AB 372 Insults Adopted Persons

March 20, 2009

[This photo is of me in the Maternity Hospital before I was relinquished for adoption back in 1966. My birth mother kept these with her through when I found her in 1994]

Back in 1996, I watched Mike Leigh’s Oscar-nominated film, Secrets & Lies. A character, an adult adopted person, asks for information about her birth mother. She asks if she could make a copy of her file. The social worker responds that this was her file and that they will keep a copy. Britain has been allowing adult adoptees access to their birth records since 1975. The British government trusts its adoptees, but California does not. In fact, there are several states across the country who trust their adult adoptees, like our neighbor, Oregon, but California does not.

On February 23rd of this year, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma introduced AB 372. The legislation would force me to go to a judge to ask or beg for my original birth certificate.

You see, I am an adopted person. I was born Cynthia Anne Henke for the first few months of my life. When my parents adopted me, the social worker asked them what they would name Cynthia. When the adoption was finalized all the documents pertaining to my life as Cynthia including my original birth certificate was sealed by the court. I appear in California Birth Index twice once as Cynthia Anne Henke and once as Denise Fuller. The birthbook in San Francisco has the name Cynthia Anne Henke written in pencil and crossed out with the notation as “sealed”.

My parents were told by the system that we would get all the information when I turned 18. It was a lie. Instead, I would get non-identifying information. What was blocked out with a black pen was completely arbitrary. An adult adoptee in Marin County got her non-id info on a small index card. It is hard to describe what it is like not being trusted with the facts of my own birth. It assumes as an adult I cannot handle the truth and be trusted to be responsible with it. In the eyes of the government I am either a perpetual infant or a potential stalker.

Because my government refused to provide the information myself and my family wanted and needed, we were forced to search out my birth relatives to get that information. These birth relatives did not know nor did they ask to be protected from their offspring. The absurdity of it all is I can now trace my roots to the 1400s, but when I stand in line at the local registrar’s office and ask for my original birth certificate I get a blank piece of paper.

Why do I need my original birth certificate? It is not like I am about to take on the persona of Cynthia Anne Henke — that ship has sailed. Yet, I cannot be buried in my ancestral graveyard without proof that I am born to that family. As an adoptee, I am not technically considered a blood descendant either unless I lie that I am a birth child of my adoptive parents. The amended birth certificate I have says that my parents were there at my birth, but they did not know that I even existed. I want the true document of my birth, and I need to be trusted with that document. I have done nothing to deserve being put in a suspect class of citizens that have to reveal my personal life to a judge to get documents that complete strangers have control over.

Court case after court case has determined that there is no right to privacy from one’s offspring. What kind of culture are we that there is such a thing as a shameful birth that needs to be kept a state secret?
Some History

The sealed record system in California was a social experiment born in the last depression when there was a huge stigma of being born out of wedlock. There were parts of the country that would stamp “illegitimate” on birth certificates of these newborns. Well meaning people sought to seal these birth certificates from the public, and issue amended birth certificates to cover their shame and encourage adoptive parents to feel like they are their real parents. The sealed record system was never intended to protect birth parents from adopted persons, or adoptive parents from birth parents. It just evolved that way as agencies, lawyers, religious organizations took advantage of the system of secrecy to lie to all the parties to coerce women to give up their children and find children for couples. From my eight years working at Voices of Adoption, a premier adoption website, I heard countless stories of the damaging effects of secrecy from birth families, adoptees, and adoptive parents. The resistance to open records in California has a lot to do with fear of the truth coming out by these agencies, lawyers, and religious organizations.

They like to hide behind the prospect that there is this single woman out there who doesn’t want to be found, a woman they never promised anything to and never really cared much for. Universally, women with out-of-wedlock pregnancies were treated poorly, told never to tell anyone, never to bother the children they give away, and just get on with their lives. They would send these women home with mother’s milk running down and absolutely no psychological support.

For agencies, lawyers, religious organizations, and politicians to claim they care about birth mothers is laughable. The plain truth is that no one has ever cared about the plight of birth mothers, except for certain sectors of the adoption reform movement.

My birth mother voted for opening records in Oregon in 1998 and she like countless birthmothers I have talked to would tell you she was promised nothing. We called out to birth mothers just before that election and got more than 600 birth mothers in 48 hours to be in a full page ad in the Oregonian in support of the Oregon open records law, Measure 58. Many of those women were victims of rape, but felt strongly that sealed records punish them again by denying their offspring rights. They said clearly and said it clearly when we tried to open records a couple years later in California, “We do not need protection from our offspring.”

Please oppose 372 and support real open records.

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Category Posted in AB 372, California adoptee rights

Comments to “AB 372 Insults Adopted Persons”

Mara said:

March 23rd, 2009 at 6:26 pm

Thank you for this enlightening post on AB372, it’s the bill from hell.

The Adoptee Rights Protest is on July 21, 2009 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Here’s the link to the promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsQesQP0H8

It’s time for real reform, not crumbs from crummy politicians. Equal rights is what the United States Constitution ensures us. (There is no “except for adoptees” clause anywhere in it.)

Open records for ALL adoptees, no exceptions, no compromises.

Mara said:

March 29th, 2009 at 11:13 am

AB 372 has been modified, but as it stands right now, adoptees would have to wait until they are 25 years old to get their birth records.

So, you can be drafted or enlist in the military and die for your country at 18, but you’re not old enough to get your birth records until you’re 25? Give me a break. What an insult. That is degrading, pathetic, and just plain stupid.

Dear Assemblymembers Feuer, Tran, Brownley, Evans, Jones, Knight, Krekorian, Lieu, Monning & Nielsen,

RE: AB 372 (Amended March 26, 2009)

If an 18 year old can be drafted or enlist into the military and die for his/her country, he/she should be able to have his/her original birth certificate. A person can drive a vehicle at 16, vote at 18, and drink alcohol at 21 years old, but is not considered “adult” enough until 25 years old to get his/her own birth records?

I am over 25 years old. This age limit on this bill wont personally affect me. But, it continues to treat an adopted person, someone who is a legal adult, as a child. I find this “special” treatment is unnecessary and degrading.