Adoption Bias: One Sided Triangles Fall Flat

A while back I posted an item from the Chicago Tribune's Problem Solver column in which an adult adoptee was denied her passport because she erroneously assumed her amended (falsified) Illinois birth certificate granted her citizenship. I subsequently posted the followup in which she was able to gain a passport, not from the U.S. but from her country of birth. At the time of the first article I wrote to Problem Solver Jon Yates explaining that this is not an isolated incident and that all adult adoptees with sealed records are in danger of being denied necessary documents like passports and driver's licenses. I received no reply and the Tribune made no further mention of the case, leading its readers to continue assuming that such incidents are rare and isolated.

Today's Trib celebrates four years of the Problem Solver column, with Mr. Yates highlighting some of his favorite cases. He describes one that was so poignant he keeps the picture in his office:

When Jill and Jason Alexander wrote me asking for help getting a passport so they could travel to China and adopt a son, I was more than happy to place some calls. Shortly thereafter, the Alexanders wrote me a thank-you note I will never forget. They attached a photo of Owen, who looked so cute I couldn't put the picture down. So I tacked the note -- and the picture -- to a wall in my cubicle, where they remain today. I see them every day I come to work -- happy reminders about why I became a reporter in the first place.

This illustrates (again!) a common bias when reporting about adoption, a bias that is reflected in the public's idea of adoption as a whole. People love to help put a Poor Orphan Waif(tm) in the loving arms of prospective adopters. But when those same waifs turn into adult adoptees, our requests for help are answered with chirping crickets. Why is it, I wonder, that people are so willing to sympathize with prospective adopters and adoptive parents, while dismissing the dilemmas of adult adoptees and birth relatives? I have some theories.

• The rescuer mentality. People view adoption as "rescuing" children. They want to participate, to bask in the glow of the Good Samaritan. Never mind that most orphans aren't and that the adoption industry is more corrupt than a sledgehammered hard drive.
  
  
• The stereotype of birth parents as poverty-stricken strung-out malcontents who don't deserve their own children. When was the last time you saw the media helping to keep a child with his family of origin, especially if that family is not so perfect and there is an "ideal" adoptive family waiting in the wings?
  
  
• The stereotype of the ungrateful adult adoptee. "Good" adoptees never question the adoption industry, never want to know their origins, assimilate perfectly into their adoptive families and insist that's where God wants them to be. Anything less and you are branded the "bad" adoptee, the ungrateful adoptee, the bastard. The validity of any concerns can thus be dismissed, whereas if they came from anyone else someone might have to pay attention to what's going on in the adoption industry.
  
  
• The successful marketing strategies of the adoption lobbyists. Let's face it, these people are very good at their jobs. They have made adoption not only palatable but desirable. They have swept all negativities under the rug with words like "adoption plan" and "best needs of the child". Even well-researched articles pointing out the flaws in the system come under fire. They have been so successful in brainwashing the public that it's difficult just to enter into a discussion about adoption reform.

In short, a one-sided adoption triangle falls flat. You can't cover putting infants into the arms of adoptive parents without also covering the lifelong anguish of birth mothers and the continuing discrimination against adult adoptees. What's a triangle with one side? A line, the definition of one-dimensional. This is one-dimensional reporting, which is all too prevalent in the vast majority of articles about adoption. I have to agree with Robin over at Motherhood Deleted... there is no adoption triad. In the public eye there are only perfect adoptive parents, perpetual infant adoptees, and no birth families in sight.

Being a reporter isn't just about the feel-good, it's about tracking down the truth and saying what other people won't, even if–especially if!–it's unpopular.

Adoption Isn't A "Choice" For Everyone

There's this billboard that has been ticking me off for months now. It used to be on the northbound Metra tracks. I was so happy when they took it down, but now it's back up along eastbound Route 14. It's sponsored, natch, by McHenry County (Illinois) Right To Life and pictures a couple with a baby and the slogan: "Adoption. The choice everyone can live with."

