Adoptions and the right to an original birth cert

Thanks for sharing that. I've known I was adopted since I knew what the word adopted meant. I've never had the urge to find out who my birth parents were. But, I do think that it should be possible for those who want that information. With a bit of luck the new legislation will make that happen.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680862#Comment_117680862

How will the proposed legislation keep everyone's privacy when it's specifically overrules birth mothers who do not consent?

It's another fine example of legislation by NGO

Dude, read the room:-)

Strumms

Every child, person should have access to their original birth certificate. It is ‘their’ record of birth not their parents property.

if two people conceive a child, a mother brings it into the world they should not be of the ability to hide this document or keep it from the child applying to be in possession of it or a copy of it.

Hermy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680915#Comment_117680915

That's not privacy - that's secrecy.

And that secrecy is at the heart of the issue, perpetuating the myth that there's something that ought to be hidden.

There's no good reason in the world why the identity of a child's parents should be hidden from that child.

It's past time that we accepted this and let the light in on this dark chapter in Irish history.

Hermy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680325#Comment_117680325

That's not a birth record, and even if it was, you can't just waltz up to the church and demand to see that dusty old ledger.

Many of those ledgers are now in the possession of Archbishops House and, in my case at least, it did not contain both parents names.

alibab

I am adopted also . I applied online via gro with what info I had basically a idea where I was born , the first name given to me at birth and my DOB . I had the birth certificate in 10 minutes as there was only one child born on that day in that area with same name . My dad was not named and she slightly altered name .

from that I know exactly where to find her . I got her marriage certificate and and could knock on doorstep tomorrow. I have even found her Facebook page .

What will I do with this info absolutely nothing. I know I am a secret she doesn’t want found . I tried 15 years ago to get medical information and she refused. Very clear no way would even provide that . I know all about her from stuff I can get online .

I will not be making contact and I will not be bothering her . I respect her wish for privacy and have no interest in upending her world .

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680915#Comment_117680915

Why do you think privacy should be the priority here? If some unforeseen health issue arose in myself or my children I would want to know as a matter of urgency what I was dealing with. I would demand it. One way of gaining insight into this is to access health information from your descendants. My birth cert is my information. It contains information about other people but it is my information.

My heart goes out to women shamed into giving up their children historically but there is no shame anymore. Perpetuating the secrecy surrounding historical births and adoptions does nothing for their "shame", and can actively damage their children and grandchildren.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117681228#Comment_117681228

It's not about secrecy, it's privacy and respecting the wishes and the previously legally guaranteed expectations of that birth mother. While you may not know of any good reason why birth mother's might want to remain anonymous, there are some that have their own reasons for wanting to. Who are you to judge them? I suppose State knows best, is that it?

Most birth mother's consent to the information being made available, but it's the principle of consent that's important here. They could at least wait until the women have passed away where an agreed solution cannot be come to.

BattleCorp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680888#Comment_117680888

I'm also adopted and, like you, never had the inclination to go look for my birth parents.

I'm in two minds on this legislation to be honest. I see the benefit for adopted people being able to have access to their birth cert but I don't like the fact that the new proposed legislation tramples over the birth mother's right to anonymity.

Strumms

A solution could be to redact the full name of the parents...

instead of Liam Kelly / Ann Kelly, the copy of the cert and section just reads the record Father : Lxxx Kelly / Mother : Axxx Kelly.

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682026#Comment_117682026

What would be the point of that?

Hotblack Desiato

People banging on about "privacy".

If a birth mother states she does not wish to be contacted, and is not contacted, then her privacy is being respected.

As Hermy said, what some here are calling for has nothing to do with privacy, and everything to do with secrecy.

From the linked article:

Mothers who allow themselves to remember tend to talk more about their experiences and are generally those who will try to seek out their children, often approaching the adoption agency, who will (in all cases I have encountered) contact the adoptive parents of the (adult) adopted person instead of the adopted person themselves.

Says it all really. Adoptees are still not regarded as people in their own right and people with rights. They are treated as a parcel passed from one set of parents to another.

One thing I'm confused about - all medical records are strictly private and confidential. Covered by data protection laws, GDPR, etc.

Finding your birth parents identity does not mean you will be allowed access to that person's medical history, to find out about hereditary illness etc. They have to give it to you, and that means contact and consent.

