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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

My mother wears army boots
She kicked butt for me and I want to thank her.
By Lisa Zeidner
[05/08/00]

An introduction
We devote a week to Mother's Day and the messages that don't fit on the cards.
By Jennifer Foote Sweeney
[05/08/00]

Remembering Cardinal O'Connor
He stopped taking my calls after I slammed him in the press, but he still had time to be kind to my mother, an Orthodox Jew.
By Ari L. Goldman
[05/05/00]

Sexism and the death chamber
Chivalry lives when a woman must die.
By Cathy Young
[05/04/00]

My spawn arrives!
In the third installment of his lesbian sperm donor saga, Hank Pellissier describes the arrivals of his two babies -- born 21 days apart.
By Hank Pellissier
[05/03/00]

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It's not that I'm completely unsentimental. But those shows irritate me because they have motivated a generation of adult adoptees and birth parents to believe in that perfect reunion -- the meeting that will fill all the voids in their lives, resolve all of their feelings of inadequacy, assuage all their guilt.

Also Today An introduction to this week's series By Jennifer Foote Sweeney My mother wears army boots She kicked butt for me and I want to thank her. By Lisa Zeidner The series Beyond Hearts and Flowers We devote a week to Mother's Day and the messages that don't fit on the cards.

In fact, this image of divine reconciliation has fueled the voters and lawmakers of a growing number of states to amend adoption laws to allow adoptees access to their original birth certificates or their adoption records. A countermovement, comprising mostly birth mothers who entertain no fantasies about meeting the children they gave up for adoption, has grown in response, creating a deadlock on the issue, mostly in court.

In Tennessee and Oregon, open-access laws faced court challenges before they even went into effect. The Tennessee law was ultimately upheld by the state Supreme Court, but in Oregon, where a group of anonymous birth mothers opposed to open access lost their battle to strike down the law, the state Supreme Court may reconsider its decision and could issue a ruling as early as this week.

These laws make the assumption that every child who was given up for adoption burns with an overwhelming desire to meet, and fall in love with, his or her birth parents. Even the birth parents who oppose open access use this argument, believing that without legal protection they will surely be tracked down and exposed by curious birth children.

Did it not occur to anyone that there are some adopted children who aren't interested in finding their birth parents? That some adopted children might want some guarantee that they won't be hunted down by their biological parents? Shouldn't they be entitled to a choice about who will barge into their lives and make themselves at home?

I was adopted as an infant on the Friday before Mother's Day, 1970. My adoptive parents were assured that the records would be forever sealed, and that no stranger would ever show up on their doorstep and claim their baby as their own.

Eighteen years later, I received a thick envelope in the mail. I lived in Indiana and the postmark was from California, so I assumed it was from a camp friend. I tore it open, and a handful of pictures spilled out.

I didn't recognize the brunet woman smiling at me in those snapshots, taken over a period of two decades. There she was in high school in the '70s with a middle part and long straight hair, and then in the early '80s, with big puffy hair and lots of eye makeup. And there were more recent photos too -- professional, on glossy paper with vibrant color. Who was this woman?

The letter explained it. "I believe you are the baby girl I gave up for adoption in 1970." Whoa. "Mom! Look at this!" My mom joined me at the kitchen table. Together we read the letter and stared at the pictures.

"She looks nothing like you," my mom said. (She was right.) "How could she do this when she didn't even know if we'd told you that you're adopted? Why didn't she contact me first?" There was fear in my mom's questions; I could hear it. I shoved the letter aside.

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