But for those few who would like to be anonymous, their desire does not out weigh a person's human right to know who they are and their ancestry.

Knowledge is not the same thing as a relationship. For those few women who would not want a relationship, providing one meeting and sharing of information is not too much to ask.

Are we just making up rights now? Women who gave up children for adoption (as my biological mother did me) did so on the understanding that their identities would be protected. Why would we reverse that? As an adopted child, I may want to know more about my ancestry -- but I don't have a right to, and I certainly don't have a right to invade someone's privacy and invalidate their contractual understanding of the legal process they entered into all those years ago just to satisfy my curiosity.

It is a lie that mothers were promised or even wanted anonymity.

Your desire to be treated as a second class citizen does not change the fact that very basic knowledge of who we are is a human right.

There is no theory of rights that supports what you're saying. It's mere sentiment.

There are women who, although they surely didn't forget about their child, don't want the adoption revealed at this late date. There are organizations that both adoptees and birth parents, mothers AND fathers, can register at so we know those parents who do so certainly want to find that child they gave up for adoption. I think it should be the choice of the women whether or not they find the child. Even for the timeframe those laws were passed, for authorities to think that women are like dogs who forget their offspring after some time had gone by was so backwards, utterly stupid and cruel that it's difficult to believe. They acted as if women weren't even human beings. But shit, what else is new in this world?

For example, CCRs that limit sale of property to people of the white race were perfectly legal when they were drawn up before civil rights laws made them illegal. Now, they're unenforceable.

Closed adoptions and the contracts associated with them are now being invalidated in states like Maine because it's now considered more important that adoptees have access to birth records than it is to honor the privacy implied in those contracts. Nothing about the change mandates that adoptees seek out the information. Nothing about the change requires biological mothers, fathers, or other relatives to have any contact with the adoptee.

We are NOT just "making up rights"! WHAT THE HELL???? How dare you!!!!! I'm sorry, I've never flat-out gotten pissed off at somebody posting here, but your post here just made me VERY angry, Proud Public Servant! Been annoyed, perturbed, disappointed, but THIS is different! It's OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!

I'M an adoptee. From a closed state. And I DO, TOO, have the right to know where I came from, WHO I came from, and what my biological heritage is! This isn't just vague, vain, I'm-just-bored-today curiosity. Ever filled out a medical form asking if your mom, grandma, aunt, sisters, etc etc ever had breast cancer? After you found a lump in your breast? And you're freakin' TERRIFIED because you have no idea what familial tendencies you may have, and you start feeling like you're a loaded gun waiting to blow off? And all you can do is write in N/A - for not applicable? Is this one of those "sucks to be you" type of attitudes? What if you need an organ transplant, or marrow donor, AND YOU KNOW OF NO BIOLOGICAL RELATIONS who could offer a realistic chance to save your life? And what if it's not you - what if it's ME? Are you so cavalier as to think MY fate is screwed because we have to keep some dead person's secret???? You know, those searches and revelations do NOT come with notices sent out to the originator-in-hiding, nobody sends a brass band over to their house to notify them that their secret's being exposed, no notices are then splashed all over the local and national newspapers, no evening news crews go over there to knock on their door as though it were some big, public Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes surprise.

I WANT TO KNOW. It's part of MY PERSONAL BIRTHRIGHT, dammit!!! It sure as hell isn't for vanity. It isn't because I just woke up and felt like it one fine day. It isn't because I've got all kinds of time on my hands and just felt like making some fuss for selfish reasons. It cost me more than double the amount a fellow adoptee friend of mine had to pay to get information from elsewhere here in California where policies are a more open, humane, and sensible. I had to pay THOUSANDS of dollars (that I really didn't have to spare) to an adoption detective, after I tried on my own and got nothing but roadblocks and excuses and people telling me "no" and discouraging me, and then a stack of barely coherent forms to fill out whose bottom line is - "well, we're not really able to help you anyway, but we can maybe furnish you a few vague semi-relevant crumbs and a boatload of platitudes about how wonderful it was that your birth mother gave you up. But otherwise, your records about your own birth are sealed and YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO KNOW. Sorry. Too bad. Sucks to be you, I guess. It'll be an exercise in futility anyway because we're not gonna be of much help, but here's the fee you'll have to cough up to us nonetheless."

