Posted on 05/20/2011 12:28:20 PM PDT by TheDingoAteMyBaby
TRENTON, N.J. — Adult adoptees in New Jersey who want to find their biological parents are hoping that a three-decade battle in the Legislature over giving them access to their birth records will end with a stroke of Gov. Chris Christie's pen.
Awaiting the governor's signature is a bill that would open up state adoption records, marking a major shift for New Jersey, which has one of the most restrictive adoption records policies in the United States. The move has been fought by an unlikely alliance between legal groups who say it violates privacy concerns and anti-abortion advocates who fear it will encourage women facing unplanned pregnancies to choose abortion instead of adoption.
The bill would give future adoptees access to their original birth certificate — with the names of their birth parents — once they turn 18. Although birth parents could list their preference not to be contacted by the child they surrendered, adoptees won't be required to respect the preference. Parents who gave up children before the law takes effect would have one year to opt out and have names would be redacted from the certificate.
After meandering back and forth between the state Senate and General Assembly for more than 30 years, the bill finally passed on May 9. The governor has until June 23 to decide whether to sign it. Christie's office said he hasn't decided either way, but will give the bill due consideration.
Transparency in adoptions runs the gamut from places like Kansas and Alaska, where adult adoptees have ready access to their records, to New Jersey, where only a judge can unseal a child's original birth certificate once the adoption is complete — even if the parents grant permission.
Just over half of states require a court order, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but in recent years many states have moved toward increased access for adoptees. New York lawmakers are currently considering such legislation.
In New Jersey, the decision is likely to involve competing priorities for the Republican governor, who has an adopted sister. The most vocal opposition has come from anti-abortion groups such as New Jersey Right to Life, who maintain that more parents will choose abortion if they know they can't cloak an adoption in guaranteed anonymity. Christie, a Roman Catholic, is opposed to abortion, but he has meticulously steered clear of divisive social issues during his first term as governor.
"With abortion, there is total anonymity, but if a woman gives her child to a loving, caring family, she doesn't deserve anonymity? What type of society makes decisions like that?" said Patrick Brannigan, who runs the New Jersey Catholic Conference and opposed the bill. Catholic Charities is a major adoption coordinator in New Jersey, and prefers reunions mediated by professional counselors over surprise phone calls from long-lost children.
Despite statistics touted by both sides, there is no solid evidence linking open adoption records with a change in abortion rates. For example, proponents point to states like Alabama and Oregon, where abortions actually went down after open records policies were instituted. But overall pregnancies also declined at similar rates during the same periods.
Over the past decade, the Catholic Conference and New Jersey Right to Life joined with the New Jersey State Bar Association and the state chapter of the ACLU in an unconventional coalition of groups that rarely find themselves on the same side of policy debates.
"The people we're fighting for are the people who can't come forward and fight about this, because it would expose them as having given up children," said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the ACLU-NJ.
But the bill's backers say times have changed, stigmas have faded and secrets help no one. They argue that even if parents expected privacy, their needs should be trumped by the intrinsic rights of the adoptee.
When Dee Armstrong gave a son up for adoption in the late 1960s in Morristown, N.J., she was told the records would be closed. He came looking for her when he was 29, and while mother and son eventually decided to live separate lives, she can't imagine denying her son information about who he is.
"I don't care what someone was promised," said Armstrong, 62. "Any adult's birth mother should understand that her secrecy or confidentiality are minor to the rights of a young baby that had no say in what went on around them."
The trump card for me is the importance of a complete medical history. There is no way to provide one anonymously at the time of adoption because there is no way to know what medical advances may determine as hereditary.
I think a person has a right to know (if at all possible) who his/her parents are.
Changing that agreement later is wrong.
Except an important party to that contract was never allowed an opinion. It is what a judge would rule as unconscionable.
Then I guess you support abortion, because that would have been the decision of some of those mothers if they knew the couldn’t give up the child and move on.
This law should allow the parent, who gives up her child, to be able to have the option of not being contacted. They can wwrite down their medical history and even leave a DNA sample to ensure the child has the medical history.
I know for myself, if I had to give up a child, I’d want a complete break. Give the child a good home to grow up in. I would not want to be contacted 30 years later and, if I were contacted, I would make it clear and without doubt that it is not a happy reunion from my side.
If there is indeed such a contract, doesn't this law impair the obligation of that contract? That would violate the Contract Clause of the U.S. constitution.
