What Needs "Reformed"?

I'm not sure adoption as it is practiced today is "reformable". But here is a start:

*Immediate restoration of the right of all adult adoptees unconditional access to their original birth certificate.

*An immediate cease of all "fees" and exchange of money related to adoption. This creates a world-wide environment for corruption and gross conflict of interest permeating the adoption "system".

*Deeming illegal all marketing schemes such as "Dear Birthmother" letters and agency advertising for "recruitment" and "counseling" of mothers. Uniform regulation of all adoptions, no matter what type. It is a sad situation that adoption is one of the highest grossing industries in America that doesn't even require proper accounting or regulation.

For example, in my own state, the Office of Vital Statistics was approached to see if they would find it "financially feasible" to keep accurate accounts of the number of "amended birth certificates" they issue each year. They reported that this would be "too expensive" and that, in fact, some birth certificates they are receiving have been already changed to reflect the adoptive parents names rather than the name of the mother who actually gave birth, even before an adoption is finalized and an "amended" birth certificate is issued. Obviously the laws and policies surrounding adoption are geared for the benefit of those who make their living in adoption, rather than protecting the individuals they actually affect.

These are human rights issues affecting new generations of adoptees, not us "bitter, angry" adult adoptees who still fight for identity rights. If today's adoptees can't be guaranteed even a factual original birth certificate, "reform" needs to be replaced with a completely new paradigm in America regarding human rights.

This may sound "pie in the sky", but it shouldn't. It is the only way to right the wrongs that have been perpetuated against adoptees for decades. What a slap in the face to every adoptee who must still witness the fierce competition, recruitment and MONEY involved in adoption today. Adoption is a profound life-long loss. When will society realize adoptees are not commodities, we are people?

Adoption is nothing more than a supply/demand based, financially-driven industry in human lives. It isn't for the benefit of children, or basic civil rights would not remain in question, and society would not continue to tolerate (and even celebrate) the sappy-happy mindset of "building families" through advertising strategies with the goal of increasing the number of "available" children (supply) for adoption. All while true orphans (usually older children or those with disabilities)are passed over and left without.

Baby Business

A family in China made babies their business
The lucrative trade in newborns was fueled by an adoption frenzy that saw government-run orphanages paying for children who they then made available to Westerners.
By Barbara Demick

January 24, 2010

The telephones kept ringing with more orders and although Duan Yuelin kept raising his prices, the demand was inexhaustible. Customers were so eager to buy more that they would ply him with expensive gifts and dinners in fancy restaurants.

His family-run business was racking up sales of as much as $3,000 a month, unimaginable riches for uneducated Chinese rice farmers from southern Hunan province.

What merchandise was he selling? Babies. And the customers were government-run orphanages that paid up to $600 each for newborn girls for adoption in the United States and other Western countries.

"They couldn't get enough babies. The demand kept going up and up, and so did the prices," recalled Duan, who was released from prison last month after serving about four years of a six-year sentence for child trafficking.

Huddled around a gas stove that barely took the chill out of their ground-floor apartment, Duan and his parents offered a rare look at the inner workings of a "mom and pop" baby-trafficking ring run by members of his family and an illiterate garbage collector with a habit of picking up abandoned babies.

From 2001 to '05, the ring sold 85 baby girls to six orphanages in Hunan.

His story, which is backed up by hundreds of pages of documents gathered in his 2006 court case, shed light on the secretive process that has seen tens of thousands of unwanted girls born to dirt-poor parents in the Chinese countryside growing up in the United States with names like Kelly and Emily.

"Definitely, all the orphanages gave money for babies," said the 38-year-old Duan, a loquacious man with a boxy haircut.

At first, Duan said, his family members assumed that they weren't breaking the law because the babies were going to government-run orphanages. It had been an accepted practice among peasant families to sell unwanted children to other families.

But the police didn't see it that way. Chinese law had been strengthened in 1991 to clearly prohibit commerce in children.

The concern is that not only is paying for babies unethical, it can encourage kidnapping, a rampant problem in China. And when babies are trafficked and their records falsified, they grow up with no sense of where they are from and their heritage.

Although Duan and his family trafficked babies only from the southern province of Guangdong, he says other families were doing the same -- bringing in babies from impoverished parts of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces to the west.

The merchandise may have been human, but it was a trading business like any other. Cash on delivery; prices set by laws of supply and demand. The Duans' supplier in Guangdong would charge extra if a baby was prettier or stronger than the average. The orphanages would often phone in their orders and haggle over the price.

"Sometimes they would give us money in advance to buy the babies. They'd say, 'We'll take this many babies at such-and-such a price,' " Duan recalled.

Duan and five members of his family -- two younger sisters, his wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law -- were convicted in 2006 of child trafficking. The others remain in prison. Only Duan was released, on the grounds that he needed to support his parents.

Family members complain that they were made scapegoats in the widespread buying and selling of babies. Several orphanage directors involved were promoted afterward.

"The government was making the big money. . . . We only got a little bit, like the dregs of the tofu," said Duan Fagui, Yuelin's 59-year-old father. He said that many other families were selling babies to orphanages -- "the only difference is that we got caught."

It began in 1993 when Chen Zhijin, Yuelin Duan's mother, and the two sisters who remain in prison were hired for $1 a day to take care of babies for the orphanage in Changning, a town adjacent to the larger city of Hengyang.

At the time, the Communist Party's campaign to limit population size was running strong, and overly zealous cadres would sometimes demolish the houses of families that had more than one child (two for peasants if the first was a girl, because rural families wanted boys to carry on the family name).

It is illegal in China to abandon a baby, even at an orphanage, so people would discard their unwanted daughters in the dark of night in cardboard boxes or bamboo baskets. If they were leaving baby near an orphanage, they often would light a firecracker as a signal for the staff to find the child.

"We'd find the babies all over," recalled Chen, a tiny woman in tattered plaid trousers with short hair hugging her face. "They'd be wrapped in rags, filthy. . . . Sometimes they'd have ants all over their face because babies have a sweet smell and the ants like them."

Because Chen worked for the orphanage, rural people sometimes asked her to take their unwanted babies there. The orphanage would accept some, not all; it didn't have enough caretakers or formula for all the babies.

Then, in 1996 and '97, the orphanages around Hunan began to participate in a fast-growing program that was sending thousands of baby girls abroad for adoption. For each baby adopted, the supplying orphanage would receive a donation of $3,000 from the adoptive parents.

Instead of rejecting the babies, the local orphanage director began begging Chen to bring in as many as she could, even offering to pay her expenses and then some.

" 'Do us a favor, auntie,' " she said the director told her. " 'Bring us all the abandoned babies you can find.' "

Five other orphanages opened nearby and were making the same request. By 2000, however, the supply of babies was drying up.

Rising incomes, changing attitudes toward girls and weaker enforcement of the one-child policy had combined to stem the widespread dumping of baby girls. Besides, pregnant women who were insistent on a boy would determine the gender with ultrasound (illegal, but common just the same) and abort female fetuses.

