Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2004

"The U.S. Census Bureau does not count adoptees or the mothers who
birth them, but the adoption industry estimates there are 12 million
birth mothers and 6 million adoptees in America"

Is this a typo or what.  It is not a logical estimate.   With all the
overseas adoptions, there should be more adoptees, than there are real
mothers who lost a child to adoption.

'Unlock our lives'
By JASON COLLINGTON World Scene Writer
9/5/2004

Adoptees lobby lawmakers to change state's adoption laws

Pat Marler still remembers her birth mother's first words, "What took
you so long?"

Marler fought for years to gain access to her adoption file, which was
sealed in Iowa.

"I'll be honest," said Marler, the Oklahoma director of Bastard Nation,
one of the largest adoptee organizations in the country, "I'm mad. I'm
still mad about it. It took me years to find my birth mother.

"I don't think I am a second-class citizen. But I, and every adoptee
whose records are sealed, is being treated like one."

Her belief has prodded Marler to lead Oklahomans for Open Records and
Adoption Honesty, a group with one goal in mind -- to unseal the
original birth certificates of people adopted in the state.

Marler, who lives in Edmond, is working with adoptees and some birth
mothers in the state to get a bill before the Legislature next session.

Samantha Franklin, a Tulsa adoptee who is also the Oklahoma
representative to the American Adoption Congress, said she joined the
group because she agrees that the sealed records are a violation of
civil rights.

"It takes a long time to get brave enough to look for your birth
parents," said Franklin, who started her successful search in her 20s.
"But once you do, you get really upset.

"We're told that our lives started when we were adopted. But that's just
simply not true," Franklin said.

The group is taking aim at many of the arguments used to defend the
continued sealed-records policy, arguments that include breaking trust
with birth parents to lowering adoption rates.

Franklin and her group say most of those arguments are myths.

"Just look at Oregon, New Hampshire and any of the other states that
recently have opened adoption records," Marler said. "The myths are
being dispelled."

One of the biggest myths the group is fighting is that birth mothers
don't want open records. But a number of national birth parents groups,
including the popular Concerned United Birth Parents, support opening
records.

Ronna Smith of Claremore is a birth mother who has joined OORAH.

"I relinquished my son in the late '70s, and was basically told to
forget and get on with my life," she said. "But I could never forget.
That's just not realistic."

After searching, she found her son in 1998. Smith discovered that her
son had a wonderful life with his adoptive parents, and he didn't want a
reunion with her at that time.

Smith said her motive in contacting her son was not to cause havoc to
his adoptive family, but to know her child is alive and well.

"The search for an adoptee often brings that person's adoptive self and
his birth self together, to feel completely whole -- as he had never
felt before," she said. "This is true for the natural mom as well, even
when the search doesn't end well."

Smith is working with OORAH to support Regday, which is Oct. 2. Regday
is an awareness day for the International Soundex Reunion Registry, a
free mutual consent registry dedicated to reuniting adult family members
separated by adoption, divorce or other dislocation.

The registry allows adoptees and birth parents to file personal
information. If both an adoptee and his or her birth parents choose to
send information, staff with the registry will contact both parties and
arrange a reunion.

Current Oklahoma laws make the registry one of the few resources
available for those wishing for a reunion, Smith said.

Members of OORAH view the organization's most important task as
educating Oklahoma legislators, none of whom has voiced public support
for unsealing the adoption records. The group's legislative survey,
distributed earlier this year, did reveal that a few legislators are
personally sympathetic to the group's cause, but asked to remain anonymous.

"A majority (of legislators) don't want anything to change," said Mary
Payne, who leads the Shepherd's Heart adoption support group in Oklahoma
City, a group already lobbying state officials. "Adoption is a
multibillion dollar business in this country. Many of our
representatives at the capitol are lawyers who make money on adoptions.
About two dozen (legislators) are adoptive parents."

But the Legislature has modified some adoption laws during the past
decade, including enacting in a 1997 bill that allows adoptees born
after 1997 to access birth-parent information if the birth parents
authorize the release of the information.

"They think (the 1997 law) took care of our needs," Payne said, "so
they're not interested. But there are thousands of adult adoptees who
don't have access to their records. It just doesn't make any sense."

Whenever she talks on this issue, Payne says someone will bring up the
confidentiality that birth mothers were allegedly promised at the time
of adoption.

"I have never met a mother who has presented a confidentiality agreement
that had her signature on it," she said.

Marler, whose birth mother did want a reunion, said even if adoptees
successfully contact their birth parents, the parents don't have to
agree to a reunion.

"Can't they just say no?" she asked. "Only in a handful of cases have I
heard of birth parents who don't want any contact. But that shouldn't
stand in the way of a person having his or her original birth certificate."

The U.S. Census Bureau does not count adoptees or the mothers who birth
them, but the adoption industry estimates there are 12 million birth
mothers and 6 million adoptees in America.

Right now, adult adoptees in all but five states (New Hampshire, Alaska,
Oregon, Alabama and Kansas) are unable to get unconditional access to
their original birth certificate.

In Oklahoma, a medical need can sometimes convince a judge to turn over
adoption records.

OORAH doesn't believe that should be the case.

"We want equal rights," Marler said. "I'm 58, and I hope that I live
long enough to see us being treated equally. I guess that is why we
can't stop."

information
For more information on Oklahomans for Open Records and Adoption
Honesty, visit the Web site www.geocities.com/oklahoma_open/OORAH.html 
or call (405) 341-0044.

Jason Collington 581-8464
jason.collington@tulsaworld.com