by John C. Sonne, M.D.
August 9, 1996
...... I am writing to urge you to support passage of laws being currently proposed in several states which would authorize adoptees to have access to their original birth certificates. Currently this is illegal in all states of the Union except Kansas, Tennessee, and Alaska.
Most adoptees have experienced three major traumas which have resulted in many of them having unusual difficulty feeling secure in their identity, their sense of belonging and connectedness, and their feeling of being real, authentic, first class, present, and comfortable with intimacy. They share much in common with abortion survivors (Sonne, 1996). The fact that the birth parents of future adoptees did not keep their children, no matter what the reason, suggests that many adoptees, as unwelcome unborns, experienced their first prenatal trauma as a result of being in an ambivalent parental environment during their life in the womb. In addition to most adoptees probably having experienced a first prenatal trauma, all adoptees have definitely experienced a second trauma by virtue of the postnatal disruption of the emotional bond between them and their birth parents when they were given up for adoption. Most have also experienced a third trauma in the form of a psychological abortion of their identity by virtue of having been given a falsified birth certificate defining them as the biological children of their adoptive parents.
During adolescence, when adoptees are maturing sexually and going through the stage of identity vs. role confusion, or at a time when they plan to marry, or when they plan to have, or are having, children of their own, many adoptees experience an escalating and almost imperative need to search for their roots. The search is by no means an easy one under the best of circumstances, but finding themselves deprived of access by law from learning the truth about their origins brings to the fore and reinforces their third trauma, a powerful psychological abortion of mind and spirit that has been latent, but is now manifest. The consolidation of this psychological abortion by law forecloses the opportunity for adoptees to address and resolve all three traumas. Without knowing the truth about their origins, many adoptees are unable to use their minds to heal themselves.
There has been intense opposition by some pro-life groups to passage of bills which would authorize adoptees' access to their original birth certificates, based on the presumption that passage would result in an increase in abortion being chosen over adoption by birth parents who are not prepared to raise their children. This was the prediction of Willke (1990), then president of National Right to Life, in his testimony to the Ohio legislature in which he strongly opposed passage of an open access bill, which was, indeed, defeated. Not only is this presumption unsupported by available data, the data documents the opposite. Countries with open access actually have a lower rate of abortion than those who have sealed records (Forrest, 1996). A Canadian study (Daly and Sobel, 1993) showed that abortion and adoption were both decreased. The authors report that more unwed pregnant women are keeping their babies than was the case in past years, and the decrease in adoption was due to this, not due to an increase in abortion. Ridgeway ( 995) reports similar data and conclusions from England.
The anecdotal presentation in hearings this spring in Trenton that some birth mothers actually threatened to have an abortion unless guaranteed confidentiality is also not supported by evidence. Again to the contrary, Feinstone (1996), found in a survey of seven adoption agencies in New Jersey that not one of them had ever had a birth mother who expressed such a threat. It has been my clinical experience that a more common reason some women choose abortion over adoption, in addition to other reasons, privacy upon adoption being an unlikely one, is because they fear the pain of relinquishing their new-born child. N.M. (1996), writing in the Adoption Triad Forum, speaks to this, describing her adoption relinquishment as "by far the single most painful event in my life. I've always felt strongly that abortion was wrong. and in an ultimate sense I still do. Yet after going through one unplanned pregnancy that 'ended' with my son being adopted, I knew I could not survive that kind of pain one more time when I became pregnant just 2 months short of my wedding." (italics by N.M.) She chose to abort. Closed records actually increase the fear of relinquishment because they confirm to the birth mother that she will never again see her child. Most birth parents miss their children, worry and grieve about them, and would welcome contact. Gioglio (1996) to the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services reported that out of 322 birth family members contacted from 1992 through 1996, predominantly birth parents and siblings, there were 289 in-person reunions, and 10 by-mail reunions. Only 14 refused contact, and 10 were deceased.
Since the presumption of some pro-life opponents of an increase in abortion upon open access is unsupported by evidence, it can be credited as a fantasy, and dismissed. There remains, however, a component of the position of pro-life opponents of access which deserves serious attention, and which actually threatens the viability, integrity and consistency of the right to life movement This is the inherent contradiction in the position of those who oppose abortion, support a right to life, and yet do not support adoptees' access. Dedicated to saving the lives of unborn children from physical abortion prenatally, but opposed to adoptees' right to know, and to their right to have access to their original birth certificates, they are paradoxically unwittingly sanctioning a psychological abortion of the minds and souls of some of these same saved children who happened to have become adoptees after having been born alive.
Please reconsider your position if you are opposed to access. I know your intentions are good. However, saving the lives of the unborn is not enough if the souls and minds of some of them are damaged subsequently. I also know that you believe that there is more to life than a material existence. The adoptee is not magically born again by the act of sealing his original birth certificate and issuing a false one. To the contrary, his birth is denied and erased. His original identity is psychologically aborted. The same might be said of the identities of birth and adoptive parents, and also their nuclear and extended families. I believe that pro-life opposition to passage of these bills is not only harming adoptees, birth and adoptive parents, and their families, but that it will also harm the pro-life movement in the long run as more and more people realize the contradictions contained in a position such as this taken by anyone who professes respect for the sanctity of life.