But foreign adoptions were in full swing, with more than 5,000 babies heading to the United States in 2000 alone.

"It used to be that you'd get 50 or 100 yuan [$7.30 or $14.60] per baby, then 700 or 800, but there was more demand and fees kept rising and they'd bring in babies from other provinces," Duan said.

One such place was neighboring Guangdong, the manufacturing hub of China, with a large population of migrant workers who often couldn't keep their babies.

By chance, the husband of Duan's sister Meilin got a job in 2001 working on a chicken farm in the small Guangdong city of Wuchuan. Nearby lived an older woman by the name of Liang Guihong, a former garbage collector, who for years had been taking in babies. She sometimes had more than 20 newborns in her home, lined up on blankets on her beds.

The Duan family members saw opportunity. They started buying up the babies to sell to the orphanages in Hunan.

"Liang used to take care of the babies out of kindness, but she turned into a businesswoman," Duan recalled in the interview.

Instead of turning over extra babies to the orphanages in Guangdong, Liang preferred to sell them to traffickers who would pay more to take them to Hunan or adjacent Jianxi province, which also supplied many of the babies adopted in the United States. The Duans say that in addition to the 85 babies she provided them, Liang sold more than 1,000 to orphanages.

The orphanages disguised the origins of the babies, the Duans said.

"They would fabricate the information. They would say that the baby was found at the Sunday market, near the bridge, on the street. Very few of the stories they put in the babies' files were true. Only the director of the orphanage knew the babies were really from Guangdong," Duan's father said.

The orphanages had to comply with a law requiring that they look for the birth parents before putting a baby up for adoption. The Hunan civil affairs department put official notices seeking the birth parents of the babies in a local paper, but they were filled with deliberate misinformation about where the babies had been found.

The well-publicized court case involving the Duans prompted the China Center of Adoption Affairs to suspend adoptions from Hunan and warn orphanages against paying for babies. Insiders in the orphanage community here say the practice continues, but with more discretion.

Deng Yuping, director of an orphanage in Yichun in Jiangxi province, said he pays up to $75 to cover transportation costs for people who bring in babies, but that many walk away because they can get more from other orphanages.

"It's true, some orphanages are paying bigger 'finder's fees' than we are," Deng said.

Orphanage directors acknowledge that they don't have the resources to make sure that babies brought in had been abandoned.

"We can only take care of the child. It is up to the public security bureau [police] to investigate if that child was really abandoned," said Chen Ming, a former orphanage director who received a suspended sentence in the Duans' case.

The Chinese government acknowledges that each year 30,000 to 60,000 children go missing, most of them abducted.

The Los Angeles Times reported in September that local family planning officials in Guizhou and Hunan provinces sometimes confiscated babies from families that had violated the one-child policy and then collected money by selling the children for foreign adoption.

There is no evidence, in the Duans' case, that any of the babies had been kidnapped or forcibly taken from their parents. The Duans insist that even if they broke the law, the babies have had a better life as a result.

"Many of those babies would have died if nobody took them in. I took good care of the babies," said the mother, Chen. "You can be the judge -- am I a bad person for what I did?"

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Nicole Liu and Angelina Qu of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Tragedy Exploited

Tragedy Exploited: A Sad History Repeating Itself in Haiti
by Mirah Riben / January 21st, 2010

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/tragedy-exploited-a-sad-history-repeating-itself-in-haiti/

The humanitarian Kindertransport program brought nearly 10,000 children, mostly Jewish and mostly girls, out of Nazi Germany to Britain during the Second World War. Reunion of Kindertransport, is an international organization aimed at helping the now grown displaced persons find their kin. Some have never recovered psychologically and spent the past 50 years in mental institutions.

Yet, at the end of the Vietnam war, the U.S. decided to enact another mass “savior” of children project. The infamous Vietnam “Operation BabyLift” airlifted more than 2,500 infants and children from Vietnam in 1975, allowing the children to be adopted by families around the world.

This evangelistic rescue effort led to a class action suit in the Federal District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Vietnamese children brought to the U. S. for adoption. The suit, which claims that several of the children labeled orphans were not. They seek to enjoin adoption proceedings in order to ascertain if parents or extended family in Vietnam ever consented to their adoption or cannot be found. They further wish to return to Vietnam.

Then came the tsunami of 2004 that left in excess of five million people homeless, including about 1.5 million children most of whom “became” orphaned, according to the United Nations. As calls poured in to adopt victims, Save the Children issued a statement “Adoptions, especially inter-country ones, are inappropriate during the emergency phase…” With orphans being targeted by criminal gangs, in the wake of the floods, Sri Lanka banned adoptions fearing child trafficking.

And now we are faced with an earthquake with unimaginable damage in Haiti.

Unicef has stated it very simply:

The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said Tuesday that international adoption should be the ‘last resort’ for children orphaned by last week’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.

“Unicef’s position has always been that whatever the humanitarian situation, family reunification must be favoured,” spokeswoman Veronique Taveau said during a press briefing in Geneva.

“The last resort is inter-country adoption,” she said.

Taveau said Unicef is working to find and identify children left without parents after last Tuesday’s devastating earthquake in the country.

“We find them, identify them and register them, and favour family reunification,” she said, adding that for Unicef’s purposes, family includes uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents and more distant relatives.

Unicef expressed concern amid reports of efforts to speed international adoptions of Haitian children in the aftermath of the disaster, which is estimated to have left about 200,000 people dead.

International Social Services and the International Rescue Committee concur, stating “in general, international adoption should not take place in a situation of war or natural disaster, given that these events make it impossible to verify the personal and family situation of children. Any operation to adopt or to evacuate children that are victims of the earthquake to another country must be absolutely avoided, as was the case during the 2004 tsunami….”

Haitian “children are currently experiencing extreme stress so that a sudden shift to a new country and a new family can have a psychological impact that is impossible to measure. According to the Guidelines developed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the evacuation of such children or their temporary placement in families abroad is also traumatic. It is considered as an added disruption to the injury already suffered by the child.”

The Hague Conference on International Law likewise states:

evacuation should not be confused with intercountry adoption which is a more radical measure changing the parenthood of a child. Haiti covered by the UNCRC but is not a signatory of the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention. However, any and all countries attempting to adopt from Haiti are under the limitations of that treaty which recommend that in a disaster, like the Haitian earthquake, efforts to reunite a displaced child with their parents or relatives must take priority. Premature and unregulated attempts at the international adoption of these children should be avoided. “Any decision to evacuate a child should be based on considerations of the child’s safety and should not be confused with the adoption process. A humanitarian disaster such as the earthquake should not be the reason for by-passing essential safeguards for safe adoption…. In a situation where child care and protection services have broken down such as in Haiti, the risks are even greater that the adoption may be ‘unsafe’. This is why in these tragic situations the emphasis should first be on child protection, rather than adoption.

