Rooted in Conflict: Law Governing Research for Adoptees Is Duplicitous
I do believe in a woman's right to choose, yet it is challenged by my belief in an adoptee's right to have information about his or her family and parentage.
November 22, 2019 at 12:28 PM
7 minute read
I have long been intrigued by our cultural and my own fascination with the family tree. Friends have traced their families back to kings, queens, slaves, slave owners and historical figures both benevolent and unsavory. My family narrative is one built on the Italian immigration story. Various relatives have contributed significantly to the family tree, going back three or four generations.
My great grandparents immigrated to America for a better life, found a community of other Italians and started a life premised on the fallacy of the American Dream. Like other immigrants, our family experienced intolerance, poverty, long work hours and the love of family and community. It is easy to romanticize the American Dream, fantasizing an equitable system in which we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and change the status quo. I have over time pieced together the real narrative our of family, which became much easier over time as some of the secrets were buried in a language lost with assimilation. Some lines can be easily traced back to Benevento and Naples, while other lines are not so clear. I have no memory of hearing Ellis Island stories; I visited the online site to check for any name listed in our family tree, but could not locate everyone who appeared in U.S. Census data.
The branches of our family tree are filled with names, sometimes faces. The stories are almost forgotten as each generation passes. I search, discuss and tell their stories I remember. Recently, my sister and mother embarked on an Ancestry DNA journey. The results were both surprising and not. The lines we all thought would indicate an Italian tapestry were instead woven with Turk, Caucasus, Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern strands. This was shocking and forced conversations about the implications of affairs, immigration patterns, impact of war and a surprising lack on all our parts of the science of DNA.
For me, the shock took on a different form, it was visceral. I found myself short of breath, hot, sweaty, dizzy; all manifestations of my anxiety. The realization that the genetic family tree could never include me was overwhelming. I was thrown back to feeling ashamed of being a bastard, angered by the imagined story of unknown birth parents, and alone. I could not articulate this in part because we don't talk about me being adopted, though we all know.
My parents told me I was adopted when I was 5 and gave me my adoption paperwork when I turned 18. At various times in my life I thought about my birth parents, mostly nightmarish images of dying and ending up in a heaven with a drug-addicted prostitute who already didn't want me. I have been all over the place emotionally, vacillating quickly between the wanting to know and fearing rejection by not only my biological family but my real family. I received information from Catholic Family Charities and then stopped any process of learning more about my biological parents when the agency, in my mind, attempted to extort money for a connection I thought I was entitled to. I interned with a probate judge to learn more about the regulations regarding adoptee records, pretended my curls were a genetic link to my father's side and cried over the lack of connection to a biological family, or anyone.
At the heart of the at times dramatic ebbs and flows of my desire for a biological connection were societal norms about family, parentage, gender and maintaining the status quo. I have spent a lot of time on this issue, mentally reminding myself of the former while battling the emotional scars of my birth mother's decision. I do believe in a woman's right to choose, yet it is challenged by my belief in an adoptee's right to have information about his or her family and parentage.
In 2014, there was a victory for some adoptees in Connecticut when the Legislature approved Public Act No. 14-133, An Act Concerning Access to Birth Certificates and Parental Health Information for Adopted Persons. The act granted adoptees, 18 years old or older, who were born after Oct. 1, 1983 (or such person's adult child or grandchild), the right to an uncertified copy of their original birth certificate. The act also provided a mechanism for birth parents who contacted the Commission of Public Health to complete a contact preference and medical history form. This was progress, but it was not all-inclusive. Adoptees born on or after Jan. 1, 1944, to Oct. 1, 1983, were not covered by the act. This group is only able to access information about birth parents if the birth parents named on the birth certificate have consented, died or cannot be located or are incompetent and the legal representative of the birth parent has consented. See Connecticut General Statutes (C.G.S.) Section 45a-753(e).
I am in the group impacted by this legislation, and though I am unlikely to request said records, the fact that I cannot is infuriating. I understand that societal norms play a role in the rationale for keeping records confidential. The intersecting rights of mothers, fathers (but mostly mothers), and adoptees are difficult to balance. Race, class, ethnicity, age, mental health, marriage, property and intellectual acumen each created additional challenges and shaped practices across the country, defining who should parent as well as who should be placed and with whom. All of these issues impacted generations of adoptees and birth parents and arguably further complicated feelings of shame, marginalization and otherness.
In 2018 and again in 2019, An Act Concerning Access to Original Birth Certificates By Adult Adopted Children, which would allow access to original birth records to all adopted persons 18 years of age or older regardless of date of birth, came close to passing. The timing of this coincided with my own family's Ancestry DNA results and forced the realization that there was a way to connect with birth families via this mechanism. Perhaps I could find out if my purported doppelgängers in Hartford, Waterbury and New Haven were related to me somehow. Each of the genealogical DNA connection sites has information about adoptees, but each lauds the ability to reunite as a positive thing. Yes, there is an option to turn off the ability to be connected or contacted, but the pull to do so remains. For someone who has done the work and thought all was well, I was rocked.
I am one of thousands of adoptees in the state. This is one perspective and there are many others to consider. But the fact remains that I cannot receive an uncertified copy of my original birth certificate, but I could send my saliva through the U.S. mail and months later be connected to a biological relative. To me, this is outrageous. Our state should take a stand, like others, and allow access to original birth certificates for all adoptees, regardless of birth date.
Karen DeMeola is a member of the Connecticut Law Tribune editorial board and is assistant dean of finance, administration and enrollment at the University of Connecticut School of Law.
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