Posted on 06/23/2009 4:52:16 PM PDT by Bokababe
Is there a time limt?
How about 5 years ago? 5 Months? 5 Weeks? 5 Hours?
The meanspirted attacks on the rape victim has caused me to re-examine my Pro-Life stance.
Nope.I basically disagree with the whole "privacy" thing here as it applies to the child.
The meanspirted attacks on the rape victim has caused me to re-examine my Pro-Life stance.
The meanest I've been to the mother in this thread is to seriously question her motives in seeking $$$ here.And as I've already suggested I suspect that a filthy,amoral American lawyer has played in role in *that*.And if this thread can cause you to develop a love and respect for the likes of Tiller The Killer then all I can say is that I pity you.
I wasn’t accusing you of saying meanspirted things about the rape vicim, there were plenty of others.
If there is no time limit, what good is the word of the state?
Those who are considering giving a baby up for adoption need to be advised that almost anything can happen as a result.
They may even be sued to provide financial support in the future.
These privacy laws need to be changed.They should,at least,have a time limit (at 21 the child can be given contact info),if not done away with completely.
They may even be sued to provide financial support in the future.
I'd be completely opposed to that.However,if a biological mother/father volunteered to assist a child...
So I go back to one of my original questions. Is your opposition and contract binding for 5 years, 5 months, 5 hours?
As you yourself said, no time limit, the contract can be overturned in a heartbeat. It's meaningless.
If this doublecross by the state stands, both natural parents of any child being place for adoption better start a college fund.
Without the rule of law we have the chaos this case illustrates.
My husband is one of five adopted children. He and his biological sister were adopted together. Out of the five, only his bio sister was ever interested in finding her birth mother. She spent years looking and finally found her and the rest of the family. She has since moved several states away to live with them. We have contact with them but have never met them and my husband is pretty hesitant about it.
The only chaos I see in this case is that it's the State of New Jersey,which has billions,being sued instead of the rapist who,I'll wager,has hundreds.
Fair enough.
I'm just posting this for the record: The reason the State is being sued, and not the rapist, is that it was the State who broke the contract and their word, not the rapist.
She is suing the correct party.
every view point is not either conservative or liberal. that is not reality.
This is a viewpoint that has to do with laws and rights.
morality and what should or shouldn’t be the simple rights of every human being born on this earth.
To know who gave you life is a very simple right. maybe the most basic. why it seems so evil to some is confusing.
But in this specific case if the mother didn’t want her privacy violated she should have responded to the request. She also might have even gone a little further and sent an anonymous letter to her child explaining the whys of her decision and also give her some basic medical information.
although i’m sure some here would think that would violate the all important privacy rights.
anyway...i’m bored with this discussion now.
Also there could be a way to if the mother had some medical info she wanted to give or was necessary she could without revealing her name.
I have a friend who gave birth to a child from a rape when we were 18 23 years ago. Her daugher tried to contact her and she said she couldn’t deal with it at this time but her daughter needed some medical info that she was able to give.
The strength my friend showed in still carrying the child and giving birth despite brutal rape that started it makes me even more angry at women who skip down to the local abortion house like they’re going to the dentist.
One of the main concerns raised by those who oppose opening records to adult adoptees is that doing so violates their birth parents’ right to privacy. Open records proponents have long argued that there is no right to privacy that extends to birth parent anonymity, and on February 11, 1997, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision confirming this view. [106 F.3d 703 (6th Cir. 1997)]
In 1996 the Tennessee legislature passed a law granting certain adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates, subject to contact vetoes and significant exception clauses. The law was halted by a court injunction when a group of birth mothers, adoptive parents and an adoption agency filed suit claiming the law violated their constitutional rights under both the Tennessee and Federal Constitution. The federal case ended in 1998 when the United States Supreme Court declined to overrule the Appeals Court ruling in favor of the defendants and open records. The courts rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that their right to privacy was infringed upon, stating, “A birth is simultaneously an intimate occasion and a public event — the government has long kept records of when, where, and by whom babies are born. Such records have myriad purposes, such as furthering the interest of children in knowing the circumstances of their birth.” The judges of the Sixth Circuit Court further found that “if there is a federal constitutional right of familial privacy, it does not extend as far as the plaintiffs would like.” The court also cited a 1981 decision in which the appeals court found that “the Constitution does not encompass a general right to nondisclosure of private information.” More directly, the Court found that the interest of an adoptee to know who his or her birth parents are is “an interest entitled to a good deal of respect and sympathy.”