The Quebec government has followed the advise of these experts, putting a hold on new adoption applications for Haitian children while the U.S. and the Dutch have sent planes to bring children out of Haiti in the midst of the recovery efforts despite Professor Rene Hoksbergen of Utrecht University, the Netherlands, warning that authorities should take great care in dealing with orphans from such a disaster, fearing the hurried evacuation could send a wrong signal.

“You have to be very careful in adopting these children from a country in chaos,” he said. “It might look like when a country is a disaster it is easy to adopt children there.” Worse still is the fear of all NGOs of corrupt baby brokers and opportunistic child traffickers using such disasters to their advantage.

When confused by pro and con statements about adoption, with both sides claiming to have the best interest of children at heart…follow the money.

Adoption agencies, even religious and non-profit rely on the redistribution of children to pay their bills, including salaries. This motivates their “concerns.” They have lobbyists that pressure government into quick “feel good” bills and “rescue” actions that don’t always look so quite so good in hindsight, and by those “rescued” and their families – or snatched – depending on your point of view.

Truly non-profit child advocating organizations all side with caution before the wholesale removal of children from their families and culture while lobbyists and marketers for those who profit from the redistribution just want to rush in and grab up the commodities.

SOS Children’s Village, The UN, ISS and IRC, The Hague have no financial gain in the best and safest outcomes for these children. They simply advocate what is best for the children and have the expertise and workers on the ground to back it up.

Unicef and other NGOs involved in child welfare know full well that nearly 90% of children worldwide in orphanages are not orphans but have one living parent, or extended family who visit and hope to regain custody. People in impoverished nations like Haiti reply in institutional care for temporary assistance and to access medical care they cannot otherwise afford.

Children are a highly sough commodity in a multibillion dollar industry in which demand creates supply. Poverty is always exploited, let’s not add this exploitation to people who have already suffered so very much.

There are many organizations accepting donation aid the children of Haiti for all who feel compelled to help without risking being exploitative.

ROOTS UNKNOWN

I'm Legit

Infant-Maternal Separation Has Lasting Effects

© Photographer: Dmccale | Agency: Dreamstime.com

"Separation in early life is associated with changes in

hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) responses to stress [38], transient and

long-term changes in immune competence in non-human primates [39], and reduced

maternal-infant attunement [40]. The impact of maternal-infant separation during
the sensitive period may permanently alter affectional ties [23], and may
consequently influence developing organ systems, including the nervous system[8].

 

Events that affect the ability of the mother to attend to her infant shape
the capacity of the newborn to tolerate stress, since the immature nervous

system is unable to regulate states of high arousal. Events occurring during

labor and delivery that may affect the mother or the infant's ability to bond

include early separation, pain in the mother or infant, the use of medication

such as anesthesia, and anxiety, among others [23]. Whereas healthy newborns

demonstrate more rapid returns to baseline cortisol following exposure to stress

[41], babies born following mild obstetrical complications have less optimal HPA

responses [42] as well as decreased habituation and sensitization to stressors

[41]. Maternal-infant separation following cesarean sections is common and

appears to negatively impact quality of maternal-infant interactions [43-46] as

well as frequency of breastfeeding [46]."

http://www.veroniquemead.com/somatic_early.php

 

"CONCLUSIONS: Skin-to-skin contact, for 25 to 120 minutes after birth, early

suckling, or both positively influenced interaction 1 year later

when compared with routines involving separation of mother and infant."

***NOTE: If a ONE HOUR PERIOD of bonding with mother influences

relationships a year later, then what does mommy disappearing do???

My friend and fellow advocate (a first mother) Lori also pointed out in her comment a revealing article from Psychology Today:

An infant, due to the amount of time in the womb, and until the discovery of motor skills such as crawling, usually around 9 months old, is unaware that they are not a physical part of their mothers.

 

*Being both an adoptee as well as mother to a preemie who spent his first four months in a neonatal intensive care unit, reading these studies 'explain' the issues and behaviors so readily apparent in both myself and my son, and also saddens and angers me. Dr. John Bowlby and others have researched the importance of the mother/infant bond for years.

 

Yet both the medical and adoption communities have been either too slow or completely unacknowledging of the ABUSES they have committed against human lives.
Taking an infant away from mother immediately after birth is damaging to a child. Yet it is practiced daily in hospitals everywhere, and applauded in "open adoption", all for the benefit of waiting adoptive parents. Furthermore, research like this is avoided during "options counseling" when adoption agencies spout the "benefits" of adoption in marketing pregnant mothers. These conclusions are certainly not provided to prospective adoptive parents either.

 

How can we call "counseling" provided by the very "professionals" who make their living in adoption non-directive or ethical?
 

I recently attended the "grand opening" celebration of a new NICU in our local Children's Hospital and could hardly hold back the tears touring this beautiful "mother/child" friendly facility. Each room is completely private, with a warming bed/incubator, a comfortable recliner, and even a pull-out bed. The best-practice philosophy in neonatal care is "family-centered" where the mother (rightly) becomes an integral part of her newborns care from day one, including "kangaroo care" (skin to skin contact) as much as possible. I would have given anything for this environment when my son was born. He lived in a "pod" of open space with numerous other babies within just a few feet. I sat for four months propped on a tall bar stool by his side, with no privacy, noise and traffic surrounding us continually. The "alarms" alone were enough to send even an adult through the roof at times. What did they do to tiny, under-developed nervous systems? Just thinking back to this experience causes my heart to race with anxiety.

Last night I snuck away to a women's meeting at my church and then went out to eat with a dear friend afterwards. I got home after my son was already in bed asleep. Mind you, he is 4 years old now and has come a long way after his traumatic start in life. But this morning, he threw a huge panicked fit, ordering me to "GO AWAY!!!" over and over again. He was still reeling from my (just a few hours) absence last night. This is very typical for him and it has been so hard. It hurts me to see him hurting - dealing with high-anxiety and insecure attachment. All because he was separated from me for so many months at the beginning of his life.

True, I got to hold him when he was two weeks old and then on, but only for minut periods of time. Getting to hold him for even an hour a day was a privilege that we didn't get to partake of until he was well past 2 months old. His vital signs calmed, and so did mine. But even that was not enough to give him the foundation he needed. God comforted me with a verse in Isaiah 66 which promises, "I will comfort you as a mother comforts her child" and I literally lived and breathed this to keep going.

I am so thankful the medical community is finally beginning to "catch up" with the known research of maternal/infant health.

 

Yet, the adoption community continues to ignore and contradict these important studies for their own benefit.

 

According to the research above, not only are children affected emotionally and psychologically by being separated from their mother, their physical health is detrimentally affected as well.

This growing body of research can't be ignored much longer. We call upon ethical professionals to take these studies seriously and use the knowledge to change policies and laws surrounding adoption. To protect voiceless children who are caught in the web of a financially, supply/demand driven adoption industry. Even puppies are not separated from their mothers until well after the time of weaning ~ for a reason. Shouldn't human children be given this same respect and more?