I have so many beefs with this billboard I could cook a chuck roast. It's a daily reminder to me of everything that is wrong with adoption.

• The billboard is specifically promoting infant adoption. Never mind that there are plenty of foster kids in Illinois and elsewhere who would be delighted at a chance for a good home.
  
  
• It pictures Obligatory Cute Picture of Healthy White Infant with Smiling Heterosexual Caucasian Couple. In other words, it promotes adoption of white infants over infants of other ethnicities, foster kids, and kids with disabilities. Get Your Tabula Rasa Here! It also discounts single-parent adoption, gay adoption, and anything other than the stereotypical "nuclear family".
  
  
• This ad is designed to get expectant mothers to surrender kids–in other words, to make money for adoption agencies. I don't see the RTL groups posting ads offering help for expectant moms or brochures on where they can find support. If it's really about fighting abortion and not promoting adoption, why not offer every alternative? Nor do I see them giving expectant mothers realistic information about adoption (PDF).
  
  
• It portrays adoption solely from the perspective of the adoptive parents. The baby is a perpetual infant without voice, and the (birth) mother* is nonexistent.
  
  
• It says nothing about the lifelong impact of adoption upon everyone involved, including the adoptive parents.
  
  
• (Plus, the damn thing ends in a preposition. My English teacher is howling from beyond the grave.)

Some people, especially the RTL crowd, get bent out of shape at criticism of infant adoption, or indeed any criticism of adoption at all. This billboard's message is clear: An expectant mother's only choices are abortion ("murder" in RTL parlance) or Warm Happy Fuzzy Adoption. What this billboard carefully does NOT point out is:

• Adoption is not Warm Happy Fuzzy. Adoption begins in loss. There's no way to make that prettier or more palatable.
  
  
• Adoption is not a guarantee of a better life, only a different one.
  
  
• Adoption should be a last resort. All efforts should be made to keep children with their families of origin, and only if they are truly in danger and there is absolutely no other choice should they be relinquished for adoption. But most prospective adopters want unspoiled goods, the tabula rasa, not an older child or one with potential problems or one whose birth family might want (horrors!) to maintain a relationship. They pay good money and like any consumer they demand a quality product. Which is why adoption is about finding a child for parents who want one instead of finding a home for children who need one. That leads to the adoption industry snatching up as many products (read: children) as possible.
  
  
• Adoptees grow up; we don't remain voiceless infants forever. Adoption was never a "choice" for us, nor for our mothers, many of whom were forced socially or literally into surrendering us. It's also not a "choice" for our extended families, friends, and significant others, all of whom are faced with the negative impact adoption has had on our lives and the lives of those around us.
  
  
• Adoption agencies make billions on infant adoption. Adoption is a profit-making venture, not a charity, however it may be portrayed.
  
  
• Adoption agencies get federal subsidies for promoting adoption, to the point where they push adoption to strangers over keeping birth families together.
  
  
• Adoption agencies deliberately market in such a way to discount the negativities of adoption (again, because they make money from adoption). Which means any information about adoption from an agency or adoption "professional" should be taken as suspect.
  
  
• Adult adoptees are routinely denied access to their origins. Birth mothers are routinely denied access to the paperwork they signed and information about their offspring. Illinois has mechanisms that purportedly facilitate contact but they're about as effective as a walrus trying to tango.
  
  
• So-called "open" adoptions are rarely enforcable from the biological family's side. Once the adoption is finalized, the adoptive parents can–and do–take off with the kid, never to be heard from again. "Open adoption" is a marketing phrase to get an expectant mom in the door.
  
  
• Foreign "orphans" often are not orphans at all, and may in fact have been stolen from their families. Adoption, international and otherwise, is chock-full of corruption.
  
  
• Adoptees are torn not only from their families but also their countries, languages, and cultures of origin. Birth mothers suffer long-term consequences including depression, anxiety and other stressors that can diminish their health. Hollywood and made-for-TV movies gloss over these impacts, just like adoption agencies do. It's not a pretty picture but it is the truth.