I finally did find out. It took more than a year. My biological mother is DEAD. LONG DEAD. She's not around to be embarrassed about ANYTHING anymore. And it's none of YOUR business and none of YOUR judgment call to keep that information hidden from me!!!!! Or to support or advocate for same!!!!!!! If you are an adoptee, YOU certainly don't have to go find out, and you can live with those question marks for the rest of YOUR days if you like!!! I won't stand in YOUR way. Wouldn't even THINK of doing so! So why do you feel the need to step in and intrude on mine, and decide for me what I am and am not allowed to find out about - concerning MY own personal biological background (NOT yours!!!) lo these many years later? Especially when those who were intimately involved are no longer around to get embarrassed anymore!!!!!!

It's a damn thoughtless, selfish, senseless, ill-conceived taboo that has NO RELEVANCE to modern times and modern circumstances, any more than some dictate that we women have to wear medieval chastity belts and dress in high lace-up shoes and bone-insert corsets and bustles and collars that button all the way up to our chins. I don't know WHY it's being preserved.

This also flies in the face of the "philosophy" on the one side - that the mother's "rights" when a baby's involved are nowhere, LOW-priority at best, dismissible and irrelevant, and the life of a small mass of differentiating cells within her trumps everything and is all that counts. Well, why is that turned upside down here? Why does that have no merit here? THIS onetime mass of differentiating cells has rights. Including the right to know. And it isn't something I "just made up."

Just "making up rights now"? WTF????????????????? HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!

I'm sure it felt good to get that off your chest, but you still haven't articulated a right. In fact, you give the game away with your all-caps "I WANT TO KNOW." Yup. Me too. But that's a desire, not a right.

That said, I'm glad you found out. And, as I say below (post 10), it's a well-established legal doctrine that the right to privacy ends at death so I have no problem with post-mortum unsealings.

Americans DO INDEED have the right to know. People go to court all the time to assert the right to know. News organizations do it frequently when stuff is being hidden from the public. The Freedom of Information act is enough. I believe it applies across the board.

And before I place you on ignore I will tell you this: Thank you NOT - for your condescending and highly patronizing attitude. YOU go ahead and stay in the dark for the rest of your life. And as I said previously, I wouldn't even think of standing in your way. That's YOUR right as well, whether you might classify it as "making up" rights or not.

This really is a first for me - and I've never said it before to any DUer since I joined up not long after Selection 2000. But I'm done with you. Hope you find peace in your life. I will thus make sure I'm no further irritant to you.

Fare thee well.

The mother had the choice to not have sex, or not have a baby.

What choice does the baby have?

human right ot know who they are and their ancestry."

And with that comment, you have proven why a woman should always have the right to choose to end a pregnancy. If the price of giving a child up for adoption is the fact that the child may show up on your doorstep someday, some women may choose abortion. Because allowing a child to know who his/her biologial parents are does not guarantee that they will not contact said biological parents (or that the biological parents might not try to step back into a child's life thereby interfering with the relationship that the adoptive family has with the child).

I do believe that any adopton agency should collect important family medical history for a child put up for adoption because that can be important for the child's physical welfare.

I do not believe that a chld should have absolute right to know who his/her biological parents are (and for that fact no biological parents who willingly gave up their child should not have have an absolute right to track down that child later on). If a biological parent wishes to know his/her child or a child to know his/her biologial parent, it should be suffiicent to register with some type of national clearing house that you are willing to meet your parent or child (or have some other type of contact). It is a matter if both sides of the coin so to speak are both willing to share identification with one another.

For an adoption agency to hand out personal information on either the biological parents or child would be a gross invasion of privacy in the absence of consent from the parties involved.

Not EVER. I knew and fully understood the strength and the power of that taboo. I had already resolved that I would NOT go look for HER, specifically. It was enough just to have the information, the family background information. The biological birthright. BELIEVE ME, I was fully aware that the circumstances of my adoption might well have had lots of shame and an attempt to avoid public humiliation attached to it. People talk. What would the neighbors say? How could I face my church group? All that. The 50s were an era of young girls "in trouble" from coast to coast suddenly disappearing and "going off to live with Aunt Tillie" for a few months. Because of the shame and embarrassment and taboo. Hell, it was YEARS before anyone could even SAY the word "pregnant" on TV!!!! You didn't even say the word in polite company! It was always "she's in the family way" or "expecting" or some such. The comedian Shelley Berman used to call stuff like this "cleans and dirties" and saying one was "in the family way" was a "clirty" as in - a "cleaned-up dirty."

