Updated disclosure and contact veto stats

In July I posted a summary of numbers from the Ontario government about forms relating to adoption disclosure. Today's copy of the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder has an interesting reunion story which includes some new stats from the government which are good till July 24, so I've included them in an updated summary and corrected some minor errors from before:

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

		Sept–Dec 2008	Jan–Apr 2009	May 2009	Jun 1–19, 2009	Jun 20-Jul 24	Total
Disclosure Veto	All	921	1,490	2,243	1,367	~400	~6,400
	Filed by birth parent	543	490	?	?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	358	1,000	?	?	?	?
No Contact Notice (contact veto)	All	1,050		265	152	~50	~1,500
	Filed by birth parent	650		?	?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	400		?	?	?	?
Notice of Contact Preference	All	1,500		151	219	182	2052
	Filed by birth parent	625		?	?	?	?
	Filed by adoptee	875		?	?	?	?
Post-Adoption Birth Information		0			3,443	2,791	6,234

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

(Note that the Standard-Freeholder story credits the reunion to the new law; I doubt very much that this is possible. The government is certainly not at the stage even now, where a one-week turnaround time is possible, and they were hugely backlogged in June. Plus, if this were through the new law, it would be the adoptee doing the calling, not the Custodian of Adoption Information. Much more likely is the explanation that this was done through the old search service offered by the Adoption Disclosure Register and the timeframe near June 1 was just a coincidence or an effort to clear old backlogs before everything changes!).

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.

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.

The ethics of retroactive disclosure

Countdown: 32 days to go before the Access to Adoption Records Act takes effect in Ontario!

So after June 1, I'll be able to find out my original name and my birth mother's name; she'll be abke to see my adoptive name.  Lifting these restrictions after all these years has some serious implications for personal privacy and these are what doomed the 2005 Adoption Information Disclosure Act.

Debate on this issue is quite polarized; most people who have an opinion on the question of retroactive disclosure have a strong one.  Here are some of my thoughts on some aspects of the subject:

1. Birth mothers and confidentiality.  I've seen a lot of claims, many anecdotal, on this subject, asserting that birth mothers who surrendered children for adoption were promised complete confidentiality or never promised confidentiality at all.
   
   I think it's clear that quite a number of birth mothers walked away from the adoption with an expectation of confidentiality, whether legally founded or not.  All you need is some cases for disclosure to be an ethical issue, so this makes it clear to me that we need to be concerned about this.
   
   
2. Adoptees and confidentiality.  An adoptee never entered into a contract, so I think the case is less clear, but because the system concealed our identities from birth parents for so long, it is reasonable to say that most of us grew up believing that disclosure or contact would be voluntary.
   
   
3. Violation of preference.  No matter how effective the government's publicity campaign, there will be adoptees and birth parents who would have wished to file disclosure vetos but missed the notice.  These people would reasonably expect the secrecy provisions to continue, so we are guilty of violating their preferences.  I can't feel too sorry for them, because I've seen a lot of publicity about the new law, but fair is fair.
   
   On the other hand, if we can talk about "hypothetical preference" and use ignorance as an  excuse, I think the status quo is just as much guilty of violation of preference.   A lot of us who are interested in contact, when we were getting started, thought that navigating the system would be a lot easier or at least possible!  I think there are a lot of folks out there who wouldn't object to contact but tried investigating it.
   
   
4. Disruptive effect.  In the debate about the 2005 Adoption Information Disclosure Act, Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian reported getting anonymous calls from sobbing birth mothers in dread of being "outed" by the law, though she never gave any evidence or any precise numbers of such callers.
   
   Now, the disclosure veto pretty much eliminates this as a practical concern. Neverthelessm while I acknowledge that the idea of contact is pretty shocking, I really have to wonder just how much of the kind of fear Cavoukian described is completely rational.
   
   Long-kept secrets and the judgments they're hiding from have a way of getting frozen in the psyche: almost no one today judges "unwed mothers" in the way that people did in the 50s and 60s, but a birth mother who never shares a secret may not fully accept that.

A lot of what I said above might look like arguments against the new law, and they can be.  But I think all of them are trumped by one basic point, which is the right of an individual to information about their origins.

I was born to two living, breathing parents, and I had a name.  While it was their choice to relinquish me and have my identity replaced, it is the complicitity of my government in this operation that offends me.  It's one thing for one's only links to the rest of humanity to be unknown (as in the case of abandoned or orphaned children); it's quite another for them to be hidden by the government.

Why have I been denied information about myself, on the feeble and hypothetical grounds that it is to protect my reputation and that of my birth parents?