How to balance the respective rights of two groups: that of adopted people to discover their identity – to find out who they really are – and that of birth parents to their privacy. For the adopted, tracing their birth family has often proved difficult and time consuming; for many it has been a fruitless and harrowing experience. Equally for a birth mother or father, the search for an adopted child can be no less stressful, and as emotionally challenging. The Government this week is expected to discuss a further reform of adoption law, this time to make the painful process of discovery somewhat easier for all – both for adopted people and for their birth parents. The underlying emphasis in the planned law will be towards disclosing more information, in particular to adopted people: information that should have been made available much sooner.
The measure, The Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill should enable some 50,000 adoptees to see their birth certificates, and thereby identify their original parents. At present, an adopted child can only do this with difficulty, as the birth mother must first agree to make the birth certificate available. The draft legislation envisages that adoptees in return for access to their birth certificate would make a statutory declaration, agreeing to respect the wishes of birth parents who do not wish to be contacted.
At present a National Adoption Contact Preference Register operates to facilitate contact between adopted people and their birth families. Contact, however, remains voluntary and can only be started after both parties have registered with it. That level of contact, it is proposed, will be raised significantly. A new adoption information register will be set up on a statutory basis, and operated by Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. The agency will actively support contact between the adopted and birth parents, in line with their stated preferences, and provide both groups with greater support and guidance. The legislation is expected to come into effect following a 12-month awareness campaign, which should help ensure the public are fully informed of the Bill’s provisions.
The Government has been slow to deliver on promises to reform adoption law, and to give adopted people adequate rights to discover their true identity. The proposed legislation should help to do that, while protecting the privacy rights of those birth parents who may not wish to make contact with a child placed for adoption. Last year, Philomena Lee, whose quest to find her son placed for adoption became the subject of a best-selling book and an Oscar-nominated film, spoke in favour of a Private Members Bill in the Seanad, similar to the draft legislation. She noted ruefully that if such legislation had been in place years ago, then she and her son would have been reunited before he died.