Why are we adoptees supposed to be grateful that we were not raised in our families of origin? Why are our mothers supposed to go away and never be seen or heard from again? Why can't we promote support of expectant mothers instead of stealing their children to feed the adoption industry's profits? Why can't we restore unconditional access to adoption records? Why are we supposed to ignore what is wrong with adoption and simply accept the happy-go-lucky picture the billboard above invokes?

How about this as a new billboard? "Adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Support expectant mothers and unconditional records access."

* I use the terms "birth mother" and "birth family" on this blog although some find it offensive, not because I disagree (I find it offensive too) but because it's more likely to be picked up by search engines. Which is a further demonstration of how relinquishing mothers and adoptees are dehumanized in discussions of adoption.

Update From Threatened Tennessee Adoptee

A while back I posted the story of "Donna", the adoptee who was threatened by Tennessee DCS for contacting a birth relative who wanted to be contacted. I subsequently posted an open letter from Fr. Jack Sweeley taking Tennessee DCS to task.

I'm glad to report the following update from Donna:

Well, I am in shock! I am the Tennessee girl who got into trouble with DCS for contacting my buncle. My bmother had filed a contact veto after I had contacted him, but I still got in trouble. Anyway, today I received in the mail a letter from DCS saying my bmother had rescinded the contact veto and will allow one phone call and then “we go from there.” I am so excited I am shaking. My first inclination was to pick up the phone and call, but I need to think about all the things I want to say and ask. I don’t want to screw this up. I want further contact. She sent her phone number and address and a current photo. We don’t look anything alike. I have her current last name and her driver’s license number. This was all included for identification I guess. She lives in the same town as me and only a few miles from where my husband grew up. I can’t breathe!!!

Donna has since spoken with her birth mother and hopes for further contact in the future. I am very excited for Donna and pray that their reunion moves forward with positive outcomes for all involved. I'm also glad this takes the heat off her concerning Tennessee DCS's threats, although I'm sure they'll take advantage of the situation to chalk her up as another "success" in their statistics much as Illinois did to me.

Congratulations to Donna and her family!

The Too-Wanted Adoptee

There is a fabulous conversation going on over at FirstMotherForum on an old thread. It began with Lorraine's remarks about a book written by an adoptive father, who joined the conversation and shared his viewpoints. In one of the comments maryanne wrote:

We all know the many terrible things that are supposed to happen to the unplanned, "unwanted" child in a family, but has anyone ever looked into the detrimental effects of being the "too wanted" child, the result of years of assisted reproduction or adoption that was difficult and expensive?

I think this might place an awful burden on a child to live up to some unrealistic expectations of the parents that the kid be superior and "worth it", and cause problems if the child does not fit the mold set for him as the golden prize baby. In international adoption I could see this being a problem if the child did not fit some ethnic stereotype the adoptive parents had about people from "that country" , like that Russians are literary or Asian girls are passive. In any adoption or high tech reproduction, in some ways the kid has to be more than just a kid to justify how hard it was for the parents to become parents.

I left several comments including this one:

maryanne, your observations are astute. I was exactly that to my adoptive parents, a goal and a prize. In their world being childless was tantamount to social suicide. They needed the privileges being parents would bring, such as meeting "the right" families through contacts at school and other parent-related events. I don't know if anyone has researched the detrimental effects of being the "too-wanted" child, but they should. When adoptive parents go through the expense and ordeal of assisted reproduction, plus the expense and ordeal of adoption itself, there is a strong pressure upon the adoptee to live up to that "investment." In my case, my adoptive parents seemed to be under the assumption that by adopting me, they could mold my interests and personality--even going so far as to hire psychologists to try to force me into that mold. This backfired to the extent that we are now estranged. I can't speak to the effects upon international adoptees, but I do know that trying to meet the unrealistic expectations of being the long-awaited and finally-attained "prize" is emotionally overwhelming and impossible to achieve.

