Author Makes Case that Adoptee Birth Records Shouldn’t be Kept Secret
Susan Gilmore, Seattle Times
September 4, 2000

For decades, history has treated adoption as one of America’s dirty little secrets, encased in shame. Unwed mothers producing unwanted children. Infertile couples spending thousands to buy a baby they couldn’t create themselves. Adopted children feeling they are somehow second choice.

Certainly these myths have been shattered. But while adoptions don’t have the stigma they once did, secrecy endures. Most states still protect original birth records, and no one knows how many children have been placed for adoption.

In a new book, Adam Pertman, a reporter for The Boston Globe and an adoptive father of two, explores the history and breadth of adoption, using real-life stories to reinforce his belief that adoption should not be a dirty secret, that records must be open.

“When we adopted I discovered a whole planet out there I knew nothing about,” said Pertman, who covers children and family issues for the Globe. “As a journalist I wondered how can people have so many mistaken notions. It was an unexplored world . . .”

Three years ago he convinced his newspaper it was a story worth telling. That became an award-winning series that evolved into “Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America.” The book is scheduled for release in early October by Basic Books ($25).

Pertman, 47, will be in Seattle this week as the keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by Bastard Nation, a radical, upstart adoption-rights group that was formed in 1996 on the Internet and fights for opening adoption records.

It was Bastard Nation that led the campaign in Oregon, where voters in 1998 passed a law that opens original birth certificates to adoptees. Despite court challenges, the law went into effect last May, making Oregon the fourth state to open adoption records and the first to do it through the voters.

The law was unsuccessfully challenged by six anonymous birth mothers who said they were promised, when they relinquished their children, that their names would never be revealed. “They were promised they could put it behind them and move on,” said their attorney, Frank Hunsaker of Portland. “They shouldn't have to worry about that knock on the door.”

That may be true for mothers who gave up children years ago, said Delores Teller, president of the Oregon Adoptive Rights organization who, at age 16, relinquished a child to adoption. Today, she said, 95 percent of adoptions in Oregon are open, where there is contact between the child and the birth parent.

Julie Dennis, legislative chairwoman of Bastard Nation, is heading an organization called Washington State Open 2001, which hopes to put an initiative similar to Oregon’s on the Washington ballot next year. The Bastard Nation conference, scheduled to run Sept. 8-10 at the Aljoya Conference Center in Seattle, is being billed as a “training retreat,” teaching members in other states how to mobilize legislatures to push for open adoption records.

Pertman is not a member of Bastard Nation, but supports its mission to open adoption records. “No other adults in America are treated in this way,” he writes of the closed records, “and singling out adoptees marks them as lesser citizens entitled to fewer rights.”

“Laws preventing adoptees from seeing their own records have to be repealed, laws regulating the role of money have to be written and laws forcing people to do emotional calisthenics to accomplish an adoption, or live with one, have to be rewritten.” Pertman is a strong supporter of open adoptions and said it saddens him that he doesn’t have more contact with the birth parents of his son, Zack, 6, and daughter, Emmy, 3. He sends the birth parents cards and letters but hears nothing back.

In his book, Pertman explores the complications of foreign adoptions, the roadblocks faced by gay adoptions and the unscrupulous behavior of some adoption agencies.

Using real-life stories, he also talks about the problems placing special-needs children who languish in foster care, the high cost of adoptions, the anguish faced by birth mothers who give up their children and by infertile couples who realize they can’t produce a child, and the devastation faced by adoptive couples who arrive at the hospital only to learn the mother has changed her mind.

“Like the overwhelming majority of adults who decide to adopt in America today, we did so because we were infertile,” wrote Pertman. “I don’t look forward to explaining this to our kids, but there’s no sugar-coating the bottom line: Adoption was our second choice.”

Pertman said it now costs from $20,000 to $35,000 for adoptions outside the public system, regardless of whether a nonprofit agency or an attorney is used. Pertman points out that there is no national branch of government that keeps track of adoptions, so no one really knows how many adoptees there are, although estimates are 5 million to 6 million in America. Another fact in his book: Fewer than 3 percent of American women give up their babies for adoption today.

As far as adoptees finding their birth parents, Pertman asserts keeping birth records secret is often no obstacle for those determined to find their roots. With the Internet and groups that help with cyberspace searches, it's not that hard for an adoptee to find his or her parents. But that’s little comfort to those who oppose opening birth certificates.

Pertman understands the concern of those who want to keep birth records closed, but thinks it’s misplaced. “We’re in the throes of a revolution. The secret is out,” he said of the success supporters have had in some states in getting adoption records opened.

For Pertman, adoption is a passion. He would give his book away, he says, “if it would help remove the stigmas and normalize the adoption process entirely so that my children are never hurt by people’s misunderstandings, skewed opinions and negative views.”

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