While finally allowing myself to grieve the loss of my own mother through adoption (several years before the birth of my son) I wrote several poems. The feelings of a human-being who experiences the trauma of pre-verbal separation from mother run so deep, it is truly fearful to acknowledge and experience them (especially in a society which disregards them, causing further trauma,'disenfranchised grief'). Yet, that is exactly what is necessary to bring healing. That which is kept in the dark and is never exposed to the light can never be healed. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. That is why "sealed records" in adoption is a crime, perpetuating painful shame for all involved.

Here I Lay

Alone in the nursery I lay
Cries ring out like radar
Searching, searching, searching
In circles around my bed they reach
Striving to find the woman I know
Her breath, her hair, her touch
No where.

Alone in the nursery I lay
The ceiling so far away
Arms flinging hoping to find
Nothing but emptiness I feel

Where is she? Why isn't she here?
I am lost and alone. I can't feel.
The cries stop. There is no use
She is long gone
She or me? I do not know
Here I lay in the nursery alone.

Battle Over Birthright

Battle over birthright: Case raises questions about role of sperm donors in children’s lives
Kenyon Wallace, National Post

When a lesbian couple from Terrace, B.C., decided they wanted a child of their own, they were overjoyed that a good friend agreed to donate his sperm.
They were going to have a family.
Before the child was born in October 2006, the donor signed an agreement stating that the female couple would be the parents and that he would consent to an adoption of the child. But since the child's birth, things haven't gone according to plan. The donor began making frequent visits to the female couple's home and referring to the child as "his son" in the community. He also allowed his family to send him congratulations and gifts on the birth of the child.

These are the allegations set out in a statement of claim filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The lesbian couple is now suing the donor for willful infliction of mental suffering and breach of contract, and is asking the court for a restraining order against their former friend. The couple and the sperm donor cannot be named to protect the identity of the child. The parties in the lawsuit declined to be interviewed.

The case has raised questions about the rights of sperm donors across the country and whether adults should have the power to contract away the rights of children before they are born.

Observers say conflicting provincial legislation and a dearth of case law makes those questions difficult to answer.

"Most provinces have not amended their family law to clarify the rights and responsibilities of donors, so you can get into these murky situations," said Diane Allen, executive director of the Infertility Network. "It's a very grey area."

Ms. Allen says her organization often hears from donor offspring at conferences who say they should have a right to know who their parents are and that nobody should be able to withhold information about their genetic origins.

"For the lesbian couple, I can certainly understand why they feel threatened and that their parenting is being interfered with," she said. "But what are they going to tell that child down the road? Are they going to say they didn't want the child's father in his life? What about what the child's needs and wants?"

Another element adding to the confusion is the six-year-old Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which makes paying for sperm illegal. As a result, couples are increasingly turning to friends and acquaintances to act as donors, creating a legal and ethical quagmire, says Saskatoon fertility specialist Dr. Roger Pierson, spokesman for the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society.

"When the act was brought into law and no compensation was allowed, in essence, it closed all but one sperm bank in the country," said Dr. Pierson, referring to Toronto's Institute for Reproductive Medicine. "So if friends start doing things on their own, and you have a female from one province and a male from another, it can be problematic."

There are still some agencies in Canada that import sperm from other countries, but the $35-a-sample sperm banks are a thing of the past.

To the relatively small extent that courts have heard cases involving the rights of sperm donors and donor offspring, judges have tended to rule with the best interests of the child in mind, according to Margaret Somerville, director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law.

"They're going to look at public policy and whether what's being done is contrary to that. There are just some obligations that you can't contract away," she said. "They are also going to look at what's in the best interests of the particular child. In effect, what they're doing is looking at these cases both at a general societal level and what impact the ruling will have on societal values and rights of kids, and how the ruling will affect the child in question."

In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a decision by the Alberta Court of Appeal that is considered by many observers to be precedent setting. The case involved a woman who wanted to be a mother while her common-law husband had no interest in fathering a child but wanted to stay in the relationship. The couple signed an agreement whereby the woman would have a baby -- using sperm from a donor -- but the man would have no parental responsibilities. The court found that such a non-parent contract contradicted the Alberta Family Law Act and that the man, even though he wasn't the sperm donor, would have parental responsibilities if he continued to live in a relationship of interdependence with the mother.

"The ‘settled intention' to remain in a close, albeit unmarried, relationship thrust [the man] from a practical and realistic point of view, into the role of parent of this child," said the ruling. "Can it seriously be contended that he will ignore the child when it cries? When it needs to be fed? When it stumbles?"

The lesson is clear: parents cannot sign away a child's right to a father and mother.

In a case with echoes of the B.C. matter, the Irish Supreme Court ruled last December that a gay man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple should be allowed to see his three-year-old son regularly. The Irish Constitution does not permit gay marriage and defines parents as a married man and woman. Because Irish law identified the 47-year-old man as the father, the court ruled he had a right to have a relationship with his son, who was born in 2006, even though it acknowledged that the female couple provided a stable and loving home for the child.

The man told the court he had agreed to donate sperm to the lesbian couple, who were his "good friends" at the time, on the basis that he would be treated like an uncle when the child was born. However, after the birth, the man's relationship with the couple deteriorated.

As for whether the B.C. couple will likely find a favourable ruling in that province's Supreme Court, opinion is uncertain.

Vancouver family lawyer Kathleen Walker says because the non-biological mother did not go through the formal adoption process (for reasons unknown), the father of the child is "still in the grey area of being a parent."

"From a practical point of view, I think that it's a good thing the father has an interest in the child," said Ms. Walker. "I think the more people that love a child, the better off the child is. If the child has been adopted, then I think the issue is privacy. If the lesbian couple don't want the father around, he's got no right to be around or interacting with that child."

Still, the child should have the right to know his biological father, says Wendy Kramer, director and co-founder of the Colorado-based Donor Sibling Registry, a website she created for individuals conceived as a result of sperm, egg or embryo donation who are seeking to make mutually desired contact with others with whom they share genetic ties.

She says the legal systems in both Canada and the United States have not kept pace with how donors and their offspring are redefining parenting when they mutually consent to meet, an increasing trend. Her registry has more than 26,000 members worldwide and has helped connect more than 7,000 donor offspring with their half-siblings and their own egg or sperm donors. More than 1,000 members are donors curious to find out who their biological offspring are.

"There are many recipients of donor sperm who don't tell their kids about where they came from, but for the donor offspring, it might be very important for them to connect to their biological parents," Ms. Kramer said, whose own 19-year-old son was conceived using donor sperm. "The one voice that's always missing from the conversation is the voice of the children who are being born. It's not just about getting pregnant. It's about realizing the rights of the children being born."

You alone

National "Human-Trafficking" Prevention Month

© Photographer: Michaeldb | Agency: Dreamstime.com

For those who are not aware, in addition to Mon being a Nat'l awareness day, President Obama issued a proclamation designating January National Human Trafficking Prevention Month!

BELOW is an excerpt from the President's proclamation:

Fighting human trafficking is a shared responsibility. This month, I urge all Americans to educate themselves about the signs and consequences of human trafficking. Together, we can and must end this most serious, ongoing criminal civil rights violation.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 2010 as National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, culminating in the annual celebration of National Freedom Day on February 1. I call upon the people of the United States to recognize the vital role we can play in ending human-trafficking, and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities."