Or will that be the next step in the removal of the birth parents right to privacy?

I do understand the perspective of adopted people, yet I'm really conflicted on how I feel about the removal of the right to privacy of the birth mother.

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682099#Comment_117682099

Nobody says that birth parents will be forced to give up their medical records to their children, I know who my parents are and I can't force them to give up their medical information, but the mechanism of being able to ask should be there.

This has nothing to do with privacy and everything to do with secrecy and shame.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682124#Comment_117682124

But will that be the next step?

Once you start removing rights, I would be concerned where it would end. That's all I'm saying.

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682153#Comment_117682153

But rights have already been removed from adopted people. Actually, they weren't removed, they never had them in the first place!

Drumpot

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117680805#Comment_117680805

I’m adopted , honestly don’t know what to think of this. Not really something I’ve paid attention to.

From a health POV I do think adoptees should have some sort of access to birth parents. Whether it’s through an intermediary (Barnardos etc), doesn’t matter. Regardless of why a child is given up for adoption I think the biological parents should be at least encouraged to provide medical and hereditary information that can at least help the adoptee look out for any family illness. I’ve Found out there is autism, heart disease and addictions within my biological family.

My biological parents seeked me out and contacted my dad out of the blue to meet me when I was still in school. I have no rights, no protection and never had any support to help me understand how to deal with it.

This isn’t just about woman’s rights, it’s about people on all sides who have been effected by a poorly managed system. Does this legislation fix things? No, I’m not even sure it makes any difference to me, but the conversation needs to be about what’s good for all, not creating one set of victims.

I didn’t have a choice in being adopted. I’ve had to deal and manage the gravity of that decision all my life. Not everybody feels the same but I’ve struggled to value myself and from an early age (when I found out I was adopted) I unfortunately felt I was an unwanted Raggy doll , discarded and unloved. I was looked after by nuns (think I was in st Patrick’s) for a few months and only now am I starting to look at how no motherly love or bonding for those months might of made it hard for me to connect with others.

Ive not Met my biological parents, partially because I didn’t like how they tried to meet me. They found me and used to watch me in school apparently without my knowledge . But as a parent now I understand their pain, I empathise that things were different back then and they must of found it so hard to move on from giving me up. They prob should of done things through Barnardos but as usual the state doesn’t really take much responsibility for issues it’s caused unless it really has to so the supports aren’t really there to help adoptees or parents who gave children up for adoption.

So my point is that the conversation should not be about one element of adoption, it needs to be about all aspects and all parties. Otherwise it’s just one side taking up a cause “protect birth mothers” and ignoring the adoptees because it suits what you want to believe. I’ve tried to understand decisions by my birth parents, there needs to be a similar effort to understand adoptees on the other side.

Lillyfae

Thank you for sharing, Drumpot. That sounds very difficult.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117681348#Comment_117681348

In the above post, (which I did not see before my last post), you yourself stated:

"If some unforeseen health issue arose in myself or my children I would want to know as a matter of urgency what I was dealing with. I would demand it."

This is what I would be concerned about. Would the next step being adoptees having a right to demand their birth parents' medical records?

As a single parent who has raised a child with multiple medical issues alone and without the benefit of the father's medical history, (I don't know how many times over the last 20 odd years I've had to tell a HCP that I had no information on that side of her family) - I get it.

But I'm sorry, I just can't get on board with the removal of the birth parents' right to privacy, and any disclosure of their personal information, be it their identity or their medical history, should be voluntary.

(eta) or through an intermediary as mentioned by drumpot.

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682293#Comment_117682293

You need to put those sentences in the context of my whole post. I would demand to know what I was dealing with. I would exhaust all avenues of insight, including asking my family about health issues. Not demanding medical records. I'm sure you would do and have done the same.

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117681958#Comment_117681958

As has been stated repeatedly, the system of adoption in Ireland was critically flawed and was based upon the shame of children being conceived out of wedlock, shame that was informed by the Catholic church and who were given too much freedom to inform the morality of a fledgling nation.

You are putting the right to privacy of the birth parents on a pedestal and the rights of the adopted people do not exist when you do this. As another poster said adopted people were treated like a commodity to be passed from one set of people to another, never having the same basic rights as the rest of society because of the shame of their very existence, they were the product of sin and should be grateful for the fact they even exist at all.