I'd like to explore this more, the idea of the "too-wanted" child. Do assisted-reproduction facilities and adoption agencies elicit unrealistic expectations among prospective adopters? How does this affect adoptees in the long term? In my experience, the answers are yes and extensively. There are far too many adoptive parents out there who set unrealistic goals for the children they adopt. Even after we adoptees become adults, we are expected to fulfill set roles that act as strangleholds upon our emotional well-being and identity formation. People raised in their families of origin sometimes suffer that, too, but in the case of adoptees there is this unspoken assumption that we must be 100% perfect because we were so badly wanted and, not to put too fine a point on it, very expensive. (And, if we're not 100% perfect, we can get shipped back.) When people spend tens of thousands of dollars they expect a return on the investment. But if you're investing in a human being, you have to be very careful of your motives.

I think prospective adopters would do well to assess thoroughly and extensively the question: Why do you want to adopt? The obvious answer--I want a child--is insufficient. Why? Is it to provide social status? Be a "rescuer" of poor orphans (not all of whom are orphans or poor)? Or is it honestly and truly because you want to open your heart and home to a child? If the latter, are you sure? If your adopted child said she want to meet her birth family--that she wants to have a relationship with them--how would you react? Can you accept the idea that your child will have two sets of parents, both of whom are equally "real"? Will you put aside your own fears, assumptions and expectations to help your child form positive, personal attachments to her family, culture, and language of origin? Will you accept her birth family as an extension of your own, or are they the "them" to your "us"?

Tough questions, and ones that not every adoptive parent wants to face. In which case, I submit they have no business adopting. Because adoption is different--not better, not worse, just different. And failure to accept that difference hurts everyone.

What do you think about the "too-wanted" child?

Erasing Adoptees' Identities: The Foreign Adopted Children's Act

As reported by Ethica, there is a new bill pending that would, in essence, erase the identities of international adoptees.

As written, the Foreign Adopted Children's Act (S. 1359/H.R. 3110: A bill to provide United States citizenship for children adopted from outside the United States, and for other purposes) supposedly simplifies the adoption process by conferring U.S. citizenship retroactive to birth. Adoptive families would apply for a Consular Report Of Birth which, like an amended birth certificate, makes it appear "as if" the adoptee was born to the adoptive parents. Proponents of the bill say this will help adoptive families by eliminating some of the paperwork and expense, and help adoptees by offering them the same inalienable rights as a U.S.-born citizen. There are plenty of concerns about this proposed legislation which have been remarked upon by bloggers in the adoption community. From where I'm sitting, it looks very much like erasing adoptees' identities.

Internationally-adopted adoptees already have many difficulties reconciling their identities. They are severed from their cultures and languages of birth, suffering lifelong consequences as a result. The FACE Act would remove what little remains of their birth identities, replaced with a fiction that has more to do with appeasing adoptive parents than it does helping adoptees acclimate. It would put further hurdles in the path of adult adoptees attempting to seek information about their origins.

Adoptive families should not be frightened of an adoptee's culture of origin. It is an irrevocable part of international adoption. Rather than sweeping this fact under the rug, adoptive families must embrace the cultural differences that inviting an international adoptee into their lives entails. You can't just rename a kid and expect them to fit perfectly into your little world. Doing so sets the adoptee up for immediate failure, as they attempt to rationalize the lie they are expected to live with the face in the mirror. And we already know that amended birth certificates don't work for domestic adoptees. I'm against anything that puts my international adoptee brethren in the same leaky boat I find myself in.

Please visit the Ethica page and contact your legislators, urging them to vote against the FACE Act.

Adopting A Child To Replace A Deceased One

In the WTF category, this article (Houston Chronicle: Family eases grief of lost child through adoption) makes me sick, sick, absolutely sick. I feel so sorry for this girl and the expectations that are going to be heaped on her, above and beyond those expected of most adoptees.

The adoptive parents are in mega-denial:

"I'm convinced Marin [the deceased child] and Sioban [the Chinese adoptee] met in passing," Lori [the adoptive mother] said. "Marin told her, This is how you get to Daddy's heart, and this is how you get to Mommy's heart.'"

