It is hard to say who hinders adoption reform the most but just why are some of the large organizations opposing it? There is some support toward state adoption registries and confidential intermediary programs. But when it comes to treating all adult adoptees equally and opening records, Catholic Charities (CC) is one of the organizations that shows opposition.
For years CC social workers have told unwed mothers to place their baby for adoption and then they can move on with their life and forget about the baby they relinquished. Any of we women who have given birth know there is no way that we could have parted with our baby and gone on with our life as if the pregnancy and birth of our child never happened.
CC social workers continue to say that birth mothers were promised confidentiality. This "confidentialty factor" seems to me to be something that social workers decided on with adoption attorneys and our government enforcing it.
Could it be that CC social workers have lied so much over the years that CC is afraid that open record laws will result in their being sued?
My own search took over 20 years to complete and during that time my birthparents died while in their 50's. They had married before my adoption was finalized. It is believed that my birthparents had contacted CC and been told that I was deceased. Birth certificates of my siblings indicate one baby was born to my birth mother but not alive at the time of their birth. I'm the only baby that anyone can think of that she must have been referring to at the time their birth certificates were completed. But I was very much alive and still am (obviously, or I would not be writing this).
During my search I asked a CC social worker about my deceased birth father. It said on my adoption decree that he was deceased. I was told that he was alive at the time I was placed for adoption and that I just did not understand legal terminology. Well, deceased means dead in the dictionary. It makes one wonder what other lies were told and maybe passed off as "legal terminology".
This is 2008 and for CC to continue to fight open records makes me wonder if they are not running scared. The excuse of their protecting the adoptee, birth parents, and adoptive parents has become mighty old and many of us know that is a lie. Just how many have they told over the past 60-70 years?
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Daiily Bastardette moving to Word Press
10 years ago
2 comments:
Let me begin by saying I am a fellow CC adoptee. I am the LAST person in the world that would cut CC ANY slack. Catholic Charities has done me wrong a million different ways to Sunday.
However, I think it's worthy to note that there are a great many individual CC social workers that are actually FOR open records. (I believe it is the Catholic Council that rears it's ugly face at open records hearings.)
Catholic Charities has more skeletons in their closet than we can count but there are individuals within that org. that believe it or not do have a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong.
I bring this point up NOT to give brownie points to CC as a whole but because it clearly shows the hypocrisy that continues to run rampant within Catholicism.
Catholic Council: Another clear cut example of why religion and adoption don't mix.
All the best to you.
"Another clear cut example of why religion and adoption don't mix."
I'll drink to that.
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