Author Susan Beale highlights the stigma that adoptees still face in the United States, as authorities persist in witholding information about their birth parents.
Susan Beale
My birth certificate is a lie
Posted on: Fri 08-Jul-16 17:44:20
(11 comments )
My birth certificate is a lie.
It's perfectly legal; it just isn't true.
The true record of my birth is not legal. Until recently, it was a classified document, hidden from the public, including me. Especially me. This was for my protection.
Nearly every other adopted person in the US is in the same boat, tens of millions in all, and most are still barred from knowing their biological and medical histories.
The practice began in the early 20th century, with the commendable goal of protecting adopted babies from the stigma of illegitimacy. Rather than tackling the problem at its source - stigma is wrong – legislators in nearly every U.S. state opted to sweep the babies' origins under the carpet: permanently seal the original records, and issue new birth certificates that listed the adoptive parents. Read mine and you'd assume my mother was in hospital at the hour and time of my birth, when she'd happily tell you she was fifty miles away, eating lunch in a restaurant.
The aim was to airbrush birth parents from the picture; pretend the adopted children were biological.
It suggests that there really is something shameful about my beginnings, something so shameful that the state needs to hide it.
My original birth certificate isn't actually a birth certificate. It's a Non-Certified Copy of Record of Birth Prior to Adoption. It cost me $50, whereas a copy of my legal birth certificate was $2.50. Scribbled across it are the words: 'Corrected to Beale, 8/18/196'. Not 'amended', not 'changed'; 'corrected', as if by some clerical or administrative error I'd accidentally exited the wrong womb.
Today, over forty percent of all births in the US, as in the UK, are to unwed parents; given current trends, they'll soon be a majority. The stigma of illegitimacy is long gone, yet we adult adoptees are stuck with discriminatory laws designed to shield us from its stain. All but two American states still seal original records upon completion of adoption. Six grant adult adoptees unrestricted access to their original birth certificates, eleven others, including my home state of Massachusetts, permit restricted access.
Legislation in several states has stalled over concerns for the privacy of birth parents, who might have kept the birth of these children secret (usually on the advice of adoption agencies). This line of reasoning infuriates me. In what other circumstance does the state actively assist in perpetuating a lie? Calls for 'balance' between the rights of adoptees, birthparents and adoptive parents ensure a perpetuation of the status quo, which means that that adult adoptee's right to information about their biological and medical histories will continue to be infringed.
To be clear, I love the parents who raised me. I'm happy and proud to be their daughter despite not sharing their DNA. The fact remains that, barring religious conversion, we humans are born only once. For the state to pretend otherwise insults my intelligence; moreover, it suggests that there really is something shameful about my beginnings, something so shameful that the state needs to hide it. It makes me illegitimate.
Susan's book The Good Guy, based on her own personal history, is published by John Murray and available now from Amazon.