Ontario bill proposes unsealing adoption records

A number of important points need to be made here.

First of all most adoptees ALREADY have the surname of the birthmother from their adoption order. The anonymity of birthmothers is a myth.

ALL adoption orders before 1970 have the birth surname of the adoptee on there. The birth surname is also the surname of the birth mother. Adoptive families get these from day one of the adoption. Adopted adults can have a copy on request.

Adoption orders after 1970 vary - sometimes a name, sometimes a number - but one can't tell.

If you don't believe me, just visit this web site.

http://www.canadianadopteesregistry.org

You will see that even from 1927 when the records were supposedly sealed, that adoptees still know their birth surnames - 13 out of 16 in this case.

If the birthmothers names are already exposed, how is a disclosure veto supposed to work?

Furthermore, because most adoptees DO know the names of their birthmothers, adoption is exempted from the Privacy Act.

It is also OUTSIDE the mandate of the Privacy Commissioner who has misled the public about their confidentiality.

The Privacy Commissioner has now been forced to issue an "Alert for Birthparents" in light of the misinformation she has issued. In it, she admits that birthmothers DO NOT have the confidentiality she says that they have.

Why then is the Privacy Commissioner still saying that they do???

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One other point - disclosure vetoes do not work.

How can they when one of the parties ALREADY has the information?

Furthermore, the provinces that do have them find that they don't work and tell people that they MUST take out a CONTACT veto at the same time. If a person finds despite a disclosure veto, they will not be penalised if the found party has not filed a contact veto too.

It should be remembered that disclosure vetoes are only against the government giving out more info. It is not against any individual who can still find information about you without you even knowing about it.

There are other avenues of getting information and no Canadian disclosure veto can stop it.

For example, Canadian adoptees adopted by Americans are entitled to their immigration papers under the US Freedom of Information Act.
This information includes the full name of the birth parents plus other info.

Explain to me how a disclosure veto is going to stop that?

Disclosure vetoes are so useless that Australia has dropped theirs, and the rest of the world doesn't bother - for example, the UK, France, Alaska, Kansas, Israel, Sweden, etc. etc. (too long a list to write here).

Bill 183 does NOT expose birthmothers - they are ALREADY exposed!!!

It is about time people told these women the truth and stop lying to them about having non-existent confidentiality.

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The very simple solution to all of this is to give all mothers all the records regarding the adoption of their children to do with as they wish. Get them out of the hands of the middlemen who care about the records only as a way to keep their own jobs, power, fees and secrets, not as the human rights issue they truly are. The goal of free societies should be to allow citizens to be more human, not less human.

In the US most adoptors already know the mother's name--something mothers and adoptees are not told about. Numerous generations of strangers (each one somebody's next door neighbor, cousin, etc.) with varying qualification also see the names over the years during routine clerical work and the continuing research on the mothers.

Adoption, laughingly called the "death penalty" for real families by courts behind their backs, seems to generate and require more and more complicated lawmaking to prop it up. That says much about the practice. If non-orphan adoption is as great as society is supposed to think it is, it should need fewer laws to keep it going, not more.

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My husband is an adoptee and has been waiting for a bill like this since he first wanted to search almost 18 years ago. He has received all of his birth information including his name of CHarles Darryl Black. It is written on all of his forms. How can we deny any human the right to know where they came from? Do you look at a family picture and see your facial features or your smile on that of an aunt or cousin?? Now look at that picture and see nothing at all that resembles yourself. KNow for a fact that the blood and features running through those people have nothing at all to do with you and that somewhere out there is a family whos picture your would fit perfectly into. That is the missing piece of every adoptee's life. Every human deserves to know where they came from and at least know the names of the people that gave them life. Birth moms were never promised secrecy...it might have been the parents of those children who were pregnant who were promised something to hide them from the shame that thier little girl was pregnant......we need to open these records to every human can know that they belong somewhere.

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Secrecy was invented by the social workers to protect adoptors and themselves. They exploited the shame of unsophisticated families for their own gain. It was imposed on the frightened, demonized mothers.

I do wonder reading about all the mothers who allegedly contact legislators with concerns over being "outed" if they are actually mothers of adoption loss at all. How would anybody know? Perhaps they are zealous adoptors or adoption workers protecting and promoting themselves. Do these selp-proclaimed mothers sign their names to their letters? If they do, they have just "outed" themselves, the very thing they are supposedly trying to prevent. If they do sign their names, do the legislators verify their identities then have access to the "secret" records so they can then verify they really are mothers? If so, the records are no longer secret...

It all seems pretty shakey to me. We are talking about people's lives here. Giving the mothers their own records and closing out the files forever would solve all the problems.

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