Adoptions and the right to an original birth cert

Wait until they pass away!! You’ve hit the nail on the head there. That’s exactly what’s happening. Dead people can’t tell their stories.

Right, so "conciliation" fails, the Adoption Authority puts my right to an identity and information (as enumerated in the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the Irish Constitution) over the (non-existent) "right" of a natural parent to deny me my birth cert. I am made aware of their request for no contact.

So... what's the worst that can happen?

There are already civil and criminal statutes in place to prevent harassment. I have literally nothing to gain from hassling someone who doesn't want contact.

Adopted people (and natural parents, and siblings separated by adoption for that matter) have had the knowledge on how to trace each other for a couple of decades now.

Where are the horror stories, the prosecutions, the stories of harassment, stalking, etc?

What? There are - after several decades - a tiny, tiny handful? (Or, quote possibly, none?!)

Bad cases make bad law.

The reality is that quietly and without much fuss, thousands of adopted people, natural parents, and extended family of both have been tracing each other for a few decades now. You just haven't been aware of it.

And the people who have traced each other? Who have been able to establish anything from polite exchanges of letters ("Oh, yes, you're right, there was no medical information on the file. That's because everyone in my family was healthy when you were born. But you really need to know that there's [x condition] on my side...") and photos and little more contact, to full ongoing friendships and family relationships. We've just been getting on with things. Just now with more of our own family and medical history. Useful, when we have kids ourselves!

You're not engaging honestly because you're saying the suffering of one group of people trumps the suffering of another.

It's a completely ridiculous stance,but by all means take the moral high ground.

You have consistently put the suffering of one group above the suffering of the other. I'm not putting words in your mouth, you wrote them yourself.

To come back to this - yes, this happened a lot. To give an example, I'm aware of one case where Saint Patrick's Guild conducted an illegal adoption - placing the child with a couple who then registered the birth as if the child was born to them - against the wished of the natural mother. The natural mother was back in touch with the agency for literally years, trying to be put in contact with her (now adult) son. The agency lied - denied she had ever been with them, then that they had no records, then that they had been in touch and he didn't want contact - before admitting the adoption had been illegal but they wouldn't do anything as the adoptive parents had never told their son he'd been adopted. And the adoptive parents were refusing to tell their (adult!) son. This, despite one of the reasons the natural mother wanted contact was to pass on important medical information!

Again, this is far from unusual. Most (but not all) adoptive parents obviously did tell their children. But it was still common enough that parents didn't tell their children that they were adopted that, at one stage, the General Registrar's Office had trained staff in how to sensitively break it to someone that they were adopted (because adopted person turns up to get a birth cert for employment, or college, or to get a passport, asks for the long-form birth cert, and instead gets "An Extract from the Adopted Children's Register."

The uneasiness about this new legislation will be like previous social issues that were changed in recent times ie divorce, abortion & same-sex marriage. Those changes were not wanted in any shape or form by large numbers of our citizens but the world didnt fall in when we brought in new rules.

I'd say there were many people who got married years ago with the expectation that it was for life but the law changed, so saying that something was expected because of a choice made years in the past is a poor reason imo to deny our fellow citizens their basic human rights.

Those of us not affected cant understand how it feels, the same way that those in a happy marriage or with wanted pregnancies cant feel the same way as people in unhappy marriages who want a divorce or with those who have an unwanted pregnancy. Walk a mile in their shoes etc...

Who are we to deny adopted citizens the right to their own information? Its a bizarre situation that should have been sorted decades ago. Birth parents who gave up children had their reasons for making that choice but to suggest that the children should continue to be discriminated against by not allowing them the same rights as others to access their own data which is a public record & making them feel like second class citizens still in 2021 is just cruel imo.

EDit: a lot of people forget that dna testing can shed a light on many issues from the past. No secrecy with dna.

Agree that anyone who falsified records are beneath contempt, everyone should have fundamental information about who they are & who their ancestors are irrespective of who raised them. Its sad that children were seen as a commodity by some in the past with no consideration as to how it could affect them in later years. I have huge sympathy for birth parents who lost a child to adoption by choice or coercion, that must have been horrific. I have children & cant imagine that pain.

Providing information doesnt mean contact is obligatory OP, people are free to refuse. As others said, there's a big difference between privacy & secrecy.

The nuns must have been smuggling petrol or something, given the numbers of records "lost in a fire" that was hushed up and never made the news.

I'd imagine those who've been actively misled, or were illegally recorded on birth cert as the child of the adoptive parents would have a hard time getting hold of the truth, but as a poster says above, DNA doesn't lie and people are finding cousins and half-siblings in unexpected places.

While I understand things weren't easy for those mothers, it doesn't make sense to give someone the right to take away someone else's right to their own birth cert. Ethically it wasn't a promise the state were entitled to make, and if those babies had a voice at the time it never could have happened.

Many of the birth mothers who have up children for adoption didn’t see it that way. Many were under huge pressure from families, nuns etc to cooperate and give up the baby. This caused them huge grief and shame. My grandmother has told me many stories of women she knew in that situation who never got over it. I was born in the 80’s to a single mother, my grandparents didn’t try to force an adoption as they had seen the huge harm it caused when it’s done against the wishes of the mother. My father’s name is not on my birth certificate I know nothing about him except a name. So I have no family medical history on that side I will never know it as my mother will never give me more information.

I have to say I would have sympathy for both parties here both the person adopted and the birth mother. The state failed them both.

Just to mention, you do have the option of doing a DNA test on ancestry.co.uk or 23andme (or both) and possibly finding close relatives that way, if you're interested in medical information.

Good idea! And yes, there are absolutely thousands of people with falsified records, as anyone working in the field will admit if they're honest.