Four more weeks

Sigh. The word on the mailing lists, from some people who've called up ServiceOntario to ask for a new ETA, is that because of all the requests they've received (Post-Adoption Birth Information, vetoes, and contact preference forms) that the expected 6-8 weeks has expanded to 12 weeks. What does this mean? Four more weeks.

Sure, this sucks, but at least it's better to know. I won't be rushing to the mailbox every day after work for whole bloody month!

I also heard that the workers have clarified that pending Post-Adoption Birth Information (PABI) requests from 2007 will be processed before anything else that came after June 1, which I'm happy about. I'd been wondering just what would happen if a disclosure veto arrived after June 1, but before the response to the PABI request was mailed out. The answer is "nothing", i.e. the PABI request has priority.

What a veto would mean

Well, it's been eight weeks since Disclosure Day, so if the Ministry's estimate of 6-8 weeks is to be believed, I should be getting a response to my Post-Adoption Birth Information application any day now.

Now that the day is close, I'm once again thinking seriously about what I'll get and guarding myself against disappointment. As crazy a rationalization as it may seem, even a veto would mean I know something more about my birth parents than I do now.

Would they file one? I have only the Non-ID as grounds for speculation:

• On the "pro-veto" side: well, they haven't made any serious attempt to find me since I turned 18. I also know they neither of them had told their parents about the pregnancy, so odds are I'm still their deep dark secret.
  
  
• On the other hand, my birth mother allegedly wanted lots of info about my placement, and my birth father was around for the whole thing and was "interested in my future". Could all this just be Children's Aid propaganda? Maybe, but I'm going to take it at face value until I have reason to doubt. Finally and most importantly, choosing not to actively seek for someone is not the same as wanting not to be found.

Whatever the case, I have to steel myself for the possibility that when the envelope arrives it will have nothing in it but a but a form letter shoot-down. What would I do then?

It depends. Obviously if both birthparents are listed on my birth certificate, and only one issued a veto, I'll try to find the other one.

Based on what I've heard about birth fathers and original birth certificates, it sounds very likely that my birth father wasn't named on my birth registration: this also means he wasn't entitled to file a veto. In that case, there's nothing to stop me from searching for him still.

The last, and worst, case is that both birthparents issued vetoes. I really don't know what I'd do in this case, and as much as I try I can't really prepare myself for it. It's one thing not to get your hopes up; it's quite another to convince yourself of the worst outcome.

I might well go off, despondent, and try to forget all this. But I really, really doubt it. More likely I'd quietly search while stopping short of contact and seek confirmation with whichever means I can find. I may approach more distant relatives. This whole project isn't about a relationship or a need for surrogate parents; it's about me finding my connection to the rest of Homo sapiens.

How far we've come

Well, it's been six weeks since Disclosure Day. If the 6-8 week time estimate from ServiceOntario is to be believed, those of us who had left-over post-adoption birth information requests from 2007 should be getting responses any day now. I'm still waiting, of course.

I thought it would be interesting to note just how far we've come over the years on adoption disclosure. The following article is from the Globe and Mail back in 1984, about the apparently successful campaign by Frank Drea, an adoptive parent and the Minister of Community and Social Services, to restrict Children's Aid Societies from distributing non-identifying information to adult adoptees. He argued that "in a small town it could be a neon sign with an arrow pointing to the innocent party."

To their credit, the CASes fought back hard against Drea's law, and it seems to have gotten scrapped in 1985 right after the Davis government was defeated, but it's amazing that back then even non-id was something contentious.

I was a child then, and it's hard to imagine what that era must have been like for adult adoptees, who then needed permission from adoptive parents to sign onto the Adoption Disclosure Register! It's almost incredible that just two years later, the Garber study would recommend that adult Ontario adoptees should have unqualified access to the identities of their birth parents: something which is contentious even now.

Adoption bill may bring suit

Saturday, November 24, 1984

The Metro Toronto Children's Aid Society is considering legal action against the province if legislation prohibiting the disclosure of certain information to adoptees is passed.

"We will certainly explore a constitutional challenge if the legislation in its present form is proclaimed," Doug Barr, the agency's executive director, said yesterday.

His concern, shared by other children's aid directors, is aimed at new child welfare legislation that restricts the societies from releasing non-identifying information, except when medically necessary, to adoptees they have placed.

Since the mid-1960s, children's aid societies have agreed to release to adoptees who request it, information relating to social, religious and academic background of their birth parents.

Child welfare officials say the legislative change is being pushed by Frank Drea, Minister of Community and Social Services, because he is an adoptive parent.

Mr. Drea has argued that information considered non-identifying in an urban centre could risk confidentiality in a small town.

The Child and Family Services Act, which enshrines the new adoption provisions, goes before the Legislature for third and final reading next month.