* I would be very curious to find out the number of victims of child-trafficking who are also victims of "dissolved" adoptions in America. I have a feeling we would all be very shocked.

As horrific a crime as human-trafficking is, there is a component of this subject that few acknowledge or validate. Millions of adoptees in America whose civil rights are violated through archaic "sealed records" laws born from corrupt adoption practices. Before the 1940's adoptee's had the same civil right as every other American to obtain their original birth certificate in adulthood. Today only six U.S. states grant adult adopted individuals the same priviledge as non-adopted citizens to obtain this important personal document and information about themselves.

Even today, when a mother relinquishes her child, or has her rights terminated, the child's birth certificate remains intact. It is not until an adoption is finalized that a new (falsified) Certificate of Live Birth is issued, and the child's original (factual) birth certificate is permanently "sealed" from them and their children after them. This "amended" birth certificate lists the new legal parents (adoptive) as actually giving birth to the child. A legalized lie. The adoptee's civil rights are violated because they must live their entire life (along with their children and grandchildren after them) with a falsified record of birth. That equates to a false genealogy, false family medical history, false identity ~ even throughout adulthood.

A more ethical and truthful option would be to issue a "Certificate of Adoption" much like other countries, such as Australia, do. The only other time in American history when human's were denied their identity and personal documents was during the time of slavery.

Until these archaic laws are changed, adoption in America is essentially government-sanctioned identity theft.

Adoption has sadly become a billion-dollar industry for which brokers (attorneys, agencies) advertise and market for human-lives. Competition abounds for every healthy young child who can be made "available" for adoption. While true orphans (mostly older, special-needs children) are passed by. This supply & demand, financially-driven industry in human-lives (we applaud as adoption) sets up a climate for gross conflict of interest and unethical practices across our country and around the world.

I pray for the day we can look back as a society upon the years of "sealed record" adoption law and celebrate the restoration of adoptee's civil right to KNOW and OWN their personal histories and birth certificates.

"Unlock Our Lives". Adoptee access legislation is years past due and is simply the right thing to do for millions of American's dignity and freedom.

Mother & Child Reunion

Mother & child reunion: Louisvillian says ‘Karma' played a role in reconnecting with her firstborn

By Katya Cengel
December 13, 2009
NOTE: This adoptee's background was totally fabricated in her adoption file.

Whatever your belief system, every once in a while something happens that is too perfect to write off to chance.

Maybe that is why Susanne Howe named the cat “Karma.”

This story could have been written in the usual way: the trend story about how families around the world are reuniting on Facebook; the one shown in heart-wrenching airport reunions on the evening news, rehashed on morning TV talk shows.

Only you won't read that here. Despite an alluring Facebook connection, that isn't what this story is about. It's about two women who found each other despite numerous roadblocks. It's about a woman whose timing hasn't always been perfect, acting at just the right time.

And it's about the sense of disbelief and hope you feel when you realize that every now and then things really do work out.

A difficult beginning

When Susanne Howe discovered she was pregnant, the timing was not right. Howe had just resumed her college education and had moved halfway across the country. Her boyfriend, who was supposed to join her, was seeing someone else.

Howe was 20 and single. She wanted more for her baby than what she could offer and decided to place her for adoption.

Because she was surrendering the girl, Howe did not feel it would be right for her to seek her out later in life. But secretly she hoped her daughter would find her, she said later, and she did everything she could to make that happen.

She requested her name be put in the baby's file and left a letter for the adoptive parents and another for the child, explaining her actions and reasoning. Then she breastfed her. It wasn't encouraged, but Howe knew it would boost the baby's immune system.

“I thought, ‘I can't give her anything else, but maybe I can give her this, a little bit of a start,'” said Howe, now 50.

Thirty years later, Howe sat in a Louisville coffee shop next to a woman with hair as blond as her own, eyes as blue and the same dimple in her right cheek.

“I hoped, I think, on some level there would be some bonding — that years down the road, in the future (that bond) would be somewhere in her subconscious,” said Howe, patting Crystal Love's knee.

After three decades, Howe was back with her baby.

False leads

Growing up in Vanceburg, Ky., Love had known she was adopted. But it wasn't until she was 25 and had read Howe's letter that she wanted to know more about her birth mother. She had her adoption records released and began looking. Only the woman she thought she was looking for went by “Virginia Suzanne Paige.” Love had no way of knowing Howe went by her middle name, or that “Susanne” had been misspelled in the records.

Even worse, a lot of the details about her birth mother were wrong. Now that she knows Howe and they can laugh about it, Love enjoys talking about the way the records described Howe.

“You were Methodist, you played piano, were into needlepoint, cheerleading …”

Howe cut in, “ … made my own clothes.”

“… debating, she was studying speech pathology,” Love continued.

The only problem was none of it was true, Howe said.

“It was like somebody just fabricated that stuff just to give her a picture,” she said . “Give her a mental image.”

That image sent Love searching for women named “Virginia,” checking out speech-pathology programs and generally tracking dead ends. She joined adoption sites and used all the tools she was familiar with as a lawyer. But she found nothing.

Over the years she would try again and again, and at some point was able to figure out that her biological mother was a member of the Franklin County High School class of 1976.

Then, Love, a longtime MySpace fan, defected to Facebook and decided to search there for women in that class. When she found “Susanne Paige Howe,” she sent her a short e-mail explaining who she was — and waited.

‘Timing is everything'

Howe said she almost deleted the e-mail. She had gone online only because a cat had shown up on the doorstep and kept trying to get inside her house. Howe lived with her mother and stepfather, whose home was purposefully pet-free, and was trying to find an online list of lost pets. When that didn't work, she decided to check her e-mail before getting off the computer.

When she saw an e-mail from Crystal Love, a name she didn't recognize, she was ready to send it to the trash, but at the last minute recalled a high school student named Crystal and decided to see if it was from her. When she saw who the e-mail was from, she wrote back right away.

It was Mother's Day.

Her parents decided to keep the cat; she named it Karma.

“My stepdad and mom actually, I think, associate the arrival of Karma with her (Love),” Howe said.

Howe had spent three decades in Pennsylvania and raised two children, Kelly, now 27, and Ryan, now 23. But with her children grown, her parents' health declining and her own marriage over, she had recently returned to Louisville.

When Howe moved, Kelly urged her to join Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and family members who lived elsewhere. Two weeks before Love e-mailed her, Howe had joined a group for her high school on Facebook, using her maiden name so old friends could find her.

“Timing's everything,” said Howe, squeezing Love's hand.

After replying to Love's e-mail, Howe told Kelly and Ryan about their older sister. Two hours later, Love received a Facebook friend request from Kelly.

She accepted.

In the months since, Love, who works as a public defender in Ashland, has met with Howe several times and also with Kelly, Ryan, Howe's parents and her birth father. Occasionally, she gets a Facebook friend request from another member of Howe's extended family. Coupled with her adoptive parents and brother, Love has family galore.