The whole thing for me was a moot point. My sister, who made the first contact, informed me straight off the bat that our mom was long dead (of cancer). So I wouldn't have been able to meet her even if I'd wanted to. I didn't want to. I wanted to respect her privacy, and I would not have made an attempt directly in any event. What I never wanted was to intrude. I would have sought permission through my sibs before I ever dared to contact her. I would not seek contact with any of them, either, if it was uncomfortable for any of them. I was satisfied just to get the information about them and my biological heritage.

There are STILL things I will absolutely refuse to do with any of them as a family - because her widower, who also never knew beforehand, was shocked when they told him. My siblings were wonderful and accepting and embracing. But they feared for their elderly dad - that it would shake him up terribly, and they asked me not to contact him. And I will honor that absolutely. I will not attempt to contact him. EVER. I'm not here to unwig some innocent, unsuspecting old man who had nothing to do with any of it, plopping on his front door stoop outta nowhere and saying "HI! Here I am! Guess who I was!?" 'Cause he's not my biological father. Sheesh - could you even imagine? "Hi! You've never met me before but I'm your late wife's long-lost given-up-for-adoption child she had with another man before you, and she never told you and she took the secret to her grave! But here I am anyway! Howya doin'? Nice to meetya!" YIKES!!!! That'd be awful!!!! Better he never hears another word about me! But since my sisters did tell him, I hope he forgets it ALL!!! He's quite elderly as I understand. Hopefully he's forgotten already.

Legal. It is a shame these moms have to relive a maybe sad part of their life.

to know his own genetic history. He/she needs to know if his paternal father, grandfather, and greatgrandfather all died in their 40's of heart disease. He/she needs to be aware that he/she may be prone to diabetes/cancer/Huntington's/MS, or any other life-altering condition. I'd say that trumps the mother's right to anonymity.

feel the same way now about unintended or out-of-wedlock pregnancies as they did in the 40's or 50's. We have become a much more compassionate culture toward people.

A medical history--complete, and up-to-date--is a necessity. Lots of people used to just accept their genetics as something they could do nothing about. we know now that early intervention can prevent or cure a lot of genetic diseases.

Doubt if it would result in more abortions. Anyone opposed to abortion would probably weigh their objections against the possible downside of meeting up with the child, and still choose not to abort.

that are passing more and more restrictive laws relating to women's bodies and procreation. Just think about the bookt The Handmaid's Tale. There literally is a war on women. I think that the issue goes beyond just being pregnant and deciding whether or not to have the baby, whether or not to give it up for adoption. Women really need to look at anything that impacts their life in the long run. If access to various forms of birth control become difficult, the demand for abortions may increse.

~which has been proven to be completely false. The states that have opened up birth records for adoptees have had a decline in abortion.

But thanks for playing.

A girl/woman does not want her child finding her someday does not mean there are not reasons. Wow, some people are so clueless!

Do you honestly think this would factor into a woman's decision to carry a child to term and putting them up for adoption vs. having an abortion?

Seriously?

Pony up something more than your gut feeling, and we can talk. Until then, I'll choose to believe the statistics.

And in this case it should not exist either

If there is a genetic predisposition to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. a person should know! It can be a matter of life or death, and (IMHO) trumps someone's right to privacy.

although my daughter-in-law is. She developed rheumatoid arthritis when she was 19. Total surprise. I think she would probably like to know what other surprises are lurking in her genes.

BTW, I developed cancer at age 30. My dad's dad and two sisters both died of cancer in their 50's. Knowing that, I think I and my sister are more aware, and more cautious as a result.

If people genetically screened before adoption even more kids would be unwanted

And she has never doubted it at all.

Who wants something with a known defect?

We were discussing whether ADULT children can have access to their birth records, not whether the adopting parents can.

any necessary family medical history. As long as this information is made available to an adopted child, they do not have any right to know anything further with the consent of the biological parents. It is possible to leave all relevant information behind without actually having to identify the biological parents by name.