Somebody please call the irony police. Roe v Wade is defended on the grounds of the personal privacy of the woman, and yet she relinquishes this "constitutional right" when the baby is born? Are people arguing this s*** with a straight face?
I don't know what good policy would look like with respect to adoption, but I do like the fact that states get to decide the matter. In theory, one could move to a more restrictive state to give birth to protect anonymity. Just like if you want an abortion you could go to a more liberal state to obtain..er...wait..never mind.
I can’t imagine giving up a child to begin with. How sad for a child to find out not only did their mother give them up, but never even cared to find out how they were doing. With someone like you, it probably would be best for the child to not know. Rejection by a parent is a terrible burden for a child to bear.
Let me put it to you this way.
If I end up with a child to care for, I’d be a better parent than most here. Daycare would not be an option and I’d do my darndest to home school them. It would not bother me in the least to be a parent 24/7. If I had to work three jobs to ensure their well being, it would be a joy, not a burden.
That alone makes me a better parent than most people, period.
Having said that, if I have to give up my child because I am incapable of caring for them, I’d choose the best parents for that child and trust them to raise them. If I have to break a relationship, the break must be complete and without regret.
Generally it is the mother who gives the information placed upon a birth cetificate. What if she names the wrong father either out of malice or through ignorance. Why should not the father be protected? Say at a later date the father has married and has a family and then without warning is presented with a spurious claim, perhaps even blackmailed?
As cruel as some may claim, this is the very reason that so many would-be adoptive parents are opting to go to a foreign country to find a child to love “as they own”. Those fortunate children become the “child of their own”.
Someone who is in the unfortunate position of having to give up an unborn child, may not be able to cope in any future with the result of “activistic meddling”, changing privacy laws, and other governmental mischief. The result, another abortion, as opposed to a living, safe, loved child.
I know personally of two sets of parents, who financed the costs of adoption by their children, PROVIDED THE CHILDREN WERE FROM EUROPE and beyond the reach of “busybody do-gooders.” The two children are now indeed “CREDITS TO THEIR PARENTS.”
In some jurisdictions, you cannot even dispute the claim through a DNA test. If you are named the father and didn’t protest, even if you weren’t aware, you’d be held responsible for child support.
That's an excuse that someone has the right to murder the only innocent party in that mess.
What needs to happen is more people being held responsible for THEIR choices. The baby never gets one.
IMO a mistake.
My DiL was adopted, grew up in a loving family.
She decided to find her birth parents and the relationship with the adopted parents and birth mother went south.
Only the biological father really accepted the contact.
My DiL was traumatized by the ordeal.
The birth mother didn’t want to be found, the adopted parents were very hurt.
The ONLY way it should be carried out is with an intermediary to contact the birth parents and find out whether they want to be contacted by the child.
The new idiotic adoption laws are one reason couples go to E.Europe, Asia for a child. Sad.
Why? I can't imagine thinking that the child would never be curious about where they came from.
The whole idea of pretending that the birth parents never existed so that the adoptive parents feel secure about the exclusive ownership of their children is a psychosis of the 19th century. For medical reasons alone, adult humans have a right to have information about their genetics and birth parents.
I didn’t get involved with it so can only guess.
Maybe they felt that she was rejecting the parents after 20 yrs of a loving upbringing.
Of course people should make the most responsible decisions they can possibly make in their lives.
Now let’s talk reality and the principle of least harm.
We are on the wrong side of paradise, so sometimes it is a reality that the best action is still not a good action, but it is the least harmful action.
It is a reality that if you put people in a position of having to regret their actions, like forcing them to contend with a child that they had to give up. Some will choose to kill the child rather than have the possiblity of the child coming back into their life at some point.
The least harmful thing to do is to allow the child to go to a good home and allow the mother and father the option of wanting to keep in contact or not and respecting their decision.
Privacy is a form of ownership and it is not my place to decide how much privacy somebody is entitled to, including my biological parents.
I don't understand the denial. I really don't. Let's pretend can end badly. And in the story you told, it did.
I know another young woman that was adopted. When her adoptive mother died, her father didn't want her. She was ignored. Finding her birth father (who wasn't told of her existence until after the adoption) has given her answers to medical questions and a father and step-mother that really DO love her. She's in heaven. Unfortunately her birth mother AND her sister had both died. But she has her Dad. Something that she hadn't experienced before.
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