The right to privacy, an implicit right that is not found specifically within the United States Constitution, requires case law to flesh it out and define it further. Our nation’s courts have spoken clearly that the right to privacy does not extend to withholding birth information from the very person to whom it primarily pertains — the adoptee.
Birth parents could have had no reasonable expectation of anonymity. The original birth certificate is sealed when the adoption is finalized in court, not when the birth mother signs relinquishment papers. A child relinquished but never adopted has an unsealed birth certificate. If protection of the birth mother were intended, the original birth certificate would be sealed upon termination of her legal relationship to the child, not at the beginning of the legal relationship of the adoptive family. Nearly all states have provisions for opening adoption or birth records for good cause without the consent or even notification of the birth parent. Birth mothers signed irrevocable relinquishment forms, but there have been no contracts produced promising that an adoptee’s original birth record would remain sealed.
Despite the finding that birth parent privacy rights do not extend as far as keeping their names secret from adoptees, opponents of open records have continued to claim that some birth parents, particularly women, would be harmed emotionally if they were to be contacted by a relinquished child who had reached the age of majority. In addition, some reproductive rights advocates believe that permanently sealed birth records should be an option for pregnant women who choose not to raise a child.
In reality their adult children, raised by others, are not the enemies of birth parents. Our laws and policies should not deprive one group of their rights in order to protect others from possibly having to face the consequences of their past choices. In the event that an adoptee chooses to contact a birth parent, both people should consider the feelings and concerns of the other. When birth records are opened to adult adoptees, a woman who relinquishes an infant will have eighteen to twenty-one years to decide how to answer a possible phone call from that adult child. Even today, with records still sealed in most states in the United States, birth parents must consider their responses to being found, since a network of search consultants has arisen to circumvent sealed records. Most birth parents are happy to be contacted by their adult children. A right to privacy that prevents the disclosure of birth parents’ names to adult adoptees does not exist in law or in the real world.
There is no real conflict of interest between birth parents and adoptees. The apparent conflict is a creation of the opposition to open records, primarily a section of the adoption industry which fears its past misdeeds coming to light.
This legal recitation you offered does not support your theory of natural, inherent, fundamental right to know information about birth parents. It affirms, instead, that a legislature is empowered to codify procedures for adoption...nothing more. It denies a fundamental right to privacy as a matter of constitutional law. It does not affirm a similar constitutional right to access by adoptees of birth parent information.
It's a straw man argument to say that support for the privacy of birth parents lies in some fundamental right. It lies instead in the laws and codes and policies of the individual states. It's those laws and codes and policies that the state in this story is accused of ignoring, even violating. That is the basis for the civil action.
You support open records for adoptees. That's a plausible position. What you have failed to do, however, is acknowledge that to change the rules...the contract, if you will...as done in this case has an ocean of consequences.
You will create an animosity on the part of birth parents that will poison any attempts at relationship. You will poison the process for birth parents deciding, today, whether to choose to offer up for adoption...or to abort. You will poison the process because sensible people will realize that commitments on the part of adoptive parents and the state mean nothing...that the claim of some social worker to be following some "higher" moral imperative trumps all.
And...if you have any sense whatsoever, you'll realize what happens when you p!$$ in the well...the coffee tastes funny. Sure, you'll rail on the selfishness of parents who abort rather than adopt...but, in the end, they will serve their self interest, and there's nothing you can do about it. More parents will abort, because they won't be willing to be subjected to this insane clown posse.
But I don't expect you'll see it, because I don't see any evidence of any sense on your part.
You'll create some kind of hammer to be used by adoptees...but the cries of those voices aborted before they ever spoke will ring thoughout time. The names of those well-meaning but simple fools who made it possible will be branded on the children's faces.
Good work...
Reminds me of the old lawyer's saying...if you have the law on your side, pound on the law. If you have the facts on your side, pound on the facts. And if you have neither the law or the facts on your side, pound on the table...
Those who proclaim moral rights do so because they have no legal rights to offer. There's a word for breaking the law in service of some "higher" moral authority...civil disobedience. Those who do risk going to jail...they are not immune from consequences. Seems like a potentially worrisome act when done by some citizen...when done by a government employee, it's dangerous. That is a conservative viewpoint, which I figured you needed to have pointed out...you seem somewhat clueless.
Doesn't really matter how she got here...the state and its agents have rules they must follow. When they don't they should get spanked.
As for your friends and what they call you...brings to mind what Groucho Marx had to say about joining a club...
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