I am writing in rebuttal to Steve Chapman’s Jan. 13 commentary “Taking the privacy out of adoption.” The new Oregon law, which has been upheld by the state appellate court, allows the original birth certificate to be issued only to the one person whose history it records–the adopted adult. There is no violation of privacy because there is no public disclosure. Telling us that a birth mother’s friends, family and neighbors are going to find out her “secret” is simply a scare tactic used over and over again by adoption agencies, adoption attorneys and their lackeys in an effort to keep birth records sealed. These people have a financial interest in maintaining secret adoption records. But they’re not going to say this out loud because, frankly, baby selling doesn’t sound very nice.
Instead their battle cry has become, “We must protect the birth mothers.” Don’t believe it for one minute. The higher echelon in adoption agencies and the attorneys who make big bucks from facilitating adoptions don’t care about birth mothers’ rights! Historically birth mothers have always been at the very bottom of the heap. Their only part was and still is to “sign on the dotted line.”
Furthermore you have hauled out the old “abortion versus adoption” argument again, without regard to history. The fact is that abortion rates will not rise if original birth documents are opened to adopted adults. According to the National Center for Statistics and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, in Kansas and Alaska, both states where adult adoptees can access their original birth documents, the abortion rates are well below the national norm.
If abortion rates climb in direct proportion to an adult adoptee’s ability to access her original birth documents, as you imply, then surely Kansas would have noticed by now. Their adoption records have been open for more than 50 years. I think they would have told us, don’t you?
And surely Alaska and Kansas would have become alarmed after all this time if their adoption rates were plummeting as a result of adult adoptees being issued their original birth documents.