The state failed adopted people and their birth parents by handing control of adoption to the Catholic church who were given free reign to run adoption as they saw fit. Many children and parents have sought to meet each other only to receive no help from the orders who facilitated the adoption process.

Is this legislation flawless? No, it's an imperfect solution to an imperfect problem, it's almost a token offering of the most basic of information to a cohort of people who have been failed by both the state and the church and who now are being accused by those like you who feel they may well abuse the information they receive from the birth certificate.

Health related issues are the most important thing that a person can seek if they were adopted and this legislation does nothing to ensure that is available to them beyond taking it upon themselves to find out.

The right to privacy of their birth parents is secondary to the right to understand the most basic things about yourself, no other system other than the new legislation will likely ever be created to assist adopted people in Ireland and while a small number of birth parents may have their noses put out of joint by this, ultimately it is a token gesture of goodwill towards an unwanted and ostracized section of Irish society that will within a few generations no longer exist. And you have a problem with it.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682094#Comment_117682094

Could that be because the adopted person might not even be aware that they are adopted?

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682316#Comment_117682316

It's crazy, isn't it? I mean the youngest of the birth parents concerned are in their sixties at the very least.

Just to clarify, if the laws on privacy of the birth parents was changed from today, I would agree to that.

Any birth parent who then put up a child for adoption would be fully aware that the child could get their information in the future.

But applying that retrospectively? No.

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682353#Comment_117682353

The problem is that most adopted children in Ireland are now coming from other countries.

Adoption in Ireland historically was based on shame, I'd be surprised if there is any significant numbers of Irish children being put up for adoption today, without checking the numbers I think it has been virtually non existent for a generation at least.

The adopted people from the age of shame adoptions have had no rights to know anything until now. Dirty little secrets that everyone would rather forget. Some never knew they were adopted and their parents reached out to them as adults and destroyed their lives as a result, the birth parents had that right they were in full knowledge of the fact they had a child they put up for adoption, a child who potentially had no idea that was the case and whose worlds were shattered when their parents reached out them because they WANTED to, not because they considered the feelings of their child.

The rights of birth parents have been respected more than the rights of their adopted children, who in reality have had no rights at all.

It is actually infuriating to see the type of uninformed nonsense that is being posted here, some of you really don't have a clue what you are talking about.

It really doesn't matter how few birth parents that the changes would be affect are left, or what their ages are now - that doesn't make their right to privacy any less important.

I personally know a family that imploded when an adopted child made contact with a birth mother when her husband and other children never knew she had put a baby up for adoption in her teens, and it caused a lot of anguish for her family and amongst her other children. They didn't ask for that either.

That was not the fault of the adoptee, who couldn't have known and I'm sorry, I'm sure that's not what adopted people want to hear, but any retrospective change in this legislation could impact on more then the adoptees. There is the whole family of the birth parent (spouse, any other children) to consider too.

As I said, if the law changed on birth certificates from the date new legislation is enacted, that would be different, but I don't believe its right to apply it retrospectively.

Anyway, the OP asked for people's views, I've given mine, so I'll leave it there. ✌️

TaurenDruid

There are a lot of factual inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions in the OP (and in quite a lot of the replies, for that matter).

Also, posters should be aware there's a sub-forum (now called a 'category' on adoption/adoption information and tracing, available here. It's moderated by @The_Conductor, who is a fountain of common sense.

Thanks to the new forums, I can't multi-quote, so the easiest way is to italicise the points I'm responding to. Sorry about that.

As you may or may not know, there is some landmark legislation due next year that will give adoptees the right to a copy of their original birth cert.

Yes. We've been campaigning for this for well over 25 years now. When this comes in, it will bring us into line with most of Europe. England and Wales have had this since, IIRC, 1970. Scotland since 1930.

At the moment, this can only be given out with the consent of the birth mother, of which four objected to last year.

That may be correct, but my understanding is that even then, the Adoption Authority can dispense with the natural mother's consent if they can't see any reason to withhold the birth cert.

