A birth mother voices support for adoption reform

Editor's note: This is one in an ongoing series of posts spotlighting support for our continued effort to provide adult adoptees born in Connecticut access to their original birth certificates. The testimony featured in this series was submitted to the state Legislature earlier this year in support of proposed legislation that would have restored the right of adult adoptees adopted before Oct. 1, 1983, to access their original birth certificate. (Post-1983 adoptees had this right restored in 2014.) The letters are published with the authors' permission. Sign up for our newsletter at www.accessconnecticut.org if you want to help us end discrimination against adoptees.

I became pregnant in 1966 as a college freshman. As was the custom, I was shipped off to a maternity home. I was told I had shamed myself and my family, did not have the moral character or the resources to be a mother, and would quickly forget the whole pregnancy as life when on as planned. I delivered my daughter with no family support and left the hospital with empty arms and a heart that never healed from the loss of my first child. I had no choice about privacy, confidentiality, the type of family that would adopt my daughter, or anything else. I never received one piece of paper validating what happened to me....not a birth certificate or a relinquishment document or anything else.

Of course I never forgot. Who could? Like most birthmothers I learned to cope with the unexpressed grief, worked very hard to prove I was a good person, and achieve the degree of financial security necessary to assure I would never lose another child. I lied every time someone asked how many children I had. Secrecy was a burden that got heavier as the years went on, and I wondered more and more about my daughter as she grew up.

But as I got older I also realized it wasn’t just all about me. She had a right to her medical history, her heritage, and her sisters. She needed to know her grandfather had a stroke in his early 40s, and her grandmother died of an aortic aneurysm that could be inherited. There was more and more in the press about adoption reunions, and they were generally positive.

I received the best gift possible in 1997 when my daughter found me. She was able to discover my maiden name and it was unusual and easy to track. Like most adoption reunions, it was awkward at first, but as two mature adults we were able to navigate a relationship that is very comfortable for all the families.

I have been active in the adoption community for the past 20 years, including serving as President of the American Adoption Congress and on the board of Access Connecticut. I have spoken to hundreds of adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents about the life long process of adoption. Contrary to what I was told back in 1966, birthmothers are mothers, and continue to care about the babies they relinquished. They yearn to be able to connect even if it is years later. Our babies are babies no longer, but adults entitled to manage their relationships and have all information available about who they are. Adoptive parents have the best interest of the adoptee at heart, and most often support the adoptee in the quest for truth.

And I am proud to say I am the grandmother of Alex and Luke, who would have never known me if not for the courage of their mom, my daughter.
Eileen McQuade, South Windsor, CT