No, I bet the former was pissed off at missing out on her life, and the latter is... well, pissed off at missing out on her life. What is most telling to me is this paragraph:

So they settled on adoption. And they decided on China, because most of the infants there are healthy and, because of the one child policy and male bias, there is a preponderance of girls up for adoption.

Translation: International adoption is easier because it's less likely those pesky birth families are gonna come searching. It's also easier because the records are more readily obfuscated. I don't suppose this family bothered to learn anything about the real state of international adoption, such as the number of children who are being kidnapped--yes, kidnapped--in China and elsewhere to fulfill Western desires to adopt:

• BBC News: China babies 'sold for adoption'
  
• Reuters: China takes aim at officials' illicit accounts
  
• Straits Times: Illegal babies sold: Foreign adoption programme in China spawning 'Baby Economy'
• ChinaDaily: Orphanage probed over baby adoption scandal

More telling quotes from the article:

The adoption itself was a 21-month process. Flying to China, Lori cried and cried. Was their adopting a child really God's will? Were they supposed to have just three children? What if she didn't feel love for this new baby? "But that second they put her in my arms, it was instantaneous," Lori said. "I was like, This is my baby.' It was very clear cut that our daughter just happened to be born halfway across the world."

This is NOT YOUR BABY. This child HAS a family IN CHINA. The fact that you used the coercive and corrupt American adoption system to purchase a child does NOT make it "God's will". It's blatant delusion. It's failure to process grief. Who the hell approved these people to adopt? They already have three kids, for crying out loud! These are not desperate infertiles. These are people who had their hearts set on four kids and dammit, they are gonna have four kids even if they have to swipe one from somebody else.

And the couple says she has helped make the family whole again. "I tell you, she's got McGrath blood in her," Lori said, cradling Sioban in her arms.

No, she DOESN'T, and she never will. Does anybody think this family is really going to encourage this girl to explore her origins when she is old enough to understand? I'm betting on Chinese fairytales and the occasional take-out dinner as the extent of it, if that.

The next time somebody gripes at me about mentioning an entitlement mentality among many prospective adopters, I'm showing them this article. And if that makes me "anti-adoption", then you can bite my bastard ass.

Thanks to Amyadoptee for pointing out this article, I think. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be violently ill.

Open Letter To Tennessee DCS

In response to the story about "Donna", the adoptee who was threatened with legal action and jail time for speaking with a willing birth relative, I received the following open letter to Tennessee DCS. It's from Fr. John "Jack" Sweeley, theologian and author of Rights, Liberties, and Social Justice: How America Lost Its Moral Authority. Am I allowed to say a priest knows how to kick some serious butt? This is posted with his permission.

16 July 2009

Open Letter
Tennessee Department of Children’s Services

This letter is written in response to the recent case of a woman threatened with being sent to prison for allegedly violating the no-contact clause that allowed her to receive information, including the names of birth relatives, pertaining to her adoption. What was her alleged crime that could have her doing time in the Tennessee State Prison System? Her “crime” was that after receiving the information for which she paid the Tennessee Department of Children Services $150.00 she had the audacity to contact her birth uncle by telephone – not in an attempt to contact her birth mother but rather just to hear the voice of a person who was a blood relative.

To put the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services threat to put this woman in prison with convicted felons such as murders, bank robbers, and the lowest of Tennessee’s low life criminals, it must be understood that Tennessee claims to be an “open records” state. Open records states are states that by law allow adults who were adopted as children to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate and unless their birth mother has signed a “Contact Preference Form” to the contrary are free to search for, find, and ring the doorbell of their birth mother.

Tennessee is not one of these states. The Tennessee open records case Doe v. Sunquist was decided in favor of the adoptee Doe and that decision was upheld by the Fourth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. Most significantly the judge in that case stated that, “Birth is both a public and private matter” and that, “Birth mothers were never given a promise of confidentiality or anonymity.” Additionally, “If any such promise was given by social workers, maternity homes, or attorneys such promises were extra-legal; that is, outside of the law and therefore not binding on the state.”