Which is better in the long run for a child - being given life and put up for adoption or being terminated by abortion? I am not really crazy about the idea of abortion but if the government tried to dictate to me thad I had no right to privacy once I gave a child up for adoption, I would consider an abortion before it ever got to that point.

What about THEIR right to know? What about THEIR right to have that biological heritage fleshed out a little bit, so THEY have at least some notion of what might be in their future as far as serious health conditions? It's not just ME as an adoptee. It's not just for ME. What is my daughter supposed to do, if she's presented with one of those lovely forms to fill out - "did your mother, grandmother, aunt(s), sister(s), etc etc ever have breast cancer?" She, too, is stuck, like I was myself, writing in those lame three marks: N/A - for Not Applicable. Cute. Seems to me SHE has the right to know, too. Just as I do. I always resented the idea that such personal and possibly life-saving information was being forcibly withheld from me. Kept from me. By the state. By people who wouldn't know or care, and probably know their own biological heritage just fine and in full. IMO it's not their decision to make, because that information is not theirs either.

Given up for adoption at birth in '62, adopted when I was 3 weeks old.

Do I know who my biological parents are? No.
Would I like to know? Yes.
Do I have a right to know? HELL NO.

Whoever my mother was, she made a decision not to keep me. Maybe she couldn't afford me. Maybe she couldn't handle the responsibility. Maybe I was a product of rape or incest. Whatever the reason, she gave me up. And it's a fair bet that she did so with an understanding that her identity would be protected.

She actually has rights: a right to privacy generally, and more specifically a right to have her contractual understanding honored. I have no rights that trump those, in any reasonable understanding of what "rights" are.

It amazes me that people who could support a right to abortion, as almost all do on this board, cannot see this.

There are ways this could be handled that would satisfy both parties. States could agree to release birth certificates upon the death of both listed parents (the right to privacy legally ends at death). If states weren't broke, they could establish medical databases so that adoptees could learn their medical histories without learning their parents' identities (and genetic testing advances are about to make that irrelevant anyway).

But I don't have a right to know whatever I want about other people, whoever they may be.

Please read up on the Baby Scoop Era. These were forced adoptions.

both your grandfathers died in their 50's of heart disease? Or if you had a strong genetic possibility of developing diabetes? Or if there is some genetic anomoly that you could pass on to your offspring? Don't you think you should know, so that you could make lifestyle changes, or counsel your own children?

The medical databases thing would be great--but it doesn't exist now, and knowing who your parents and grandparents are could impact your own life and health in a BIG way.

Just like most of humanity, for most of history. Obviously it would be enormously beneficial to have that information. That still doesn't give me any right to invade another person's privacy.

It's also one I've never seen presented quite that way, and with the authority of someone who knows.

As I mentioned in a post above, my d-i-l was adopted at birth. She knows a little bit about her medical history. She knows there is some alcoholism in her genes. She knows she has full siblings, and actually, having been raised as an ony child, she is a lot more curious about them than about her birth parents.

She was a very fortunate child. She had two extremely loving parents, was given the best of everything, and (more important) her parents were very supportive of her. they accepted and love my own son as if he were theirs, so he is fortunate, also.

We have talked genetics with the two of them a lot. My m-i-l has keratakonus, and so do a couple of my dh's siblings. There is something going on with eyes in my family, also, although there isn't a diagnosis. I had cancer at age 30, my grandfather and both aunts died of cancer in their 50's, and my husband's paternal grandmother died of a hemorrhagic stroke in her 40's. My husband had one at the age of 51. The thing is, they are aware of these things, and can make alterations to their lifestyles to prevent or postpone those things. They will know to watch their children for vision problems, and to pass along this info to their children's physicians, in order to do the best they can for them.

So . . . I only know that I wish, for the health and happiness of my children and grandchildren that they could know everything that is lurking in both ends of the gene pool!

I have a right to know my genetic history and who my genetic siblings are.

Good thing you and I didn't need a bone marrow or organ transplant because our birth mom and dads "right of privacy" would have left us dead.

Something to think about, this issue is not all abstract, there are real consequences for adopted children.

Or, perhaps, it's not a real "right."

I'm sure the NSA would like for privacy to not be a real "right." Such "rights" impede their absolute right to know.

