As a dedicated pro-lifer, and also a psychoanalyst and family therapist who

has worked with many abortion survivors and adoptees in therapy, and who has

written extensively on the psychodynamics of abortion and adoption, I am

writing to urge you to support passage of laws being currently proposed in

several states which would authorize adoptees to have access to their

original birth certificates. Currently this is illegal in all states of the

Union except Kansas, Tennessee, and Alaska.

Most adoptees have experienced three major traumas which have resulted in

many of them having unusual difficulty feeling secure in their identity,

their sense of belonging and connectedness, and their feeling of being real,

authentic, first class, present, and comfortable with intimacy. They share

much in common with abortion survivors (Sonne, 1996). The fact that the

birth parents of future adoptees did not keep their children, no matter what

the reason, suggests that many adoptees, as unwelcome unborns, experienced

their first prenatal trauma as a result of being in an ambivalent parental

environment during their life in the womb. In addition to most adoptees

probably having experienced a first prenatal trauma, all adoptees have

definitely experienced a second trauma by virtue of the postnatal disruption

of the emotional bond between them and their birth parents when they were

given up for adoption. Most have also experienced a third trauma in the form

of a psychological abortion of their identity by virtue of having been given

a falsified birth certificate defining them as the biological children of

their adoptive parents.

During adolescence, when adoptees are maturing sexually and going through

the stage of identity vs. role confusion, or at a time when they plan to

marry, or when they plan to have, or are having, children of their own, many

adoptees experience an escalating and almost imperative need to search for

their roots. The search is by no means an easy one under the best of

circumstances, but finding themselves deprived of access by law from

learning the truth about their origins brings to the fore and reinforces

their third trauma, a powerful psychological abortion of mind and spirit

that has been latent, but is now manifest. The consolidation of this

psychological abortion by law forecloses the opportunity for adoptees to

address and resolve all three traumas. Without knowing the truth about their

origins, many adoptees are unable to use their minds to heal themselves.

There has been intense opposition by some pro-life groups to passage of

bills which would authorize adoptees' access to their original birth

certificates, based on the presumption that passage would result in an

increase in abortion being chosen over adoption by birth parents who are not

prepared to raise their children. This was the prediction of Willke (1990),

then president of National Right to Life, in his testimony to the Ohio

legislature in which he strongly opposed passage of an open access bill,

which was, indeed, defeated. Not only is this presumption unsupported by

available data, the data documents the opposite. Countries with open access

actually have a lower rate of abortion than those who have sealed records

(Forrest, 1996). A Canadian study (Daly and Sobel, 1993) showed that

abortion and adoption were both decreased. The authors report that more

unwed pregnant women are keeping their babies than was the case in past

years, and the decrease in adoption was due to this, not due to an increase

in abortion. Ridgeway ( 995) reports similar data and conclusions from

England.

The anecdotal presentation in hearings this spring in Trenton that some

birth mothers actually threatened to have an abortion unless guaranteed

confidentiality is also not supported by evidence. Again to the contrary,

Feinstone (1996), found in a survey of seven adoption agencies in New Jersey

that not one of them had ever had a birth mother who expressed such a

threat. It has been my clinical experience that a more common reason some

women choose abortion over adoption, in addition to other reasons, privacy

upon adoption being an unlikely one, is because they fear the pain of

relinquishing their new-born child. N.M. (1996), writing in the Adoption

Triad Forum, speaks to this, describing her adoption relinquishment as "by

far the single most painful event in my life. I've always felt strongly that

abortion was wrong. and in an ultimate sense I still do. Yet after going

through one unplanned pregnancy that 'ended' with my son being adopted, I

knew I could not survive that kind of pain one more time when I became

pregnant just 2 months short of my wedding." (italics by N.M.) She chose to

abort. Closed records actually increase the fear of relinquishment because

they confirm to the birth mother that she will never again see her child.

Most birth parents miss their children, worry and grieve about them, and

would welcome contact. Gioglio (1996) to the New Jersey Division of Youth

and Family Services reported that out of 322 birth family members contacted

from 1992 through 1996, predominantly birth parents and siblings, there were

289 in-person reunions, and 10 by-mail reunions. Only 14 refused contact,

and 10 were deceased.

Since the presumption of some pro-life opponents of an increase in abortion

upon open access is unsupported by evidence, it can be discredited as a

fantasy, and dismissed. There remains, however, a component of the position

of pro-life opponents of access which deserves serious attention, and which

actually threatens the viability, integrity and consistency of the right to

life movement This is the inherent contradiction in the position of those

who oppose abortion, support a right to life, and yet do not support

adoptees' access. Dedicated to saving the lives of unborn children from

physical abortion prenatally, but opposed to adoptees' right to know, and to

their right to have access to their original birth certificates, they are

paradoxically unwittingly sanctioning a psychological abortion of the minds

and souls of some of these same saved children who happened to have become

adoptees after having been born alive.

Please reconsider your position it you are opposed to access. I know your

intentions are good. However, saving the lives of the unborn is not enough

if the souls and minds of some of them are damaged subsequently. I also know

that you believe that there is more to life than a material existence. The

adoptee is not magically born again by the act of sealing his original birth

certificate and issuing a false one. To the contrary, his birth is denied

and erased. His original identity is psychologically aborted.. The same

might be said of the identities of birth and adoptive parents, and also

their nuclear and extended families. I believe that pro-life opposition to

passage of these bills is not only harming adoptees, birth and adoptive

parents, and their families, but that it will also harm the pro-life

movement in the long run as more and more people realize the contradictions

contained in a position such as this taken by anyone who professes respect

for the sanctity of life.

REFERENCES

Daly, K.J., and Sobol, M.P., (1993), Adoption in Canada: Final Report.

National Adoption Study, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario NIG 2W1.

Feinstone, L. (1996), Survey of seven adoption agencies: No instances of

threat by pregnant women to abort unless guaranteed privacy upon adoption.

Personal communication, July 2.

Forest, B. (1996) , Chart of Abortion Rates in Countries with Open Access to

Original Birth Certificates. Now Jersey Assembly Community Services

Committee, March 4th.

Gioglio, G. (1996), Report of the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family

Services. New Jersey Assembly Community Services Committee, March 4th.

N. M. (1996), Letter. Adoption Triad Forum, 5, No. 3: p.5. Ridgeway, J.

(1995), Letter on England's Adoption Act of 1976 to Pamela Hasegawa. New

Jersey Coalition for Openness in Adoption, November 29.

Sonne, J.C. (1996), Interpreting the dread of being aborted in therapy.

International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine. In

Press.

Willke, J. C. (1990). Testimony, State Senate Hearing, HB 256, Columbus,

Ohio, August 22. National Right to Life Committee, Inc., Washington, D.C.

Doctor Sonne is a psychoanalyst and family therapist who has written

extensively on issues of custody, adoption, foster care, abortion, and the

deleterious effects of third party insurance on psychotherapy, He is

currently Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson

Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,

Senior Attending at the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and Director

of Family Therapy at Cooper Hospital in Camden. In addition to his research

and teaching activities, he has been in private practice for over forty

years. Doctor Sonne presented testimony in support of A-742 and S-287 to the

Assembly Community Services Committee on March 4th, 1996, and to the Senate

Committee on Women's issues, Children, and Family Services. on March 14th,

1996.