Essay About Adoption And Privacy Of Birth Records

The Adoption Institute recognizes 1.5 million adopted children at this time in the United States, which is over two percent of all children. About five million people in the US, both children and adults, were adopted, at a contemporary rate of about 100,000 adoptions a year. 60 percent of all Americans know an adopted person, know someone who has adopted a child or know a mother who has relinquished her child to adoption. This substantial sized group of the American public has unique and personal needs and desires in both private and political realms. These political opinions include both sides of the debate on confidentiality of birth records, a desire to further educate the American public on the option of adoption, and the struggle to uniform state regulations regarding adoption. Adoption is "the legal process which creates the status of parent and child between individuals who are not each other's biological parent or
The National Committee for Adoption represents this sector of adoption activists. Bill Pierce, the founder of this group, defends the confidentiality of birth records in his essay, "About Adoption and Privacy of Records" written in 1982. He claims that the opening of birth records unequivocally represents "willingness to disrupt not only the lives of adoptive parents but even of minor children" and Pierce claims, negates the planning and promises a birth mother received when she initially put the baby up for adoption (3). Pierce also contends that the movement towards open records is being perpetuated by a vocal minority. He claims, in fact, that the anti-privacy groups represent a minority of "probably less than a thousand-who've made adoption so controversial" (3). However, this belief is clearly flawed, or at the least outdated, give Ballot Measure 58's success in Oregon, drawing out 5,000 adoptees in less than six