Two years ago, I initiated a search for my birth mother. Last winter, I learned I am my mother's secret. For 33 years, the story of my birth has hung in her closet like an overcoat -- the name she gave me, "Melanie," a clinging broach. I'm emotional. I know it.
The worst part of being a secret is being told that my existence is being withheld from two biological sisters, one less than two years younger than me, with a son my own son's age. My mother doesn't want to know me. I was prepared for that. But knowing I have siblings who don't know about me is a lot to handle. My cheeks are salty. The space between my eyes aches. I am wrung out for reasons I can't explain.
My husband hugs me. A while later he asks, "Do you have sisters or does your biological mother have daughters?" I don't know. Blood might be thicker, but my veins course with water too. Adoption disclosure has stirred me up.
I won't be alone. In Ontario this fall, 250,000 adoption records are slated to be unsealed, potentially divulging secrets 80 years in the keeping. The province began sealing its adoption records in 1927 to protect children from the social stigma of "illegitimacy." Since then, adoptees and birth parents have been denied direct access to their original birth records. But times have changed and the rules are changing too. New adoption disclosure legislation will allow adoptees and birth parents to obtain records. Names will be divulged.
Disclosure isn't new; British Columbia, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador have already unsealed their records. But Ontario's legislation is unique because parties can't choose to remain anonymous unless they can prove that revealing their identity will cause harm. Instead, they can stipulate that they don't want to be contacted, and those who defy their wishes can be hit with a $50,000 fine.
"Nobody's saying that adoptees or birth parents have a right to a relationship, but that they have a right to their own personal information," says Wendy Rowney of Toronto, co-ordinator of Coalition For Open Adoption Records. "This is an issue of human rights, the right that every person has to information about themselves. By withholding the information, the current legislation effectively turns adults into children by denying them self-knowledge and the ability to define their own relationships."
However, not everyone agrees that the right to information ought to trump the right to privacy. The Adoption Information Disclosure Act had barely passed when Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby filed an appeal on behalf of three adoptees and one birth father. He argues that the new law violates the constitutional right to privacy, that anonymity should be a choice. "This is a personal choice and the government has failed to respect the personal nature of that choice," he says.
If Ruby wins his appeal, a disclosure or information veto could be tagged to the legislation, making it similar to other provinces. But such a veto might not be of great statistical consequence. Given the choice, only three to five percent of those affected in provinces where there is a choice decide to remain anonymous. If the same rate applies in Ontario, it means starting this fall, thousands of people will open themselves to the possibility of being contacted by a birth relative. While arguments focus on privacy and information rights, no one is expressing much concern for the possible emotional fallout of the new process of birth records being treated as little more than paperwork rather than documents that fold into a sense of identity, relationship and family.
When Bill 183 passed its third reading, 43,000 people were seeking contact with their birth relative through the government's existing search registry. Recognizing the emotional nature of searching, the previous legislation authorized trained social workers to handle cases and made counselling mandatory. The new legislation, in contrast, makes the information available but doesn't help people deal with it: to search, to handle being sought, to address identity issues and relational repercussions.
"It was a compromise," admits former Toronto MPP
Marilyn Churley, whose five previous private-member bills calling for open adoption records included financial provisions for counselling and other support services. "It was essentially cost-saving to get the bill passed."
Churley, often referred to as the "mother" of Bill 183, knows the struggle of disclosure well. When Churley was a teenager, a doctor denied her birth control, saying it would make her promiscuous. She got pregnant. Nine months later, she laboured for 24 hours alone in the hospital with nothing but a clock on the wall for company, scared she was dying. She wasn't offered medication or basic comfort measures and was instructed to "shut up and behave."
"The culture of the time was so oppressive to women who were pregnant `out of wedlock' that we weren't given options or support," she says. "The establishment treated us like we were -- excuse me -- sluts." When Churley's son was born, she leapt off the table demanding to hold him. She was allowed to stroke his head and later looked at him through a window. "Birth mothers were told different things back then," says Churley. "Some were told, `Don't worry, you'll forget about this.' Others, like me, were told that when our children turned 18, we would be able to find them. I wasn't promised privacy. Quite the opposite."
In 1989, Churley reunited with her son. The hardest part of the process was telling her parents about her painful past. "My husband and kids knew, but my parents didn't. That was really tough. They came to visit for several days. Each day I tried to tell them, but the words just wouldn't come out. When I finally told them, it was like a coil in my stomach sprung. It was a release. It was good, but hard. Hard on them. Hard on me. I was an adult, but it was a difficult time."
For some, Bill 183 carries the potential for new truthfulness, renewed connections, a fulfilled sense of identity, even an acknowledgment that the sexual oppression of women cradled the old system. For others, it represents a violation of privacy. For thousands, disclosure might raise as many questions as answers, as much struggle as solace. The new legislation leaves them to fend for themselves.
I can't recall what I was doing before the phone rang, but everything that followed is clear: Mike, my husband, pausing in the kitchen, red-faced, extending the phone, mouthing, "You'd better sit down." The social worker, pleasant, introducing herself, speaking matter-of-factly: "There's good news and bad news. The good news is that I spoke to your birth mother. The bad news is that she doesn't wish to have contact at this time. . . . She took my number. She was shocked, you know. . . . You'll be able to take action in the fall."
What action? I don't know. Do I have a responsibility to my children to learn as much about their genetic makeup as I can? Does my mother have the right to privacy, the right to keep me a secret, or do I have the right to have my questions answered? Are they really my sisters or my mother's daughters?
Like many adoptees who search, I don't expect or even want a relationship. I don't want to be a disruption. I don't want money. I want answers. I want to ask medical questions about my body and my son's body that the government can't answer. And most of all, I want the opportunity to say, "Thank you." Thank you for giving me life and relinquishing me into the unconditional love of those whom I'll always call my parents.
