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November 29, 2005
Your mother would abort you
Carol Barbieri has an Op-Ed in the NY Times today about how she lied, committed fraud, and stole private records on her adoption to try to increase the odds that her son would get the correct medical treatment of a heart condition. You see, she didn't know her family medical history because she is adopted, and so she felt entitled to do whatever she had to do to get that information. I understand why she did what she did. Indeed, I think many parents would do what she did. Nevertheless, despite her emotional pleas, it must remain a crime, and she should be punished.
We live in an society where, of the two major parties, the Republicans argue that abortion should be illegal, and the Democrats argue that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. A majority of Americans think abortion should be legal, but that they should be early(86% say no after first 6 months) and medically justified (57 percent oppose abortion solely to end an unwanted pregnancy). The behaviors that she advocates, if widespread or legalized would directly lead to more abortions on the margin. If people are serious about not wanting abortions, then one part of that strategy (on top of legal contraceptives, teaching abstinence, and cultural stigma of premarital sex and abortions) must be legal, anonymous adoption.
To people who were adopted anonymously, I'm sorry that your parents either didn't want you or couldn't care for you, but their privacy is the price of your life. That's the deal and it should not be revisited post facto. As I considered this article, I considered a parental DNA archive to go with an adoption, but that seems unfair for several reasons. First, the burden would fall unduly on the mothers, and lack of paternal involvement must be a major reason for putting a child up for adoption. Second, that thickens the paper trail to allow for the tracking of birth parents.
The real solution is that birth parents and adopted children should have an anonymous communication system for requests to initiate contact and to exchange medical information. You could easily do this with a social security number escrow. The SSA used to have a service (they may still) where if you send them a stamped letter and a person's name (SSN if you knew it) and they'd forward it along. This would work the same way.
Posted by OneEyedMan at November 29, 2005 8:18 AM
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