In response to the clarity and absolute right of adults who were adopted as children to obtain their original birth certificate, search for, find, and ring the doorbell of their birth mother, the State of Tennessee passed legislation that effectively gutted the decision of the court by instituting both the requirement of a “Confidential Intermediary” licensed by the State of Tennessee to conduct the search and a “Contact Veto Form” which allows a birth mother to state she does not grant permission for the child, now adult, to whom she gave birth to contact her or any of her relatives. The irony of this is that the Confidential Intermediary as part of their search has full disclosure of the adoption record and is allowed to contact not only the birth mother but also all members of her family of origin as well as family members of the family she married into and the family members of any family she may have previously married into.

At this point one may be shaking their heads in wonder at this convoluted state of affairs where in America a woman can be sent to prison for making a telephone call to her biological uncle. If so, you are not alone. So, how can this happen? It can happen because in America it is still believed that there are hundreds of thousands of birthmothers hiding in the closet riddled with shame and fear they will be “outed” by their progeny. Moreover, it is believed by legislators in almost all states that these birth mothers need the protection of the state because if found the result will be disrupted families, divorce, nervous breakdowns, and suicide.

Such a scenario stretches the imagination of even the most imaginative science fiction writer. So, what is the origin of such ideas and why are they believed when they are nothing more than cartoon-like characters? How can they continue to be believed when the experience of states that have opened their adoption records without restriction such as Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine has proven them to be nothing more than poppycock mythology?

They can because the well of reason and experience has been poisoned by The National Council for Adoption that purports to speak for all members of the adoption triad: birth mothers, adoptees, and adoptive parents. As such, it continues to contend that birth mothers were promised confidentiality and anonymity if not on paper than as a verbal pledge and that pledge trumps court decisions to the contrary. However, as my Native American ancestors would say, “National Council for Adoption speaks with forked tongue and cannot be trusted because it lies.”

The fact is that the National Council for Adoption was created by mega players of the Adoption Industry including Gladney in Texas, The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) Adoption Services, and Bethany Christian Services that has adoption centers in over twenty-five states. From its inception, the National Council for Adoption has been a trade lobby for these and other adoption agencies that fear opening adoption records as a consequence of their unethical, immoral, and illegal past as well as present practices. It is the National Council for Adoption that created the bogyman, more accurately the bogeywoman, of the birth mother trembling and shaking in fear hiding in the back of the closet afraid that one day her progeny will knock on the door and her secret will be exposed.

This brings us back to the woman in Tennessee and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services intimidation of her for making a phone call to her uncle in which she emphasized she was not calling him in an effort to enlist him, a third party, to contact his sister on her behalf. Her only intent was to hear the voice of one person in this world to whom she is genetically related.

What is particularly telling in this sordid farce perpetrated by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services response to this woman is that it concedes the following:

1. The woman contacted the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services prior to calling her uncle to be sure doing so would not violate the “no contact” clause of the document she was forced to sign before she could received the 100 pages of information that contained the names of her birth mother and biological relatives.

2. The woman was told by the person she spoke to that contacting her uncle by telephone would not be a violation of the “no contact” agreement she had signed.

3. By law the birth mother had 90 days to return her “Contact Veto Form” if she did not want her progeny to contact her or any of her relatives.

4. The woman had been told she could call her uncle and the call was made prior to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services receiving the birth mother’s “Contact Veto Form” that she did not want to communicate with her progeny nor allow communication with her relatives.

As incredulous as it is, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services sent a letter to the woman, the letter in which it threatened to send her to prison, stating that she had violated the “no contact” agreement she had signed in two ways. How could this be true?

First, she had contacted her uncle prior to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services being in receipt of her birth mother’s “Contact Veto Form” which stated she did not want to be contacted and none of her relatives could be contacted.

