer. We see infertility being cured miraculously, as with Sarah; Rebecca, Manoah's wife; Hannah; and Elisabeth. Examples of children given as direct answers to prayer are found in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Leah, Rachel, Hannah, and Zacharias. In Proverbs 30:16, the Bible says that "There are three things that will not be satisfied, four that will not say, 'Enough:' Sheol (the nether world), and the barren womb, earth that is never satisfied with water, and fire that never says, 'Enough."'
Think about that for a minute: the Bible teaches that the barren womb has a want that can't be satisfied. Ever. Not even through adoption. Which is why there is so much energy left in so many adoptive parents for self-defense. An excellent example of how insatiable the barren womb can be is found in Genesis chapter 30, in the story of Rachel. Rachel was the second wife of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of the nation of Israel. Jacob's first wife was Rachel's older sister Leah, who had already had children with Jacob. As the story goes,... when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she became jealous of her sister, and she said to Jacob, "Give me children, lest I die." Then Jacob's anger burned against Rachel, and he said, "Am I in the place of God, who has withheld the fruit of the womb?" And she said, "Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. "This is one of several Biblical examples of infertile women getting children to raise by taking the children of their handmaids as their own. But think about Rachel's lament. She says, "If you don't give me children, I am going to die!" The child has the power to save the life of the childless mother. Instead of losing her life, finding a path of surrender in her heartache, Rachel looks around for someone to blame and someone to use. She puts the responsibility for saving her life on someone else, in this case, her husband. Also on her handmaid, Bilhah, and on the child who is yet to be born.

The Fruit of Wrong-Headedness
The envy and discontent of women like Rachel don't just go away because they adopt. Many of you have experienced the life-long results of living with parents whose perpetual state of dissatisfaction has made them twisted people. All of our children's adoption decrees give my husband and I "the rights, duties, and other legal consequences of the natural relation of parent and child." Do you see how the law works for adoptive parents? The adoption decree gives many of us something that science, technology, and God didn't give us: "all the rights, duties, and other legal consequences of the natural relation of parent and child." Abracadabra! Now we enjoy the consequences of being naturally related. Which is why we adoptive parents go around telling everyone how inappropriate it is to use the words "natural mother" and "natural father." By implication, that language makes us unnatural. And wrong-headed adoptive parents don't want any of the contrived aspects of their relationships with their adopted children pointed out to them. So they want you to change what you say. A 1993 New York University study showed that infertile couples perceived infertility as a prolonged crisis which changed their views of themselves and others. They had stress in their relationships with their spouses, other family members, and friends. Many were not ready to move beyond infertility. Infertile women rejected childlessness as an option, and found it especially important to shift their focus from the goal of pregnancy to parenthood--by adoption, of course. The men were more ambivalent about adoptive parenthood. The researcher commented that "a gaping hole was found to exist between infertility and resolution. "I wonder how big that gaping hole is? I think it's big enough for an adopted person to fall into. I think it's big enough to hold generations of sealed records. I think it's big enough to stop open records in many states and to cause adoptive parents who run national so-called adoption "reform" organizations to compromise away your rights, rights that they themselves take for granted. A 1989 study about the perceptions of parenting after infertility found that infertility is a life crisis of such major importance that it can and often does cause subsequent parenting problems and disruptions in family-child relationships and development. Infertile couples who had adopted children and couples who had given birth to children were compared. The study found that half thebiological parents were conscientious and secure parents, compared with only 20 percent of infertile adoptive parents. Couples who hadadopted after infertility had more parenting problems thanbiological parents. Reported problems in the parents, their adoptedchildren, and in the marital relationship were found in a higher proportion of the families with a history of infertility. Half of the infertility-treated families, but none of the fertile families,reported problems in bonding with their children. This research seemed to indicate some degree of disturbed parenting and disruption in families with a history of infertility. Other research shows that adoptive mothers bond to their adopted infants just as strongly as do biological mothers, but the researchis contradictory. Some shows what our experience tells us to expect, which is that the bonds between adoptive parents and adopted children can be and often are as strong as those between parents and the children born to them. Other research shows what we fear, which is that the bonds and attachments are inferior. While some of you have adoptive parents who were excellent parents, others of you had difficult experiences growing up. Sometimes this was because your parents, like many biological parents, were inexperienced and unskilled. But others of you had wrong-headed, or wrong-hearted parents. The influence of that type of adoptive parent is destructive to the adopted child growing up, and the influence continues to be destructive on a small scale and a large one. Unless adoptive parents with destructive mindsets change, they continue to be destructive even after their children become adults. If they aren't for us, they're against us. There can be no fence-sitters in adoption reform. You're either for it or you're not. So let's look at how we can divide the sheep from the goats, so to speak--those folks who will help us in reform, and those who most definitely won't. Copyright 1998 L. Anne Babb All Rights Reserved.

"Ciggies" & Adoption

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You know how there were countless lawsuits against the tobacco industry and it resulted in them being BANNED from advertising?

Isn't "advertising" or "marketing" in adoption just as ludicrious? As an adult adoptee it disgusts me to think that there are marketing schemes ALL OVER that are geared to make MORE babies available for adoption, instead of less. Why allow an "industry" which sole stated purpose is "best interest of children" market and advertise for MORE babies to be separated from their mothers in order to fill a demand in their system?

Babies are not something to be advertised or marketed for!!! When will people realize that it is a slap in the face to every adoptee that exists? It makes us an OBVIOUS commodity. Not a human being that is respected. Sealed records can actually be correlated with "slavery" ~ human beings whose identity is changed and sealed from them for the intended use of another.

If it worked against the tobacco industry, why can't it work against the "human" industry?