Lobbying by child welfare officials and Parent Finders Inc., a group concerned with the rights of adoptees, failed to produce amendments to the controversial disclosure clause when it was reviewed by a committee of legislators on Thursday night.

William Wrye, the Liberal Party's social services critic, unsuccessfully put forward an amendment that would have given adoptees over 18 the right to non-identifying information.

Mr. Wrye criticized the disclosure provisions as "disenfranchising thousands of young adults" from information on their backgrounds, "which is important to them and makes them feel more secure." George Caldwell, executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, said he is unhappy with the disclosure clause.
"I don't know why he (Mr. Drea) is doing it," Mr. Caldwell said.

Jeffrey Wilson, a Toronto lawyer, said adoptees in the United States have been unsuccessful in their constitutional challenge to get access to their records.

Opinion on the Ministry statistics

In reading the stats on forms relating to adoption disclosure which I posted yesterday, the most noticeable thing is the jump in disclosure veto requests in May. This certainly arises from the June 1 deadline and the press coverage of it.

Now, I'm sure everyone who filed a disclosure veto believes they had a good reason to do so. However, I believe that some of what happened is a case of what I'll call "coupon mentality": that artifically-imposed time limits skew our estimations of worth.

If you offer someone an open-ended coupon, say for 2-for-1 sandwiches, there's a good chance it may never be used, and ultimately be forgotten or thrown out. If, on the other hand, you mandate (as most coupons do) that it be redeemed before a certain deadline, the coupon bearer becomes acutely aware of what happens on the the moment of expiry, when the worth of the coupon suddenly drops from "one sandwich" to "nothing".

If the bearer really wanted a free sandwich, he would've used it in either case. I think most of will agree, though, that with a time limit the chance of the coupon being used goes up considerably.

Whether secrecy is or isn't a right of adoptees and birth parents is a question for debate. But when you promise to take this secrecy away, many people who have always lived with it without strong opinions will suddenly strive to protect it because this thing (secrecy) of uncertain value is being transformed into something of zero value.

Open records advocates, myself included, would argue that the secrecy was never worth all that much and that the value of knowledge and openness is far greater. The fact that so many vetoes were filed in May saddens me, because I think that lot of these are a reaction to a climate of hyperventilation and fear for which many people over many years are responsible. The hopes of many well-meaning people will soon be dashed, unnecessarily, by cold and institutional rejection letters which are probably even now in the mail. I hope I don't get one.

Disclosure and contact veto stats

On Friday the website InsideToronto published some figures on the numbers of forms relating to adoption disclosure recently received by the Ontario government.

These include the final stats for disclosure vetoes received before the June 1 deadline and stats on contact vetoes, contact preference forms, and post-adoption birth information requests. If you're not sure about exactly what these forms are, you can read the Ontario government's explanation or this summary from a Toronto adoption support group. Briefly, disclosure vetoes block information release, contact vetoes offer information on condition of no contact, and contact preference forms let you say how you want to be contacted.

What am I interested in? Stats on disclosure vetoes, obviously. The more filed before June 1, the less my chances of finding something in the next few weeks. Of course my application is long since in so there's nothing more I can do now, but until I actually get a response I might as well play this guessing game.

I've combined these numbers with earlier published accounts plus figures from responses by the Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS) to private inquiries. The result is the following table, summarizing the numbers of forms received by MCSS from last September to now, which shows some interesting trends.

Forms relating to adoption disclosure received by MCSS, Sept 2008 to present

		Sept–Dec 2008	Jan–Apr 2009	May 2009	Jun 1–19, 2009	Total
Disclosure Veto	All	921	1,490	2,243	1,367	6,021
	Filed by birth parent	543	490	?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	358	1,000	?	?	?
No Contact Notice (contact veto)	All	1,050		265	152	1,467
	Filed by birth parent	650		?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	400		?	?	?
Notice of Contact Preference	All	1,500		100	219	870
	Filed by birth parent	625		?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	875		?	?	?
Post-Adoption Birth Information		0			3,443	3,443

(The ? symbols indicate a lack of information on my part.)

I'll comment more on the figures later; hope you find them useful.

A crazy old letter

During the lead-in to June 1 last month, I was kind of obsessing over open-records coverage in the media, as you might have noticed.

Once I was done with the press I moved onto blogs, and found a bunch of interesting reading (not all recent) including The Daily Bastardette. While there I stumbled across this incredible letter which read into the Ontario legislative record on May 5, 2005 by Tory MP Frank Klees (now running for Ontario Tory leader) during the debates about Bill 183.

There's a lot to comment on about this letter, but I'll save that for afterwards. For now, here it is verbatim:

Dear Mr. Klees,

I am writing as a responsible parent and husband living my life with my family and until recently, very contentedly in your riding. Sir, for the very first time in my life, I am afraid. I am afraid of the government of Ontario's announced intention to abrogate the province's long-standing adoption law, a law that guaranteed the privacy of both the adopted child and adoptive parents from those who, at a time of their choosing, might seek to interject themselves into the private social dynamic of the adopted child and their nuclear ‘life’ family.