“Some people have absolutely no one, and I have more than enough,” she said.

When she is with Howe, they are as affectionate and giggly as teenagers.

“It's all been sort of surreal,” Howe said. “The reason I named the cat Karma is I felt I must have racked up an awful lot of good karma somewhere to have everything happen.”

Happy Adoptees

© Photographer: Agg | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Happy Adoptees
By Julie A. Rist

I am not the happy and grateful adoptee that you want me to be. Don’t get me wrong. I was happy and grateful for almost 45 years – or so I believed. Had you asked me then how I felt about being adopted, you might have heard something like, “Great! I am so grateful to my (adoptive) parents for all they did and, no, I am not interested in finding my ‘real’ family. My adoptive family is my ‘real’ family, thankyouverymuch, and they are a wonderful family. I’ve had a wonderful life. Of course, I am grateful to my natural mother for giving me life. Oh, you’re adopting? How wonderful!”

I enthusiastically expressed that view all those years because I needed to convince myself that my life was normal and right and that I was okay. I did it because everyone else wanted me to feel that way, too. And I thought I would die if I ever looked deeper.

Happy children

You’ve seen adopted children who seem to be perfectly happy, too. They smile and have fun just like those whose families are intact. They act happy and, occasionally, they are.

Yes, adopted children smile and laugh. Did you stop smiling after you lost a loved one? Didn’t you still laugh when someone said something funny? Weren’t you still capable of having some fun?

Did you ever smile and act happy to hide your grief?

Of course you did. But even when you smiled, those close to you knew it didn’t mean you were happy. Those close to you accepted and expected your pain and sadness. They did not expect you to be happy about your loss. They gave you something most adoptees do not get: acknowledgement of, empathy for, and permission to express your grief.

What grief?

In the early ‘50s when I was adopted, little was known about the power of the bond between mother and child. Society still accepted Locke’s theory of tabula rasa – that we are born as blank slates. John Locke died in 1704, yet his theory survived until the mid- 50s. Now, however, we know that even before birth babies are intelligent, remembering and aware beings with their own personalities.

We know that much of who we are today was created in the womb. We know that mother and child are a single entity, profoundly connected physiologically, emotionally and spiritually – even through early infancy. A baby does not understand that he or she is an individual until at least 9 months after birth.

Through their research, authorities have determined that, when the mother/child entity is split, it causes an acute and lasting trauma in both mother and child. The repercussions are ominous and tenacious. Though they become buried deep inside, the repercussions follow both mother and child throughout the remainder of their lives.

It is difficult, emotionally, to imagine a tiny baby’s very real feelings about the loss of his or her mother -- the terror of losing all that is familiar, all that is comfort – the unique heartbeat, scent, taste, voice, rhythms and vibrations. Babies are born needing and expecting these familiar things which only their natural mothers can provide.

Even with this knowledge which has accumulated over the past 20 years, there remain those in our society who sever the mother/child entity as casually as they would cut a common earthworm in two.

Ignored trauma is another trauma

A child’s first experience in the adoptive family is usually joining in everyone else’s happiness over his or her tragedy. The child’s first trauma is ignored or dismissed, perhaps in the belief that enough love will make it disappear. It will not. In essence, the adoptee is expected to dance along with everyone else on his or her own mother’s virtual grave. Most experts in the fields of adoption psychology and trauma consider this dismissal to be the adoptee’s second trauma.

The first and second traumas are the root causes for a number of issues and for additional traumas, which accumulate one upon another (what Betty Jean Lifton calls “Cumulative Trauma”).

We may not want to imagine these things because it is uncomfortable to do so but, to act in a child’s best interest including protecting his or her emotional health, we need to suffer through such discomfort.

Denial

Over 14 years ago, I began 9 years in therapy, struggling with a boatload of issues that are utterly classic in adoptees. I didn’t accomplish much. The problem was that I did not connect them with my adoption experience. In all fairness, my therapist encouraged me to recognize the connection, but I was so deep in “De Nile” that I could not see it – indeed would not see it. I needed too desperately (like most of society) to believe that my adoption experience was the positive part of my life – not the source of my problems.

Denial is powerful and, in many ways, a gift. It is a state we create in order to avoid feeling the pain of seeing the truth. When a baby’s world is gone, he or she does whatever it takes to survive. If the child does not get empathy and permission to grieve, he or she has no choice but to psychologically deny the trauma. And that includes smiling to hide the grief. The child begins to believe that his or her feelings are unimportant – even wrong. The child learns how not to feel.

I do not use the word “denial” in a damning or judgmental way. It is a normal and natural human survival tool. I not only acknowledge it but, knowing intimately the pain that comes with shedding that denial, I am reticent to nudge others out of it. Denial can be a trauma victim’s most effective tool for survival, because revisiting the event that caused the trauma can feel literally life threatening.

The downside of denial unfortunately outweighs the upside. Denial prevents us from understanding and effectively managing all the issues that stem from the disintegration of the mother/child entity. What are the most common issues?

Identity

Issues of the adoptee are barely acknowledged by society and then only in those who are of a different race than the adoptive family – as if physical differences are the only ones that matter. But there are reasons why we see repetitive generations of lawyers, healers, scholars, actors, artists, etc. in natural families. It is not just a matter of continuing a family business or tribal tradition. It is a matter of like characteristics being perpetuated, generation after generation, being nurtured by genetic mirroring.

Even if we are not transracial or biracial adoptees, we still do not get the genetic mirroring that we so desperately need. We don’t know how tall we’ll get, or whether our hair will get darker or lighter, our skin clearer, our bodies thinner or thicker. We don’t know who we’ll look like when we’re older. Our own natural characteristics are unfamiliar, so we don’t know what we should or should not choose to develop.

Although such things may seem inconsequential to those around us, they are monumental to us, and serve to make us feel even more alienated, more lost.

When an adoptee’s characteristics do not fit those of the adoptive family (or the extended adoptive family), there can be trouble. In my case art, writing and psychology were all frowned upon by my adoptive family. Yet those characteristics run happily in my natural family. Though my adoptive parents meant well, I grew up feeling like a bad seed. Out of desperation for approval, I pursued career paths that I thought would please them but even those successes were never enough to overcome their disappointment.

Carrying the surname of someone else’s family also contributes to identity problems. The child is expected to embrace the adoptive family’s ancestry, as if his or her own is immaterial -- as if living in the dark is no big deal.

Low self-esteem

Identity issues can explain some low self-esteem, a classic adoptee problem. Another cause is some adoptive parents’ – and society’s – (unmistakable yet unspoken) low opinion of the stereotypical “birthmother.” Not only is this an unfair and incorrect judgment about our mothers, but adopted children incorporate these attitudes into their own self-image.

Along with this message, adopted children are often told that, essentially, their mothers loved them so much that they gave them away. This makes no sense. If my mother really loved me that much, she would have kept me -- therefore there must be something wrong with me. This creates low self-esteem.

