Adoption privacy must be honored
Adoption might be thought of as a social contract whose terms have
changed dramatically in recent years.
A generation ago, legal adoptions were typically handled with the
utmost confidentiality. The transaction often was as compartmentalized
as an espionage operation, with neither the biological nor the
adoptive parents knowing the others' identity. Biological parents -
many of them unwed mothers - were commonly told that the records would
remain permanently sealed.
In an era in which out-of-wedlock births carried enormous social
stigma, this assurance helped the biological mother and father put the
traumatic pregnancy behind them and get on with their lives. In any
event, adoption was generally understood to be a proceeding that
completely erased one parental relationship and replaced it with a new
one. The transfer was treated as final, inviolable and irreversable.
Adoption has since lost much of its secrecy, and today it is less
often seen as an absolute termination of biological ties. Some
adoptions today are "open," with the parties involved fully aware of
each others' identities. Even children raised under more traditional
adoptive arrangements are tracking down their "natural" mothers or
fathers with increasing frequency once they've reach adulthood.
Such searches have become much easier now that citizens can access
vast databases of birth records via the Internet. In Washington, a
state-sponsored intermediary service helps adoptees reach biological
parents through confidential go-betweens. These intermediaries locate
parents and ask if they are willing to communicate directly with the
inquiring sons or daughters - but the parent retains the option of
refusing contact and remaining anonymous.
Two legislators now want to go further. State Rep. Suzette Cooke
(R-Kent) and Sen. Jeanne Kohl (D-Seattle) have introduced bills that
would give adoptees a right to birth certificates bearing the names of
their biological mothers and fathers. A similar bill was enacted four
years ago, but it applied only to adoptions occurring after 1993. The
Cooke-Kohl bill would be retroactive; it would effectively undo the
confidentiality of all previous adoptions in this state.
This is a step too far. One can sympathize with the hunger of some
adoptees to discover their biological roots, but at some point their
interests have to be balanced against the interests of biological
parents who - in a different era, under different rules - were assured
their identities would be kept confidential. Many of them have no wish
to reopen a painful episode of their past. The appearance of a child
long ago given up for adoption might, for example, be profoundly
distressing for an older woman who has never told her husband or
family of her teenage pregnancy.
The release of birth certificates for post-1993 adoptions is fair; in
these cases, the birth parents know eventual disclosure of their
identities is part of the deal. But disclosure should not be forced,
long after the fact, on those who were given every reason to believe
their privacy would be honored. The Cooke-Kohl bill wouldn't merely
change the rules of adoption in the middle of the game; it would
change the rules long after the game was over.
February 08, 1998