For reasons of privacy and discretion, I choose, as I am sure countless others would also choose, to withhold my name. But I know you, sir, and ironically, I also know the Premier and his family and they know ours. But all they know is that we have tried to live our lives honourably and that we attend church, pay our taxes, volunteer and vote. We also take care to mind our own affairs and to never visit our attitudes and cultural norms on others.

We are a tolerant, dutiful and hopefully caring family, but sir, we do have a distinction from other families in our circle. We are all adoptees: both generations. Our children have never been told that they are adopted, and my wife and I, being only children, have never told our friends, business and professional associates or neighbours.

We have enjoyed the anonymity our silence and right to privacy has afforded us and our children. We were never subjected to the systemic prejudices the adopted suffer in humiliating silence almost every day. When we did poorly in school, no teacher ever raised their eyebrow in that knowingly condescending fashion and asked, ‘Oh, would Johnny be adopted?’ When our parents died, we were not singled out by the Toronto Star as ‘the adopted children of.’ We were instead listed as ‘the loving children of.’

We were never actually told we were adopted ourselves until our parents passed away, and by that time we had become the sum collective of their beings and were content to be so. Our children have been raised as our own, as in fact we were, and they are the inheritors of all that our parents once were and loved and all that my wife and I hold to be dear.

My wife and I discovered very little about the circumstances surrounding our birth. Both she and I thank God that our knowledge of such events and people are remote and intangible. For our children, however, the horrifying background and circumstances surrounding their earliest circumstances should never see the light of day. I remember the judges in the adoption courts assuring my wife and I that these haunting shadows would never be visited upon them. Now all of this is in doubt and my family is threatened by its own government.

Mr. Klees, there is much I have left out. Cryptic references aren't exactly the kind of documentation you are probably looking for in your defence of our family's privacy. I do, however, implore you to speak to the other members of the Legislature, to halt this attack on the thousands of defenceless families in Ontario who have adopted and been adopted with the clear understanding that our records were to be permanently sealed and that we were free to lead our lives (like everyone else) within the context of the lives we had actually lived, not the denial-laced pseudo-lives this legislation would lay at our door.

Mr. Klees, we and the thousands of voiceless and defenceless adoptees and adoptive parents need the Legislature to amend this bill and to take out the retroactive aspects of the disclosure provisions.

I ask you and your colleagues to change the nature and content of this proposed bill.

On behalf of my wife and family, thank you for your interest and compassion in this matter. I know you know of what I speak.

Wow. It's hard to know where to begin. Another time, I might feel compelled to challenge the assertion of guaranteed privacy for adoptees, but there's no such more to speak to that I'm just going to sail on past that.

I could also argue that by santimoniously summarizing his churchgoing, community-serving, straight-arrow lifestyle he is broadcasting a message about its worth and thus projecting his "attitudes and cultural norms" upon us all, something he claims to ahbor. But I'll sail past that too.

No, the truly stunning part is the miserable picture he paints of an adoptee's life, a life of almost Dickensian misery, a daily struggle against shame, abuse and haughtly sneers, forever coping with second-class status. Now I'll grant you I grew up after illegitimacy had lost most of its stigma, but the shocking part was not the degree of utter misery in the portrait of an adoptee—it's that as the writer relates this horrific existence with such authority he simultaneously denies ever having had firsthand knowledge of it!

I have no idea what the writer was referring to with the mention of the Toronto Star. He seems to believe that all of us "out of the closet" adoptees live our daily lives as sons and daughters forever weighed down by adjectives, distinguished and diminished. This shows, better than anything else perhaps, how clueless the writer is about the daily lives of adoptees who don't live under totalitarian regimes of secrecy regarding their adoptedness.

I am an "adopted son" when I want to be and a "son" the rest of the time, and have always felt that revealing my adoptedness was my choice to make; never have my parents or any other authority figures obliged to reveal it or hide it.   Granted, maybe my parents were enlightened in that regard, but I don't think they were that unusual.

The most objectionable point, though, is that the writer openly admits to keeping his kids in the dark about their adoptedness; even stronger, he demands further government aid in perpetuating this ignorance.   Once upon a time this was a mainstream opinion, and I can reluctantly excuse adoptive parents from that era who kept and keep their children in the dark.    But to do this now after all the evidence of the past decades is morally repugnant.  It turns a secret into a lie.  I think back to all the times doctors have asked me "is there a family history of X?" and imagine that instead of answering "I don't know" that I had in ignorance given the the response "No", which might be wrong.

Would it ever have made a difference?  Maybe and maybe not.  But nobody, adoptive parent or social worker, could ever know in advance whether it would or not.  If I could criminalize the act of not telling adopted kids they are adopted I would, because it is dangerous, irresponsible, hurtful, and terribly selfish.