Low self-esteem leads to people-pleasing. Adoptees are exemplary people-pleasers. That is why we so often appear to be happy and are pleasant to be around. Lots of smiling! Our original purpose as adoptees was to fulfill the desires of others, to make them happy. Early on, our authentic selves are sacrificed to fill those needs.

Powerlessness and control

For many adoptees, it is easy to fall into despair and feel powerless over circumstances that emotionally healthy people can overcome with relative ease. This is rooted in our separation experience, when we felt powerless, helpless and hopeless. Paradoxically, we can become obsessed with controlling other parts of our lives, those things and events that we can control. This is conflict waiting to happen.



Depression

Often, depression can come from the sheer exhaustion of maintaining pretense (being in denial). No matter how much love and care we are given, the truth is that we are (and will always be) someone else’s children. Yet we exhaust ourselves emotionally, pretending otherwise because we believe it will ensure our survival and prevent another abandonment.

We also expend a lot of energy fantasizing about our natural mothers, and a lot of energy burying our authentic selves in favor of people-pleasing. All these things take a great deal of energy yet offer little reward -- fertile ground for depression.

Trust

One of our most common problems is that of trust. The original disintegration of the mother/child entity can literally destroy a baby’s nascent sense of trust. Once lost, it can never be recovered. Only a tentative sense of trust can be painstakingly built by the adoptive family, yet it will always be difficult and sometimes impossible. Again paradoxically, we tend to casually trust anyone and everyone. It is when deep trust is required, as in intimacy, we tend to fall short.

Abandonment

Abandonment is the most common issue of the adoptee. Despite the true circumstances of the separation from our natural mothers, we experienced this emotionally as abandonment. Even with later knowledge of those circumstances, the early emotional experience of abandonment never leaves us. Relationship troubles abound. Other issues such as trust, identity, low self-esteem and control compound these troubles.

Many people have abandonment issues. For adoptees, however, abandonment is not just painful. It can feel like annihilation.

“Only eyes washed by tears can see clearly.” – Louis Mann

Staying in denial, while it may be a refuge, hurts everyone involved. Although seeing the truth also hurts, don’t parentless children deserve what they truly need? How can society continue pretending that the smiles are genuine simply because it is easier than acknowledging the underlying problems?

For those who genuinely care about these children and want to take that first step toward seeing clearly, start with one of Betty Jean Lifton’s books, such as Journey of the Adopted Self or Nancy Verrier’s The Primal Wound. They offer insight into the issues of adoptees, adoptive parents, and of mothers who have lost children to adoption. Such knowledge and understanding can open our minds and hearts to alternatives that are even better than adoption.

Smiles as masks

Despite all these traumas and issues, adoptees smile. We smile to hide a world of hurt that neither we nor the rest of the world want to face. We smile because the world needs us to smile. They need to believe they are doing the right thing for us, to forget those silly “issues,” and call us “happy.” By smiling, we help them do that.

Next time you encounter a “happy” and “grateful” adoptee who had “wonderful” adoptive parents and a “wonderful” life, look a little closer.


Ms. Rist is an artist, writer, and adoption alternatives activist living in Phoenix.

Article by J. A. Rist © Copyright 2002, 2003. All rights reserved.

Adopted - But We Didn't Know

Adopted – but we didn't know
How does it feel to discover as an adult that you were adopted as a baby? We
talk to four people who came to terms with finding out later in life.
Kate Hilpern
The Guardian, Saturday 2 January 2010

Hilary Moon found out she was adopted 12 years ago. Photograph: David Sillitoe

Hilary Moon, 60, was 48 when she discovered that she was adopted. She is
divorced.

"I was at my uncle's funeral when my cousin's husband wandered up to me and
said, 'I've been wanting to meet you, because we're both adopted.' It was a huge
shock – how could it not be? On the other hand, I had an instant explanation as
to why I'd always felt like a square peg in a round hole when it came to my
family.

"I once said to my mother, 'I've always felt like I was found on a doorstep.'
She got terribly upset, and I later learned that was the point at which she
confided in my cousin's husband. She chose him because he's a vicar. She assumed
he'd keep it to himself.

"My mother had died by the time I found out the truth, but my father hadn't, so
I asked him about it. He was an unpleasant man and simply said, 'Well, nobody
else would have you.' I threw a cup of tea at him, said that at least it meant I
wasn't related to him and we never spoke again.

"Was I angry? Of course I was. I had been advised not to have children because
my mother and brother had both had severe diabetes and had gone blind and died
early. To learn I wasn't blood-related to them means I made an enormous decision
based on fiction.

"I've mellowed now. My mother had such a bum deal in life – a husband that had
affairs and a son who died young – that it's hard to feel anger towards her. She
and I got on well, and I'm thankful for that. And although I still have negative
feelings towards my father, who is now dead, I think that's probably more to do
with how he treated my mother.

"About eight years ago, my biological sister sought me out. She put me in touch
with my birth mother, to whom I look incredibly similar. I've met others in the
extended family, too, and I even changed my full name to what it was before the
adoption. With all my adoptive family dead, and a large birth family still
alive, it just made sense to me. But, actually, they're a funny lot and I can't
say I feel any great bond with them.

"The whole situation has left me feeling neither part of my adoptive nor my
biological family, and the lack of a sense of belonging in either can make me
feel lonely if I let it. When people ask me who is my next of kin, I say, 'I
haven't got one', because that's how it feels."

Mandy Sullivan, 52, is divorced with three grown-up children. She found out she
was adopted when she was 36.

"I've never had a good relationship with my mum. She had a baby that died at a
week old and from very young I realised I could never replace that baby. But one
day, when I was 36, something else came to light that further explained things –
I wasn't even hers.

"I found out by chance. I became a mature student and the university
administration office requested my birth certificate. I'd never seen it and my
mum kept saying she couldn't find it. In the end, she gave me a piece of paper
that I duly showed the university office. The administrator looked at me and
said, 'This isn't your birth certificate. ' She must have registered that I
didn't understand and explained, 'I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's your
adoption certificate. '

"I felt sick. My whole life had been a lie. It was horrendous and not helped by
the fact that I was right in the middle of a bad divorce and my house was being
repossessed. I didn't do anything about it for three or four years. I thought
about it constantly but I felt I had to prioritise finding a job, moving house
and settling my three daughters.

"Eventually, I wrote my mum a letter. I thought, I can't just ring her up and
blurt it out because she'd get defensive. She got defensive anyway. In a short,
sharp tone, she said my dad didn't want me to know because he was afraid of me
feeling rejected and different. I believe her – my dad and I were very close
until he died when I was 25. But I don't accept that it was all him. It must
have been a joint decision. She said she planned to write it in a letter that
I'd get after she died, but what a cop out.

"Our relationship has continued to go downhill since that letter. The main thing
she seemed concerned about was that her relationship with my daughters didn't
suffer. A few years ago, when she had a massive stroke, I felt we might be
getting a bit closer, but as soon as she was on the mend the old barriers went
up. These days she doesn't want much to do with me.

