The future of adoption reform

The press coverage of the opening of adoption records has now died down, and we're in the next waiting stage.  Through this process, my position has shifted from initial uncertainty to the solid conviction that adoptees like me ought to have unconditional access to original birth information.

Along this line, the Toronto Star has some interesting letters about future reforms of adoption disclosure, particularly the one by Alex Greenwood.   Even if we make this distinction Greenwood argues, between adoption and relinquishment, I'm not sure it makes the case that much stronger.  I suspect in most cases the birth parents were notified when the baby was actually adopted, and critics could just argue that the expectation of privacy started then as opposed to the moment of relinquishment.

Now that we have conditional open records here, I suspect open records advocates will wait a couple years until everyone realizes the sky didn't fall in the interim, then push for more openness.  What strategy should we adopt?

I eagerly read all the reader comments on the June 1 stories, since this is one of those few times when we can actually read what the public thinks of us!  Two trends became clear: the public is incredibly ill-informed about adoption, and there is more public support for the rights of adoptees to original birth information than there is for the rights of birth parents to find relinquished children.

Well, I guess I probably should've expected the latter, but I didn't.  It's only natural when you think of the way society characterizes adoptees and birth parents interested in searching:

Social Attitudes Towards Adoptees and Birth Parents Interested in Contact

Characterization	Adoptee	Birth parent
Good	Naturally curious about origins; feels kinship with birth family	Feels kinship and parental sentiments towards reliquished child; unfairly compelled by society to relinquish
Bad	Ungrateful to adoptive parents, overly curious, has no compunction about disrupting birth parents' lives, cannot "move on" or "live in the present"	Promiscuous, irresponsible, ungrateful towards adoptive parents, overly curious, refuses to live with past choices, has no compunction about disrupting adoptees' lives, cannot "move on" or "live in the present"

Every negative sentiment about adoptees—that they are overly curious, might damage the other party with their probing, etc.—has a parallel in sentiments about birth parents, but birth parents have the additional burden of being often labelled as irresponsible or promiscuous.  So naturally they are given shorter shrift than adoptees.

So, a natural question that arises is: should adoptees who are interested in complete and unencumbered access to records just throw birth parents under the bus (metaphorically) and push for open records for themselves only?

I believe the answer is no.  This tactic might have short-term benefits, but breaking the solidarity that exists between the two groups pushing for open records comes with an undeniable price.  And, there is simple fairness: while no infant adoptee ever chose adoption, there are a lot of birth parents who cannot justly be described as having freely chosen it either.