One's persons rights should never take away some else's? Most of civilizational history has been negotiating how to restrict competing rights. In some cases, one right-holder dominates. In other cases, the other. In some cases, it's fairly evenly split.

The big loser is government because it has its rights sharply reduced. The government, presumably, is by the people. So in restricting the rights of government (a commonplace in liberal democracies) the rights of the individual come at the price of a sharp restriction in the rights of the majority.

Right to privacy outweighs that. I like the idea of medical database so people could learn about their medical heritage history.

Privacy is what should matter the most for all the parties involved

My birth parent(s) discarded me for what ever reason, it does not matter so they lost and have no more rights to me or my information. They do not exist as far as I am concerned. The same should be true for the birth parents, they have a right to privacy that should not be invaded

I am over 50 and have zero family history and you know what doctors do not care, family history is nice to know but in all cases it is not need.any doctors have told me the same thing about family history it is a nice to have information

Now I know many adoptees have all sorts of issues and finding mommy will make them happy that is fine as long as the adoptee and birth parents want it. But when only 1 person wants to meet or get information, then the other person(s) involved should not be forced to provide anything much less meet.

Adoptees should not have a right to any birth parent info unless both parties agree.
And vice versa too birth parents don't have a right to what is going on with adoptees.

I would love for this thread to be limited to adoptees and birth parents only but it will not.

Well said. Just posted similarly right above you.

...when she got pregnant, and there was a possibility that her child might have a rare genetic condition that could conceivably have killed both her and the baby.

Back then, they didn't have DNA testing, and the only way they could tell whether there was a reasonable chance that the lethal condition might exist was to review her family medical history.

Except that she was adopted, through one of those Catholic "No tell 'em" programs.

The search was just excruciating, and it went right down to the wire for safe termination of her pregnancy, a decision she should never have had to deal with at all.

Fortunately they DID manage (finally, via an expensive private investigation, something many people could never afford but both families --ours and her husband's-- chipped in) to get hold of her birth mother's surviving sister and get a medical history, and the pregnancy was NOT lethal, just difficult.

This should never happen again, ever, to anyone, for any reason.

affirmatively,
Bright

Finding out their birth mothers were dead junkies and their fathers were either unknown or serving life for a gang killing and a living sibling was a lowlife was not fulfilling to them. Indeed it left them consumed by terrifying "what-ifs?"

Their mother warned them that there was nothing good to be found if they went digging, but curiosity got the better of them.

Closed adoptions made the adoptive parents more secure because they knew a birth mother didn't know who they were and couldn't try to contact the child. Or worse. This was important when the supply of babies was greater than the supply of potential parents.

It also provided a new birth certificate without "illegitmate" stamped on it, allowing adoptees to grow up without the social stigma of being bastards.

Unfortunately, it eliminated their familial past as well as contact with an extended family that might contain siblings or half siblings, important for adoptees raised as "onlys." Adoptees were haunted by the question of what was so awful about them that made their first mothers give them away to strangers. Birth mothers were haunted, wondering what had become of their child.

Boomer birth mothers have changed a lot of that, either keeping their children or insisting on open adoptions with input into which prospective family would raise their child. With fewer infants available, mothers were able to push for better terms and got them.

The parents wanted that buffer between their children and the biological families because at the time this was considered one of the important components to family bonding. It's also why some parents never told their children they were adopted, or at least delayed that info until they were adults.

Knowing your medical history has nothing to do with a slap in the face to your adoptive parents.

Last edited Wed Jun 18, 2014, 02:04 AM - Edit history (2)

It has nothing to do with the adoptive parents. How would it be if one of those adoptive parents found themselves blessed with a grandchild - who had a grave physical affliction. Needed a bone marrow donor. Needed an organ transplant. Needed some sort of match. Do you think, if they were truly loving parents as so many adoptive parents are, THEY would want that urgent, life-saving information locked away somewhere in some state vault?

While I am grateful for the circumstances of my own adoption, it still left me with this deep and profound sense of isolation. From a very young age. Because my adoptive parents never kept that fact from me. I had a spat with my beloved late mother-in-law about this. She was adamant - if she adopted a child, that child was HERS. PERIOD. CLOSED CASE. And she would never tell that child he or she had been adopted. She would even have kept THAT a secret. But I disagreed. That's operating under false pretences. It CANNOT be and shouldn't be.

