As a birth mother, psychotherapist and adoption reform advocate, I am acutely aware of how much myth and misinformation surrounds woman like me who relinquished their children for adoption. The very sad fact is that most of us — young, pregnant and frightened — were never promised anything. We were told we had to give our babies away or live a life of shame, we were told we were unfit to be mothers, and we were told we would forget about our children.
For almost all of us, these statements turned out to be lies. If privacy really matters, the better route is for an adoptee to get his original birth certificate and make personal, private and direct contact with his birth mother. Any birth mother I know would prefer this to receiving a call from a distant relative. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.
