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pennagal
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Posted: Thu May 21st, 2009 05:13 am |
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| News from Green Ribbon Campaign for Open Records For Immediate Release: May 21, 2009 Adoption reform group launches new website SALISBURY – Green Ribbon Campaign for Open Records, a national adoption reform organization, unveiled a new website this week at http://www.campaign4openrecords.org; thanks to a collaborative effort involving a local public relations firm and a tech support firm in suburban Chicago.
Ann Wilmer, of Capital Letters in Salisbury and Triona Guidry of Guidry Consulting are both adult adoptees who donated their services pro bono.
“Records access is NOT about search & reunion, relationships or inheritance. It's about identity!” reads the web site. It goes on to point out that an unredacted copy of the legal and medical record of birth is something most Americans take for granted, but most adoptees cannot obtain.
“The facts of one's birth are among the most intimate details of one's life but, if you are adopted, that information is closed to you in most states. Our mission is to change the status quo,” the website proclaims. GRC is essentially a public information effort designed to persuade persons who have no personal experience of adoption that it’s wrong to keep the basic facts of one’s origins from the person concerned.
A handful of adoption reform colleagues who met as a result of their activist efforts founded the Green Ribbon Campaign for Open Records in 2000. One of them, Ann Wilmer, explained that the group has a very simple mission statement that describes the four goals they share: (1) to educate the public about the need for openness; (2) to inform the media about adoption reform issues, specifically open access; (3) to help legislators to understand the need for openness; and
(4) to help triad members to find their voice and acquire effective techniques to make themselves heard. Wilmer now heads the organization.
Guidry was one of those who found her voice. After several frustrating years of dealing with adoption officials in both Illinois, where she was born, and Ohio where she was adopted, her search for her family of origin ended in her name being “accidentally” disclosed to her natural mother but no reciprocal information nor answers for her questions, accidental or otherwise.
“The mechanisms available to adult adoptees whose records are sealed are ineffective,” said Guidry. “The process is too expensive for many adoptees. And, since there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ adoption, the only way to address all situations equitably is to restore adult adoptees' access to their original birth certificates in the same manner as the non-adopted persons.”
“Few adoptees doubt the need for serious reform. Many parents who surrendered a child to adoption or added to their family through adoption also say reform is needed and that open access is desirable,” Wilmer said. Another volunteer, Nancy Horgan, a woman who relinquished a child to adoption in Rhode Island, is spearheading a letter-writing campaign in support of a bill before the legislature that would afford adoptees open access there.
“Even the oldest professional association of social workers, the Child Welfare League of America, which once championed sealed records has done a 180 back to their original position that original records should be preserved for adoptees to access as adults. In fact, they now advocate open adoption, a situation that begins without secrets, as a “best practice” in adoption.
“Banging your head up against a brick wall loses its appeal after a while and many grow weary of the struggle,” she added. “In the near term, the ‘secret keepers’ [Wilmer’s sobriquet for courts, judges, and adoption professionals who continue to keep others’ information secret] continue to defend a profitable industry. Triad members who seek reform have no financial stake in either reform or the status quo, unless you count the hours invested and the money out of pocket.”
She concluded, “When we win, and we have in some states, we earn the satisfaction of having worked a positive transformation of the industry that altered our lives forever.”
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