I want an original birth certificate, as promised under the law, unendorsed with my adopters’ details. When I complained to Internal Affairs, they explained the endorsements were to ensure I did not use the document to create a false identity. They went on to describe my postadoption birth certificate as statutory fiction. And then as lawful falsehood. Later they described my original birth certificate as essentially ornamental.
The idea that adoption is now open is a misnomer. Open adoption is, in essence, an exercise in rebranding. Open adoption does not exist in law. Adoption is the same as it ever was: sealed records and a falsified birth certificate.
A mother losing her child to adoption may opt for ‘open’ adoption, but she has still lost all legal right to her child. She has no say over schooling or medical procedures. She has no right to insist her child remain in the country or that any visitation agreement be upheld. Adopting parents control all movements and all contact, even when a mother believes she has an open contract with adopters. Those who are adopted today have no more rights than people taken at the formation of the New Zealand Adoption Act in 1955.
In this memoir, I have stayed away from discussing surrogacy and the use of anonymous gametes. We use the language of human rights to insist that everyone who wishes to parent should be able to. Artificial reproductive technologies or ART extend the opportunity for people to experience parenthood. There is no legal need for a commissioning parent to reveal a child’s genetic or gestation status. These parents are often vocal in demanding we document their children as biological.
Those created through ART do not have an intrinsic right to an authentic identity. The issues of belonging and identity are the same as for adopted people. In my view, we are creating a new generation of second-class citizens — people with fewer rights than their parents and peers and our wider society.
In the last forty years, there have been ninety-eight unsuccessful approaches to successive governments to change the law. New Zealand is a signatory to the United Nations Treaty on the Rights of the Child. We remain in violation of that treaty on multiple grounds.
The families of adopted people are as complex and diverse as any. Not all of us consider we have had unfavourable adoption experiences. But all of us must live our entire lives with a false identity and falsified documents. Everyone who loses their mother suffers some degree of physiological damage. No matter our individual experience of adoption, we are all grafted onto the tree of strangers — for our lifetimes and those of descendants.
I do not know what it is like to grow up without a mother. But I know exactly what it is like to grow up with a mother who did not have a mother.
— Bonnie Sumner
Notes
1 Jennifer Harper, ‘Fetuses found to have memories’, Washington Times, 16 July 2009: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/16/fetuses-found-to-have-memories/.
2 Napier Telegraph, ‘Bethany’s future in good hands’, 1978.
3 Hannah Devlin, ‘Mothers more sensitive to crying babies thanks to hormone, study says’, Guardian, 15 April 2015: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26911697/; https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/15/mothers-moresensitive-to-crying-babies-thanks-to-hormone-study-says.
4 Deborah N. Silverstein and Sharon Kaplan, ‘Grief Silverstein Article’, American Adoption Congress: https://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/grief_silverstein_article.php.
5 Jenni Laidman, ‘Adoptees 4 Times More Likely to Attempt Suicide’, Medscape, 9 September 2013: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/810625.
6 http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Stout06-t6-bodyd1-d1.html.
7 Nina Darnton, ‘90 Are Killed as Jetliners Collide on Madrid Runway’, New York Times, 8 December 1983: https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/08/world/90-are-killed-as-jetliners-collide-on-madrid-runway-in-heavy-fog.html.
8 https://www.the-philosophy.com/pascal-heart-has-its-reasons-which-mind-knows-nothing.
9 https://innerwoven.me/2015/06/07/hiraeth-making-peace-with-longing/.
10 Maria Teresa Sotelo, ‘Maternal affective bond scientific findings Review Article Corresponding author’, Journal of Clinical Review & Case Reports 3, no. 5 (2018): https://www.academia.edu/39074813/Maternal_affective_bond_scientific_findings_Review_Article_Corresponding_author?email_work_card=title.
11 lga Khazan, ‘Inherited Trauma Shapes Your Health’, The Atlantic, 16 October 2018: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/trauma-inherited-generations/573055.
12 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/william_makepeace_thacker_137822.
13 Zygmunt Bauman, ‘From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity’, Liquid Modernity (New York: Sage, 2000).
14 Mirah Riben, ‘Living With Adoption’s Dichotomies and Myths’, Huffington Post, 20 January 2015: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/living-with-adoptions-com_b_6504642.
15 Mathew Salesses, ‘“I never asked for this”: On Adoption, Luck, and Thankfulness’, The Toast, 25 November 2015: http://the-toast.net/2015/11/25/adoption-luck-thankfulness/.
16 Taigen Dan Leighton, Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen, and the Spirit of Creative Living (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2011).
17 ICAAD, ‘Relinquishment and Adoption: Understanding the Impact of an Early Psychological Wound’: https://www.icaad.com/videos/relinquishment-andadoption-understanding-the-impact-of-an-earlypsychological-wound?fbclid=IwAR33eqyAEronBcPJ7gz9i3ekljJ-YSdF3VYyNQiyUJc4RvFeuVrFbIGkWFY.
18 Marylyn Plessner, ‘Lady Mink: A Sort of Requiem’, in Vapour Trails (Montreal: Stephen Jarislowsky, 2000).
19 http://emilyrlong.com/phantom-child/.
20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlNe5pECpNo.
21 Dr Catherine Lynch, The Australian Adoptee Rights Action Group, https://www.facebook.com/AdopteeRightsAU/posts/-5-tenet-adoption-is-only-bad-for-some-adoptees-but-it-works-for-others-all-of-th/309553613039831/.
22 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/einstein-s-spooky-action-distance-spotted-objects-almost-big-enough-see.
23 Judge Ellis, Family Court, Napier (FP041/31/68).
24 https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2019/09/30/what-is-a-mother-in-law.
Further reading
‘Australian National Apology for Forced Adoptions’: https://www.ag.gov.au/About/ForcedAdoptionsApology/Pages/default.aspx.
Brodzinsky, David M., and Marshall D. Schechter (eds). The Psychology of Adoption. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
‘Historical Trauma and Aboriginal Healing’. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Ontario, Canada. Email: [email protected].
Lynch, Catherine M. ‘Campaign for Adoptee Equality, Adoptee Manifesto’: https://www.academia.edu/26367687/Adoptee_Manifesto.docx.
——— An Ado/aptive Reading and Writing of Australia and its Contemporary Literature. Sydney: University of Sydney, 2007.
Meyers, Kit. Rethinking ‘Positive’ Adoption Language and Reclaiming Stigmatized Identities: https://www.academia.edu/5655199/_Rethinking_Positive_Adoption_Language_and_Reclaiming_Stigmatized_Identities_.
Orman, Meghann. Adoption, Genealogical Bewilderment and Biological Heritage Bricolage. Wageningen: Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands, 2018.
‘The Adoptee Journey — The Battle to Emerge: Resource Collection’: https://louisaleontiades.com/the-battle-to-emerge-resource-collection/.
Verrier, Nancy. The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Nancy Verrier, 2003.
Wolf Small, Joanne. The Adoption Mystique: A Hard Hitting Exposé of the Powerful Negative Social Stigma that Permeates Child Adoption in the United States. Authorhouse, 2007.
Acknowledgements
How do you thank someone who gives his everything? And then some. Thomas Burstyn, a man made for marriage. I will love you till my last breath.
My daughters shape my world. Because of them, the sun rises. Bonnie, Rachel, Ruth, Lili and Amelia, I love you.
My hope is that my grandchildren inherit a more enlightened future.
Meryl Canestri read every word, chapter by chapter. I couldn’t have done it without you. Nicola Legat believed in me and supported this work from the first couple of chapters. Jane Parkin edited with finesse and sensitivity. Ken Duncum gave