"About 10 years ago, I decided to apply for my adoption file. It's funny –
despite always feeling different to my adoptive family (I'm tall, they're not.
I'm a bookworm, they don't read books at all), I remember still thinking the
social worker might come in and say it was all a big mistake – that I wasn't
adopted at all. But, of course, she didn't.

"I didn't discover much more than what my mother had divulged, however – that my
adoptive father had been in the pub having a drink with a friend, who said that
his sister-in-law couldn't cope with her baby. Apparently, my dad came home and
asked my mum, 'Why don't we adopt her?'

"I've never looked for my birth mother. I don't think I could cope with another
mum rejecting me. But I'm in quite poor health and increasingly worried that
it's hereditary, so I think I might get in touch just to find out my medical
history.

"Every area of my life has been affected by what I found out. I have great
problems trusting people – both men and friends – and once I do trust someone, I
seem to find it really hard to say goodbye, even if the relationship is really
rubbish. On a positive note, I'm closer than ever to my daughters – they're the
only blood relations I know."

Chris Lines, 63, is married with three grown-up children and one granddaughter.
He found out that he was adopted three years ago.

"My wife and I were in a local garden centre when I spotted the daughter of my
mum's next-door neighbour. She was with a little girl, who she introduced as one
of her three grandchildren. The other two, she explained, were adopted from
Vietnam. She turned to the girl and said, 'This man was adopted too, you know.'

My wife and I looked around to see who she was talking about. She felt awful –
she thought I knew. It turned out she still remembered going in the taxi with
her mum and my mum to pick up a five-month-old baby – me – from the Salvation
Army all those years ago.

"The way I deal with most problems is to deny their existence. I didn't want to
think about it, but my wife prompted me to check the official birth records in
Liverpool and, sure enough, my name wasn't there.

"With both my parents dead, I approached two elderly aunts. They knew all about
the adoption, and even told me my original name – Dennis Kelly. The moment I
heard that name was when it really hit me. My legs gave way. I felt I'd lived
for 61 years as one person, but really I was another.

"It turned out everyone in my adoptive family knew. I'm still amazed nobody told
me because it's a huge and close family. They've all since said they thought I'd
been told. My mother had an ectopic pregnancy and was advised not to get
pregnant again, so she doted on me as her only child. I think they felt that if
I discovered I was adopted, I might look for my real parents and they'd have to
share me or even lose me.

"I did decide to look for my biological parents. It struck me that the only
blood relations I knew were my own children. Even though I used the charity
After Adoption, it was a long search because when we found out that I was born
in a home for "wayward mothers", we assumed my mother had been young. Then we
discovered she'd been 39.

"I was sad to learn that she had died, but I did find a cousin who agreed to
meet me. When he produced a box with four or five photos of my mother, I was
speechless. There she was, smiling and laughing. She really did exist. Another
relative I later found, remembered her as larger than life and always smiling. I
liked hearing that.

"It might sound funny, but a big relief to me was that I had been born in
Liverpool and that I have Irish blood in me – both things I'd been brought up to
believe and am fiercely proud of. What isn't true, however, are all the little
genetic links I'd always taken for granted – my youngest daughter having my
aunt's eyes; my eldest daughter having her grandmother' s legs.

"I think I'd rather not know I'm adopted, but it has helped explain some things
– for example, why I sometimes felt as a child that I wasn't quite the same as
the other children in the family. Also, one of my aunts told me that when my
parents got me I didn't make any noise, presumably because, for the first five
months of my life, nobody had come when I cried. I wonder if that's why I've
always been quite introverted. "

Peter Clark, 61, was 39 when he found out he was adopted. He is married and has
four sons and five grandchildren.

"The thing I remember most about the day I found out that my mother didn't give
birth to me, was this feeling of standing with my back to the edge of a cliff
because everything behind me – everything I'd known to be true – felt as if it
was a lie and I literally didn't know who I was.

"It even made me question the right to have my father's war medals. As the
eldest of five children, I'd been in possession of them. I took them out of the
drawer by my bed that night and felt it was wrong for me to have them, because
he wasn't my real dad.

"I don't think my parents ever intended to tell me. My mother says it's because
I was a sensitive child and they didn't want to upset me. When I asked her why
she still didn't tell me in adulthood, she said she gave my father, who had died
when I was 21, a deathbed promise to keep the secret. I think the real reason
was a fear that I would abandon her in favour of my birth family. Even when my
mother did finally tell me I was adopted, the first thing she asked me was never
to make contact with my birth mother.

"She finally told me just before I went on an overseas business trip. There were
some complications over my visa and passport, which prompted questions around my
birth certificate and the identity of my parents. It must have made my mum
panic.

"I was gobsmacked because I'd never had any inkling. It's not as if adoption is
taboo in our family. One of my brothers adopted four children and my wife's
brother adopted three. I felt very angry with her about the web of deception for
a long time and although I've worked through that now, I still hold a strong
belief that people have a fundamental right to know about their origins.

"I realised I needed to know my roots. It wasn't easy – the search for my birth
mother took six years. I had an unconscious fear of rejection, so I'd make some
progress in finding her, then take a step back. She was also hard to find. Even
with the help of an adoption charity, it took a couple of hundred phone calls
and many letters to find her.

"My first meeting with Agnes, when I eventually found her living in the United
States, went wonderfully, and although she never acknowledged who I was to her
friends and family – which I found hard – we continued a warm relationship until
she died in 1996. About two years later, I plucked up the courage to search for
other members of my birth family and I'm now in contact with my cousins, aunts
and uncles too – although, sadly, I was never able to get any information about
my father.

"It's good to know where I came from, although I have no regrets about being
adopted and my adoptive family feels no less my family than before. Three of my
siblings say it doesn't make them feel any differently towards me.

"Sadly, one of my brothers – who, I learned last year, was the only one who knew
before me that I was adopted – doesn't feel like this. But we have a difficult
relationship for other reasons. One of my other brothers recently had my
father's watch repaired and said he felt I should have it. Given how I'd felt
about the war medals, it was a significant gesture."

Happy New Year 2010

Wishing everyone a Bright & Blessed New Year 2010!

I wanted to share the blog of a new friend and great writer, Amanda, "The Declassified Adoptee". I think she made a most profound statement on her blog to start 2010:

"...a question that might help you decide in political matters that don't concern you: "would the world be a better place if EVERYONE were treated this way?" If it's not OK to treat everyone on a global level to be denied original identity, on-going family medical history and biological heritage, then it isn't OK to deny adoptees either."

That sounds a lot like "The Golden Rule" to me!

I had a nice New Year's morning surprise this morning when I happened to flip to a channel just as the Dr. Seuss movie, "Horton Hears a Who" was starting...got to watch it all the way through (for the first time). Adoptees, first parents, adoptive parents, and ethical professionals ~ let's work to bring our voices together and make enough noise this year to ensure our leaders hear us. This restoration of adoptee's dignity and right to obtain our unfalsified original record of birth is long past due. Millions of adopted individuals and those after us deserve it ~ Unlock our lives.

‘‘even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small’’ ~ Horton