Mother and Child Reunion

This letter appears on pp 21-22 of the Sept/Oct 2000 Offspring:

MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION

We found it a matter of great regret that your article featuring our organization, Bastard Nation, and Marley Greiner, its executive chair (“This Woman Wants You to Call Her a Bastard. Please”, June/July), managed to conflate the issues of open records for adult adoptees and open adoption. It was all the more disturbing in the Bill Pierce, lobbyist for the adoption industry in his role as president of the National Council for Adoption, who was also featured in this article, has done his best for the past twenty years to obfuscate this distinction. And it seems that Jonathan Eig has blithely followed in his footsteps.

Bastard Nation has no position on open adoption, which is an agreement between adoptive and birth parents about contact during the minority of a child. Open records for adult adoptees, which is the mission of Bastard Nation, means precisely and only that adult adopted persons have a right to access their state-held records of birth (and adoption) in the same manner as all other citizens. To juxtapose this issue with cases like Baby Jessica and Baby Richard is irresponsible, misleading journalism that shows no understanding of the issues involved.

Aside from the fact that the vast majority of birth and adoptive parents favor open records for adult adoptees, it is a matter of simple justice. All the courts that have ruled on this issue have affirmed that granting adult adoptees access to their records does not violate the privacy of their birth parents.

Bastard Nation and open records are a threat only to an industry that has operated without accountability and under a cloak of secrecy for decades.

Marley Greiner, Cynthia Bertrand Holub and Ron Morgan Executive Committee, Bastard Nation
Des Moines, Washington