RE: S.B 1445 and HB 1835: Adoptee Birth Records Bills

Dear Senators and Representatives:

I write to provide recently developed information about (a) the sentiments of birth parents and (b) the results of open adoption records in other jurisdictions, which I hope will be useful to you in considering the pending access-to-birth-certificates bills.

I am an attorney and a birth father who surrendered my daughter for adoption in 1960 and was fortunate enough to be found by her in 1991. I am also the son of the first graduate of the Hockaday School in Dallas.

The information set forth in this letter was developed in the course of representing a group of birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees as amici curiae in two parallel actions (one federal and one state) entitled Doe V. Sundquist. In one of those cases the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently rejected all federA constitutional challenges to a Tennessee statute which opens original birth certificates and some other adoption records to adult adoptees. A copy of the decision is attached. No decision has yet been rendered in the state court action.

Opponents of open adoption records often express fears that birth parents want "confidentiality" (i.e. to hide their identities) from their surrendered children and that opening adoption records will lead to a decline in adoptions. These fears misread the sentiments of the vast majority of birth parents and are contrary to actual experience. In fact, all of the available evidence indicates that the unsealing of adoption records to adoptees tends to increase adoptions, not to decrease them

In the first place, evidence from around the country is consistent that the overwhelming majority of birth parents welcome contact from their children whom they surrendered for adoption. A number of states have programs in which confidential intermediaries" are authorized to search for and contact birth parents at the request of adult adoptees, and ask the birth parent whether they wish direct contact with their children. Some of these programs have kept numerical records of all the birth parents' responses in recent years. We were able to obtain affidavits and declarations (subject to penalties for perjury) stating such results in five different states,

Arizona, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina and Washington. I enclose a table entitled "Adoptee Search Results", which shows the numerical results in each state and the total; attached to the table are the supporting declarations. The totals show that 95 percent of birth parents accept contact from their surrendered, now adult children. That's nineteen out of twenty.

Second, the attitude of birth mothers is the same at the time of birth as it is years later. I am also enclosing copies of affidavits of four social workers with substantial experience in adoption (Carol Baumann, Ellen Rardin, Deborah Robinson and Kris A. Probasco). Each of them states that in their experience, many birth mothers would not consider adoption if they were going to be denied knowledge of their child's well-being.

Third, a comparison of adoption rates in different states confirms that adoption rates are higher where adoptees can learn the identities of their birth parents and contact them. Kansas and Alaska are the only two states where adult adoptees have an unqualified right to see their original birth certificates. That has been the law and the practice in both states for decades. Both states have substantially higher adoption rates than the country as a whole. Moreover, Kansas has a higher adoption rate than any of the four states Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma - that surround it.

That is true whether the adoption rate is calculated in terms of population or in terms of births. I enclose a table entitled "Adoption Rates, 1992*" which sets forth all the relevant numbers and the sources from which they were obtained.

The affidavit of social worker Kris Probasco confirms that one reason for the higher adoption rate in Kansas is its open records policy. She practtces in both Kansas and Missouri (where records are sealed), and she has found that expectant mothers in Missouri and other sealed-records states prefer to place their children for adoption in Kansas because of its open records policy, among other reasons.

The results in Kansas and Alaska are exactly what common sense would lead one to expect, given that the overwhelming majority of birth parents want to know that their surrendered children are well and want eventually to have some contact with them. As a birth parent, I am astonished by those who assume that birth parents want only to be quit of their children. Not only is that view demeaning, it is false. Birth parents may have been reckless and improvident, but there is no reason to think that they do not love their children.

*1992 is the latest year for which state-by-state adoption totals have been published.

Opponents of open adoption records sometimes claim that opening records to adoptees in England and Wales and in Australia or New South Wales caused declines in adoptions in those jurisdictions. Such claims are erroneous. In both countries, adoptions had declined steeply for many years before adoption records were opened. The declines obviously were not caused by the subsequent opening of records; indeed, the figures for England and Wales indicate that opening records, if it had any effect, slowed the decline and thereby increased the number of adoptions over the number that would otherwise have occurred.

I enclose a copy of my affidavit (with Exhibits 1 and 2)* submitted in Doe V. Sundquist, in which I responded to such claims about English and Australian adoptions. Exhibit 1 to the affidavit is a declaration of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages of New South Wales, Australia, setting forth the annual numbers of adoptions in New South Wales from 1924 through 1995. Adoptions in Australia, as in the U. S., are governed by state rather than federal legislation. New South Wales is the most populous state in Australia. It accounts for about one-third of the total population and about half of the total adoptions in the country. It opened adoption records to adoptees as a matter of right beginning in 1991. The registry data show that adoptions peaked in 1972 at 4,564 and declined to 688 in 1990, a decline of 85 percent in the 18 years before records were opened. The subsequent rate of decline shows no significant change, and indicates that opening the records had no measurable effect on the numbers of adoptions (Affidavit, § 3-4).

Exhibit 2 to my affidavit compiles annual adoption figures for England and Wales for the years 1960 through 1984. The figures are for non-parental adoptions of illegitimate children; those are the only adoptions which could have been affected by the unsealing of adoption records. The exhibit shows that non-parent adoptions of illegitimate children by couples in England and Wales declined continuously from a peak of 14,641 in 1968 to 4,777 in 1976, the year when adoption records were unsealed for adult adoptees. That is a decline of 67 percent in eight years. In the following eight years these adoptions declined to 2,910, a decline of only 39 percent (Affidavit, § 6-9).

If the unsealing of adoption records had any impact on adoptions in England and Wales, therefore, it was to reduce the decline in adoptions, i.e., to increase adoptions above the numbers that otherwise would have occurred.

*Remaining exhibits to the original affidavit have been omitted here, to save space. They are of course available, if you wish them.

Opponents of adoptee access to records repeatedly play on the words "confidentiality" and "privacy", but avoid saying confidential or private from whom. The only confidentiality that is relevant to these bills is confidentiality from one's own child. That is something very few birth parents ever wanted. To the extent that they want confidentiality, it is confidentiality from the general public, from neighbors, from classmates and perhaps also from their parents That is different than hiding from one's child. One may have an unlisted phone to avoid unwanted phone calls, but that does not ordinarily mean that one conceals the number from one's children so that they cannot call home.

A "mutual consent registry" serves only to frustrate communication between birth parents and adoptees, not to further it. The experience of such registries in Texas, in other states, and nationally shows that scarcely one or two percent of birth parents take the initiative to register with such registries, even though 95 percent of birth parents welcome contact from their children. One may speculate why so few birth parents do register - possible reasons include inadequate funding for the registries, overly technical regulations, lack of publicity, and the birth parents' reluctance to face their own guilt and fear over having surrendered their children -but the results are clear. It is utterly unfair to subject adoptees to frustration because of inadequate funding, hypertechnical regulations, or their birth parents' psychological problems. In most cases, the recklessness and imprudence of the birth parents, after all, are the source of the adoptees' problems. The adoptees are blameless in their births. In those rare cases where there is some unavoidable conflict between a birth parent's shame and an adoptee's need for information, what earthly reason is there to prefer the interest of the birth parent to that of the adoptee?

I hope the information and views expressed in this letter are of some assistance to you in passing upon these bills, upon which the hopes and the physical and emotional well-being of so many depend.

Sincerely,

Frederick F. Greenman

P.S. My firm's name and letterhead are used only for purposes of identification.

FFG:ajs
Enclosures