There is a lot of love involved in adoption- the love to carry and relinquish, the love to adopt and nurture. It's a great human concept that triad members lives, especially the adoptee rights have been affected. The love and good intentions of many individuals are many times hindered by a state that makes it difficult to obtain information about their natural families. By the time the child searches, he or she is an adult in a system that in many states have laws enacted that do not permit the adult adoptee, or denies the adoptee the rights based on an agreement that was made between them as an infant or minor. Is it right to hold someone who didn’t have a say by such an agreement forever?

As adoptees we have lost our entire histories. Natural parents have lost their child. There is a part of society and within the adoption community that has compassion for people who have lost their child or history. I think that it is a safe statement to say that natural parents and adoptees want to speak for themselves and do not want or need laws to separate them.

There are many adoptive parents who love their kids enough to understand that their children wanting to know their history is the one thing that lost of love doesn’t cure. They understand that it is important to know medical history or about ethnic background or be able to obtain an original birth certificate like non adopted citizens often take for granted. However, there are many adoptive parents who don’t understand and aren’t willing to hear or educate themselves in order to try and understand.

For example, my home state of PA doesn’t make it easy because the laws are based on the assumption that there is a desire for confidentiality for natural parents. I am sure that this misconception is not only in PA but many other states as well. The thing is that every natural mother or father that I know is annoyed by these laws as well as adoptees. It is very frustrating knowing that the state legislatures hold the power and that it doesn’t have to be that way. The bottom line is that most natural parents and adoptees want to know the other person is doing well and the prohibitive “confidentiality” laws are protecting no one.

I think it is time that everyone to speak for themselves and stop the secrecy that makes people have to pay for information that often times is required by agencies and the courts.