My Story for Texas Lawmakers, by Eve Willhite, January 14, 1997

An Open Letter to Lawmakers
by Eve Willhite

After spending 10 years helping others to discover their roots, I was thrilled to finally reunite with my birthmother and to discover that I am part Cherokee, and that one of my ancestors was Chief Colbert of which Colvert County, Alabama was named. I've even located a great aunt who is sending me a photograph of my great-grandmother who was a direct descendant.. Coincidence or not, as a child I insisted on playing a Cherokee Indian when my brother (also adopted from Gladney) and I played cowboys and Indians. Why it was important to be a "Cherokee"remains a mystery to me. Another oddity from my childhood centers around an ongoing conflict I had with my adoptive parents about how I would wear my hair. Until I was in the 4th grade, I remember feeling humiliated in a very intense way because my hair was short. I dreamed of having long braids and feeling good about myself. I chose my friends based on the length of their hair. I thought it was a weird obsession until, as an adult, I discovered that my maternal biological grandmother who is in her 90's has the same obsession and has never cut her hair. She proudly defends her right to wear her long braids

The birth certificate that I and other adopted persons received in this state, is a legal fiction. My birth certificate gave a hospital name, but the hospital was really the adoption agency that handled my adoption. My birth certificate appears like every other persons birth certificate, except that it does not represent the truth. It states that this child (me) was born on such and such day to this mother. Every time I look at my certificate, I am reminded that the law and the authorities that administer the law think that telling lies is OK. My mom could not have children. If she could, I would not have been adopted. My mother has never given birth to anyone and I was the first born of my birthmother.

Nowhere on the certificate does it say in plain English that this person was adopted.

I have been denied the most basic of truths....from whose body did I arrive here in? For whom do I owe thanks for my life? Some adopted persons are never told that they were adopted. They go through life believing that they were born to their adoptive parents...perhaps they will never know the lie that exists and the sources from which they originated... the core of who they are.

The amended birth certificate in Texas was initially designed in 1932 to protect adopted persons from the stigma of illegitimacy, but has ended up hurting us in ways that we are only beginning to understand, including health issues such as genetic diseases and emotional and psychological well being. While effectively freeing an adopted child from social ridicule of an earlier time era, unfortunately the process also erased our biological heritage, hiding it forever from the one person for which the information pertains... me.. So why continue in this modern age where single parents abound and the stigma of illegitimacy is no longer an issue, to completely obliterate the biological heritage of a select group of human beings?

Perhaps to give people who cannot have babies, a chance to have babies? Considering the strict social mores' of past generations, I am sure that many infants were placed in adoptive homes simply because the adoptive parents could provide above average material amenities for the child, effectively buying that which they could not have naturally. Today, the average Texas adoption costs adoptive parents $20,000. That certainly leaves out the majority of families which may wish to adopt a child... families which apart from having material wealth, could possibly provide a better home environment for the child.

Adopted persons are the only people in this country who are denied access to their original birth certificate.

Why have billions of dollars been spent digging up fossil ruins, ancient archaeological sites, studying physics and the origins of man? Why is the history of the Bible with its chronology of whom beget whom, the Koran, or the Talmud, so important to human beings? Adopted persons are not the first to ask the questions of who am I and why am I here.

These questions are as ancient as humankind itself. So why would anyone be surprised that I, an adopted person, would want to know the same things about myself that every other person knows about him/herself...from where have I come? This person who sacrificed her body and allowed me to live as "one"with her, to exist only because of her existence, to thrive and grow inside her body, is the person I owe my life. Because of her, I am here.

What kind of government would deny me the right to know this precious bit of information? What kind of society would turn a deaf ear to my cry for equal rights under the law. How wonderful the day when I can say, I am just as any other person. How peacefully content am when the law upholds my right to know, to confirm, that I really was "born"of another human being - that I truly belong in the human race.

Jan-Feb 1997

Last updated March 12, 1997