adoption law

The Connecticut Post and the Danbury News-Times published my piece (DNT20140428.pdf) about adoptees who are trying to change the law so they can have access to their birth certificates.

Joan DiGiulio doesn’t know who she is.

Until the age of 45, DiGiulio didn’t know she was adopted. She only discovered her past when she went to get her birth certificate in New York City before taking a trip to Europe.

DiGiulio will turn 76 next month, but the identity of the woman who gave birth to her remains a mystery. DiGiulio said she has given up actively searching for her birth family because it just makes her want to weep.

Although her adoptive parents never treated her as an outsider, it was hard to shake that sentiment.

“You’re an outsider even though you think you’re not,” said DiGiulio, who lived in Danbury for more than 40 years and now splits her time between Florida and Southbury.

While DiGiulio concedes it’s unlikely her birth mother is still alive, she wonders if she has any biological siblings. She is also interested in her medical history, hoping it could illuminate a medical condition that affects no one in her family but her daughter.

It’s just one more longshot in a lifetime of longshots.

DiGiulio is stymied in her search because New York and Connecticut seal adoption records. Undaunted, DiGiulio and many other adoptees hope Connecticut lawmakers will soon allow access to the birth certificates of those who have been adopted.

In Connecticut, adoptees have their original birth certificates sealed and are issued revised birth certificates that list their adoptive parents as their parents. Until 40 years ago, birth certificates were open records.

Right now, a bill is pending in the General Assembly that would give adult adoptees — and their children and grandchildren — the right to access the original birth certificates. The bill would set up a voluntary procedure for birth parents to specify if they want to be contacted by their adopted descendants. Adoption agency counseling records, and court records of adoption hearings and the termination of parental rights, would remain confidential.

Time is running out, however, for the law to be changed this legislative session, which ends May 7. A compromise is on the table that would restore access to birth certificates for those adopted Jan. 1, 1983, or later. The rationale for opening some, but not all birth certificates is a form has been given to birth parents since 1983 in which they are advised when terminating their parental rights, “the child or youth, upon reaching his or her 18th birthday, may have the right to information which may identify me or other blood relatives.”

State Rep. Fred Camillo, R-Greenwich, is a co-sponsor of the original legislation to open adoptee birth certificates.

Some legislators are reluctant to support the legislation because of the earlier implicit promise to birth parents that adoption records would be closed, Camillo said.

Others are concerned that if adoptions are no longer closed, birth mothers will choose abortions instead of adoptions, he said.

Camillo argues unsealing adoptee birth certificates will help adoptees search for their birth parents and access information about their health that could potentially save their lives.

Ultimately, he said, health trumps embarrassment.

Catholic Charities, Diocese of Norwich, and Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of Hartford, submitted testimony against House Bill 5144.

In its written testimony, Catholic Charities of Norwich said lawmakers should “respect the privacy rights of biological parents who were ensured confidentiality at the time that they made the decision to place their children for adoption. Releasing this information without their consent violates fundamental fairness and privacy rights which are the foundation of our laws.”

Karen Caffrey, another adoptee, is a psychotherapist who counsels adoptees and an activist with the grassroots adoption organization, Access Connecticut.

Caffrey said her group supports the compromise bill. If the bill passes this spring, Access Connecticut will work to restore access to the birth certificates of people who were adopted before 1983, she said.

Adoption secrecy was a social experiment to protect children from the stigma of being born outside of marriage and acquiring bastard status, Caffrey said.

Karen Waggoner, of Bethel, a retiree who gave her daughter up for adoption, said women had to drop out of school when they got pregnant.

Waggoner, who grew up in Greenwich, said the stigma continues today. Waggoner, who is in the middle of helping to plan her 50th high school reunion, said she has classmates who got pregnant as teenagers and are unwilling to come to the event.

“It was a hideaway era,” she said.

Penny Palmer, a Bethel resident who grew up in Greenwich, gave up her son for adoption in 1968. Palmer said she was the only young woman she knew of who got pregnant and wasn’t sent out of town.

Today, there’s far less social scorn about children being born to unmarried parents, she said.

But in the late 1960s, not only did women go through the trauma of giving up their children, everyone around them made them feel “so horrible” for getting pregnant out of wedlock, Palmer said.

“I do understand why people don’t get over that,” she said.

For Palmer, finding her biological son turned out to be a joyful experience.

After finding him at the age of 22 in 1990, her son’s adoptive parents became part of her family, and her two younger sons embraced their older half-brother, Palmer said. He has now been a part of her life for longer than he was out of it.

Krista Bradford, a Westport resident, grew up knowing she was adopted as a baby in California. But she still had compelling questions about her identity that her adoptive parents couldn’t answer.

Finally, the need to find answers led her to careers in journalism and executive recruitment, she said. Bradford eventually tracked down both of her birth parents. She also met her siblings.

People are realizing that closed adoptions do more harm than good, Bradford said, because adoptees tend to imagine one of two extremes about their birth parents — they’re either famous, exotic royalty or celebrities, or they’re villains with loose morals.

Secrecy tends to generate shame, Bradford said. It also deprives adoptees of their sense of identity, their sense of well-being and their birth family’s medical information.

“I believe in the power of sunlight,” Bradford said.