The new system will allow access to the cert even when the mother objects and where the mother objects they will be just essentially be asked nicely to not make contact. The media and public discourse generally seems to be lauding this proposal, but I have to admit I have some concerns about the precedent this sets and how we can expect the State to hold private information.

It's not private information. Birth records are public records. They always have been. Anyone can request anyone else's birth, marriage or death cert, and always has been able to.

When these adoptions occured, rightly or wrongly, the State promised these women to keep the birth cert confidential.

NO. the State absolutely DID NOT promise "these women" to keep the birth cert confidential. They couldn't, for many reasons, including:

1) They had no legal right or basis for doing so.

2) They may not have been in any way involved in the adoption, until it came time to rubber-stamp the placement some months after it had been made by an adoption agency or other intermediary.

Granted, some adoption agency staff/Mother and Baby Home staff may have told some natural mothers that the adoption was entirely confidential, including all the paperwork, including the birth cert.

1) We know as fact that the vast majority of natural mothers never sought such confidentiality.

2) The adoption agency/M&B Home staff had no right to make any such promise or guarantee.

This promise, old as it is, appears to count for nothing

Correct. A promise - if made, and it usually wasn't - or a contract can only be valid if it is compliant with the law. And such a promise wouldn't have been.

and the State is planning to give adoptees rights over the privacy of others.

No, they're not. They're planning to give adopted people the same right of access to their birth cert as every other citizen in the country. A right to access my birth information is just that. It is not a right to anything except the information on the birth cert - my name, my parents' names (in 99.9% of adopted people's cases, that means just the natural mother's name), occupations, date and place of birth. That's it.

It does not confer a right to contact.

Little meaningful effort is going into balancing the mother's right to privacy with the adoptees right to know.

Actually, there is. Natural mothers (and fathers, and adopted people) can use the Contact Preference Register to register a wish to not be contacted.

With this precedent set, it appears that the State could choose to make any confidential information available even where it has said in the past that it wouldn't.

It didn't have the right to make any such promise in the past, and to my knowledge, it never did. Whatever lies or promises the adoption agencies and their staff told is a different story.

This is obviously a controversial and sensitive topic (some posters I'm sure will be affected), but I would be interested in what others think of this. Media debate has been very one sided (the birth mother's obviously don't have the NGO's advocating for then) but there is another legitimate point of view.

You've not come across the Natural Parent's Network of Ireland, the MABS (Mother & Baby Home Survivors) group, or any of the other natural parent's groups, then? A pity. There are plenty of such groups. The adoptees' groups also number quite a few natural parents among their numbers, btw.

There's nothing controversial about this, as far as the vast majority of adopted people and natural parents are concerned. Again, it brings us into line with the rest of Europe, including the UK, where the right to your original birth cert has existed since the 30s/1970. When Scotland and England/Wales introduced those changes, the sky didn't fall in. And in any case, GDPR means the government has no choice but to legislate for access - my birth cert is my information - all of it - and GDPR means I can access it. The AG and the government are well aware of this.

Those who don't want to be contacted can express that wish using the Contact Preference Register.

Oh, btw? Adopted people and natural parents have known how to trace each other, entirely legally, using existing access to public records, for quite a while now. There are even guides published on how to do so. They're even re-published here on boards!

Ultimately, any adopted person could always get their birth cert, unless the nuns/adoption agency/mother and baby home had falsified it. It just took a couple of days work in the GRO's Public Office, rather than just rocking up and asking for the cert. Like any other citizen.

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682573#Comment_117682573

But why anguish?? If it was my mother I would feel nothing but supportive of her. I would hope that my father would feel the same. I would never be anguished at learning that I had another sibling, only at having missed so much of their lives.

nullzero

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117682573#Comment_117682573

So the anguish of a birth mother is more important than the anguish of an adopted person whose life could also be turned upside down by a birth parent attempting to initiate contact with them?

There are two sets of potential victims in this situation and you are prioritizing the rights of one of those groups over the other.

Birth parents have always had the right to initiate contact on their terms ( I know of people who had no idea they were adopted and had their lives turned upside down by their birth parents making contact, that affected not only them but their entire families as well).

You've offered your opinion and it is every bit as invalid as that of the OP, you have essentially dismissed the rights of adopted people and offered a peace sign as some sort of means of validation of your ridiculous opinion.