The sense of "I am ALONE" is PROFOUND. The sense of "these folks really are not OF me." The sense that there are no siblings, no aunties, no cousins, who were real and true relatives. It may sound like some trivial little thing. Until YOU walk in those shoes and try that feeling on and get to know it, personally and intimately. It used to hurt - when I'd gaze around the room at the extended family (can you imagine - an EXTENDED FAMILY - and no, I couldn't) where you see chins repeating through several generations, and eye color, and personalities and tendencies. I longed for that. Yearned for that. Wondered probably every night what my family members (members? I had no idea if there was one or a dozen of them!) might even look like.

I had a sister-in-law who found out her mother had breast cancer - which eventually killed her. After careful consideration, my sister-in-law decided to do what Angelina Jolie did, to prevent it from happening to her and to make sure she would be around to see her children marry and have kids. What for me? NOTHING. No such thing. No clue. No idea whatsoever. I couldn't do anything that decisive or preventive if I wanted to. I had NOTHING to go on.

I spent years feeling completely adrift. Unconnected. Disconnected. Isolated. Alone. When we had kids, I found myself dissolving in tears upon holding my daughter, and then a few years later, my son. THESE were the ONLY known actual blood relatives I had - on the entire planet. The ONLY ones! Try THAT feeling on for a minute and see how comfortably it fits.

When you don't know - there's a profound sense of NON-belonging. No linkage. No ties that link or bind. A complete isolated separateness. No sense of deep-down-in-the-bone-marrow connection. An un-connect. A dis-connect. An "other"ness. A feeling like you've been artificially grafted on. You're not naturally-occurring. That John Donne quote about how "no man is an island"? Well, the adoptee with no connective information to any biological heritage - actually IS an island. You're rootless. I had an older woman friend who, after I had our first child, told me - "Now you belong to the ages!" And I felt nothing of the kind - except maybe going forward, by one degree. Nothing leading up to it, because there WAS nothing. My "belonging to the ages" had been truncated from the start. All I had as far as that kind of most profound human connections was what I might be able to build going forward. Nothing behind it. Nothing underneath it.

I still remember the visit to the genetic counselor. We were sent there when I was first pregnant, because I was older, and there was a standard concern about the potential for fetal complications that can more easily happen when the mother is older. They got out a blank piece of paper, drew a line down the middle, and two little circles - one on each side of the line. One was for my husband and the other for me. They started with him - "tell me about your family, your mother, your father, your sibs... anybody with this-or-that illness or tendency or whatever?" It went on for a fairly long time. The counselor drew lines from the little circle that was my husband. There were elaborate networks of lines that went everywhere! It looked like a big flower with dozens of strings for petals. Then it was my turn. They asked - "okay, so what about YOUR family, your mother, your father, your sibs, ... etc etc." All I had for an answer was - "I don't think it applies. I'm adopted." The response - "Oh."

That was that. And there it stayed. My husband with his broad, detailed, heavily-fringed flower with all kinds of information and details and connective tissue, and me with this cold, lonely empty little circle. It almost made me cry. And when the counselor said, after pausing for an uncomfortable moment or two, said as cheerily as possible "well, then we'll just go with what we know from the father's side, okay?" There wasn't any other way to go. That's all we had. But there was nothing of me. Or from me. Hell, I'm HAVING this baby. I'm MAKING this baby. This minute! It's being built in there at this very moment that we're sitting here! But none of that counts. I bring nothing to this. There's nothing of me here. I'm nothing but an empty page. GOD that hurt! What a a shitty moment. Writing about it here just brings it all back. The emptiness I felt at that moment, the uselessness. Damn. By the time I was pregnant, I really wanted to know. Badly. I wanted some biological heritage to pass on to my daughter. I wanted SOMETHING - ANYTHING to be able to tell her and share with her. I wanted HER to have a clue or two. And shortly thereafter, same thing for my son. And I had nothing to give them, no answers, no clues, NOTHING, until I finally gathered up the courage to have that search started, and finally found out.

I even struggled with doing even that. What if there was nothing to be found? What if that adoption detective wasn't able to turn up anything? What if I was destined to go through life NEVER knowing anything? Could I be at peace with that? Or would it always torment me especially having tried and failed? I was afraid to take that chance for awhile after my adoptive mom died. Afraid to get my hopes up. What if it was all for nothing?