I am very glad this letter-writer didn't get his wish and I fervently hope his children will one day learn some truths about themselves, because they deserve to know.  I also hope that when this bubble of deception bursts as it probably will, the family is not too much hurt by it.

Finding birth family by genetic means

Well, it's been a month now. I confess to not being good at waiting; in both leisure and work I tend to gravitate towards stuff I can get done myself at my own pace. So, to distract myself from the wait—and pursue my search from a different angle—I finally did something I've been thinking of for a while: I sent away a DNA sample for sequencing.

Genetics is an interesting new search tool for male adoptees, for a reason I'll explain below. I've known about the underlying science for some time (I happen to have a science background), but only recently learned of its potential for aiding an adoptee's search. I'll explain the science here and get into the details of what I ordered in a subsequent post.

The first thing to understand is that, roughly speaking, there are two kinds of DNA: recombinant DNA and non-recombinant DNA.

Recombinant DNA

Most of our DNA is recombinant. What does this mean? Every person has two copies of every gene, one from each of our parents. When our bodies produce eggs or sperm, most of the genes are shuffled around via a process called recombination, and one of them is thrown away. So half the genes from this parent are lost, but that's made up with with half the genes from the other parent, so it all adds up. However, the result is that we share half of our genes with a parent or sibling; 1/4 with a grandparent, aunt or uncle; 1/8 with a great-grandparent, first cousin, great-uncle, or great-aunt, etc.

The gist of this is that recombinant DNA gets so mixed up with each generation that it's hard to trace relationships beyond 2 or 3 steps. To use genetics to identify a birth relative, you'd basically already have to have DNA sequences from that person or a close relative, as well as your own. And that's a pretty tall order!

Non-recombinant DNA

With non-recombinant DNA, the recombination step mentioned above never happens: what this means is that non-recombinant DNA passes from parent to child with few or no changes. Since it changes so little, our non-recombinant DNA can be very similar to that of quite distant ancestors. The key is just which ancestors.

There are kinds of non-recombinant DNA: Y-chromosome DNA and mitochondrial DNA.

Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA for short) is carried only by men. I got mine from my birth father, who got his from his father, etc. So Y-DNA follows the male line (see this illustration for clarification) and any two men who are related on the paternal line would have identical or near-identical Y-DNA. Men who are related but not related through the paternal line (e.g. a man and his sister's son) shouldn't expect to have similar Y-DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA for short) is carried by everyone. It is the DNA of tiny things called mitochondria that sit inside all our cells, and are all ultimately copies of mitochondria in the egg cell from our mother. I got my mitochondrial DNA from my birth mother, who hers from her mothers, etc. So mtDNA follows the female line (see this illustration for clarification). Any two people who are related on the female line would have identical or near-identical mtDNA.

See here for a combined picture of the female and male lines.

Using non-recombinant DNA for adoption search

Well, this is all fine and everything, but what use is it to the searching adoptee? If Y-DNA and mtDNA is the same between generations, a lot of people must have almost the same Y-DNA and mtDNA. So what use is it for finding anyone?

The answer for mtDNA is, unfortunately, not much. It can be very interesting for finding out what female-line ancestor was up to a few thousand years ago, but it's hard to use it to find someone today.

However, Y-DNA is different, not for a scientific reason but for a cultural one. In Western culture we get our surname from our father, so surnames are passed along the male line, the same way Y-DNA is inherited.

Obviously this correspondence isn't perfect—any adoptee is well aware that you might inherit a surname from someone you're not genetically related to—but it does hold to some extent. It doesn't work the other way: not all Smiths stem from one original Mr. Smith, so not all Smith men will have the same Y-DNA.

There are databases of people you have paid or volunteered to have their DNA sequenced, and many of the companies that offer sequencing services will give customers a list of close matches, with surnames included.

Remember that Y-DNA doesn't change much between generations. If you're a male adoptee of European ancestry and there's some man in the genetics database who is a male-line relative of your birth father, there's a good chance he will have the same surname as your birth father. And it doesn't need to be a close relative: as long as your common male-line ancestor lived sometime after surnames started to be used (about 1500 or so) he will likely have the same name.

So—hopefully you're still with me—the conclusion is that genetics can be a useful way for male adoptees to find the surname of their birth father. But you have to be lucky.

For accounts of adoptees or people in similar situations actually doing this, here's a 2005 story of a donor-conceived American boy finding his genetic father through Y-DNA, and here's a 2006 BBC story about using Y-DNA to predict a surname for a criminal investigation.

Rather more recently, here's the story of a Michigan adoptee named Richard Hill who used Y-DNA to find his birth father. There is also a promotional video featuring Hill produced by Family Tree DNA, the company who sequenced his DNA.