Secondly, she was in violation because at the end of her conversation with her uncle she told her uncle, “If you talk with her about me thank you; and, that I have never had any bad feelings about her giving me up for adoption.” According to the letter, “This is an attempt (aim, try, seek) at contact via another person.”

The first alleged violation is in flagrante delicto (invalid by its very act) because the woman called her uncle predicated on the affirmation by a social worker at the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services that to do so was not a violation of the “no contact” document she had signed. The woman cannot be held responsible for the obvious failure of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services to create a policy that requires no information is to be released prior to the 90 days given birth mothers to return the “Contact Veto Form.” Moreover, if such a policy did exist, she certainly cannot be held responsible for employees of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services who either do not know of the policy or do not follow it.

As to the validly or rather invalidity of the second so-called violation I am dumbfounded by both the words and how they are used. Is this the best an educated person can write who presumably has not only a bachelor’s degree but also a master’s degree in social work? Thank goodness for my degree is in psycholinguistics not so that I can try to understand the intent of the social worker’s statement but rather so I can at least try to understand the total lack of linguistic skills, the lack of facility of the language, in which it is written.

The first conundrum is to try to unravel what is meant by “…attempt (aim, try, seek)…” Why was it necessary to use four different words to express one thought especially when “aim” and “seek” in no way either denote or connote “attempt” as if in some way “attempt” was the antecedent to “aim” and “seek”? All that I can surmise from this jumble of words is that the writer was in the same position as were my students when I was a college professor and they either did not know or could not articulate the thought they were trying to convey. Consequently, they used what I call “the shotgun approach” stringing together several words hoping that one of them conveys what it is they cannot convey by the proper use of the language. Like my students, perhaps the social worker does not have sufficient vocabulary development to make the proper citation or perhaps this is simply an example of a person who is ignorant of how to write a sentence.

That said and as condemning as it is, perhaps the problem lies in the fact that the word “contact” is absolutely the wrong word to use to express the social worker’s intent. What does the word “contact” mean? “Contact” in English is taken from the Latin contactus which in turn is taken from contingere which means “to touch or seize.” It is also related to langere which also means “touch.” When combined with the Latin com which means “together” we can now denote the word “contact.”

To contact is therefore an act or action of bringing two entities together in physical proximity. As such, it is immediate and requires that the two entities are within physical touching distance. Contact can also mean a relationship in the abstract such as coming into contact with previously unknown philosophical constructs. Contact can also be used in the sense of making contact with colleagues at a seminar. Contact also has specific meanings in such fields as the physics of electricity, in higher mathematics as in tangency and coincidence, in mining as the geometric term for marking the limit of a vein, and in medicine when two persons are close enough to pass a communicable disease between them.

As the social worker was not using “contact” in any of its denoted meanings and most likely is ignorant of that fact due to a deficiency in Latin, the only response to this statement of alleged violation of the “no contact” document given both its erroneous denotation and expression is that the statement in fact does not convey any intelligible meaning. Consequently, it is not a valid statement.

What this woman has been subjected to by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services is nothing short of their version of the Nightmare on Elm Street followed by The Amityville Horror. This kind of bullying and intimidation would not be tolerated by any other public agency because doing so would be on the nightly news and public outrage would follow.

Yet, not only this woman but approximately nine million – yes nine million – Americans who live in, “the land of the brave and home of free” who were adopted as children are denied their civil right to search for, find, and ring the doorbell of family members lost to them.

To put this into perspective, the only other citizens of America in the same position as adults who were adopted as children are people in the Federal Witness Protection Program who also are not allowed to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate or search for, find, and ring the doorbell of family members lost to them.

In his, Letters From a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, “No man is free until all men are free.” Adults who were adopted as children in America, with the exception of a few states, are not free because they are denied access to that very document that denotes their true identity, their true self, which is their original birth certificate. More importantly, they are not free because contact vetoes are a de facto restraining order issued without the necessity of birth mothers appearing before a judge and presenting sufficient evidence that harm would result if their progeny searched, found, and rang their doorbell.

Monsignor John W. Sweeley, Th.D., Pastor