That singular slight - a denial of "my basic human rights" - led Perry to wade into a decades-long state fight that was to have been resolved this summer. But then Gov. Christie shot down the adoptee rights and records bill that had finally passed both the Assembly and Senate.
This from a governor whose sister is adopted.
Second-class citizens
"When I started, I really didn't know where I stood on the issue," admits Sen. Diane Allen (R., Burlington), who spent more than a decade holding hearings where anguished adoptees bemoaned their unique identity crisis.
Who else in society must rely on doctored documents that tell an incomplete life story? Who else is presumed guilty of intending harm by mailing a letter to a stranger with matching DNA?
"After taking hundreds of hours of testimony and reading information I could stack 10 feet high," Allen continues, "I came to believe, as did everybody on our committee, that adoptees were being treated like second-class citizens."
The trick, the veteran legislator realized, was how to grant adoptees rights without trampling on those of birth mothers harboring painful secrets.
Critics, including an odd coupling of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Catholic Church, argue that abortion rates could soar if birth mothers are not guaranteed anonymity. But that claim is undercut both by the trend in open adoptions and by the long arm of the Internet.
"The opposition is built on mythology, stereotypes, and generations of secrecy," counters Adam Pertman, who runs the nonpartisan Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York. "We have research showing 95 percent of these women are fine with opening records and having contact. They want to know about the lives they created."
Who's against closure?