But, turns out, it wasn't.

And I found out that there IS cancer in my biological family. Guess what? I was freakin' THRILLED!!!!!! THRILLED - just to have the information! Indeed, when I went back east to meet my biological siblings, they had a reception for me and all their friends had all kinds of questions. When I told them all of this, and said out loud that when I found out there was cancer in the family, I was THRILLED to find out about it, you should have seen their faces. They were shocked! Couldn't imagine being thrilled to hear about having cancer in the family. It wasn't the cancer. It was the KNOWING. FINALLY. It was the HAVING of the INFORMATION. FINALLY! And as I explained that, I saw all their faces soften from a sense of stunned shock and confusion at what I'd said - to suddenly seeing it the way I saw it. None of them were adoptees and this, being in kept in the dark with NO information all of one's life, they'd never even considered, much less experienced. It had never occurred to them how that might feel. It just was never part of their universes or their realities before. And they suddenly knew and understood. It was MOST fascinating to watch the emotions change across their faces. It was a true gift and a blessing - just even to KNOW that stuff. FINALLY. To KNOW.

Those who aren't adopted take little, simple, seemingly inconsequential details like this for granted. But when you've lived a lifetime NOT knowing - and wanting very much to have those keys and those facts and those details and that sense of connectivity, that most basic sense of belonging - knowing means EVERYTHING.

she felt it was slap in the face her b/c as she put it we raised you we loved you we tended to you and you wanting to find these people makes me feel that after all that we're still 2nd place to people that gave you up (paraphrased)

such utterly selfish 'guilt' for a very natural desire to know from whence they came.
The children knew from a very young age they were adopted, and realized how very
wanted and loved they were. Three of those four children (all different families)
are in their 30s now. Openness and honesty from the start.

I can see how finding out decades later would shock and rock the boat. But my opinion is that
when you play, you pay, and the children didn't play, the mother and father did.

How does it harm the mother and father years later for their child they sent to an
adoption agency to find out who their parents are? Embarrassment? Shame?
I really don't understand such an attitude in today's society. Not at all. The shame
is feeling shame for doing what you thought was best for the child.

...it's not a slap in the face, but to the closed-minded.

children over the past 30 years. The children were all aware from a very early age they were adopted.
The adoptee parents felt no threat whatsoever. It's been a good thing for all. Each of these children
grew up knowing how desperately they were wanted and loved.

I was fortunate that my natural mother was sent to another state,which happened to be one of the few that allowed adoptees to obtain copies of their original birth certificates. It still took a bit of detective work,but I was able to locate her when I was 39. It was handled very delicately and with great concern for her privacy. We established a very warm relationship which lasted until she died. Had she not been amenable to that,I would have left her alone. I do feel that I had every right to the information,though. I would like to see every adoptee who chooses to do so have the same opportunity. The things I learned from my search...and even armed with the original birth certificate it was quite a search..have enabled me to help several others locate their birth families. If it somehow is seen as violating an agreement made by other parties many years ago,I would submit that we adopted children were not a party to this agreement and that we DO have rights. Others may disagree,and obviously do.

It seems to me that any objections by a birth parent center on arbitrary rules of society, and those rules thank goodness have been discarded by most people. There are those who remain locked rigidly into ridiculous artifice constructed by societies, negative, damaging, ridiculous rules.

One of their first conversations was about all the stuff that runs in her family that we should have the ultrasound technician look for. We'd never have known what to ask about if the state of Ohio had anything to say about it: he was born a week too early to have any access to his birth records.

FWIW, they get along fine. She's nice. His relationship with his adoptive parents is unchanged.

edit: Since there's some concern about contact and impact on families I might as well share some of the details of how this happened: His birth mom contacted his adoptive parents after she found them via a PI who specializes in adoption issues. They talked to her for a while (to make sure she was for real and not a weirdo and not looking for a handout or something) before they put her in touch with him. If they'd said they'd rather they weren't in contact she says she'd have accepted that. They live very near each other and while they're not socializing regularly or anything (there's an age and class divide, plus some huge personality differences) they get along well and function as part of the extended family without any friction.