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Susan's Story

Susan turned 40 in 1992. She knows little about the circumstances surrounding her birth on October 18, 1952 not even her biological family's medical history, and if the State of Maryland prevails, she never will.

For the first year of her life she was known legally only as "Baby Susan." Existing legal documents to which she has gained access give her no last name until an adoption decree was issued in October of 1953.

Susan knows only that she was born in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania 43 years ago and cannot verify the little she has been told. There are people who can, but they won't. Most of these people have never met her. They are not doctors brought in to consult on her case. They are total strangers with access to more information about Susan than she has about herself.

Legislature is to blame

In 1946, the Maryland General Assembly decided that Baby Susan, yet unborn, would never need to know about her own personal history. Medical information collected by the state-run adoption agency, then known as the Maryland Welfare Board (now the Department of Human Resources, Social Services Administration) was sketchy. It took over two months and the threat of a law suit to get even incomplete information.

What she got was a list of five illnesses that her parents did not have at the time of her birth, five out of 3000 that are genetically transmitted. Assistant Attorney General Kathy Crosby reviewed the file to determine what medical information should be released but the letter to Susan's attorney did not detail Crosby's medical qualifications for this task.

It should be noted that Social Services Administration (SSA) is obligated by law to provide adult adoptees with certain services (see COMAR 07.02.12.20). Among these is access to all non-identifying information contained in the department's records. The reality is that in many instances, the first response to such inquiries will be that the records are lost.

Joanne Brennan, a social worker in Washington County where Susan was placed in foster care in October 1952, told her that the original records were lost but that the office that placed her for adoption should have copies in their files. After much checking, Susan is inclined to believe that most of Washington County's records were indeed lost due to administrative sloppiness but cannot find any indication that SSA is making an attempt to reconstruct those records. It would be possible to reconstruct many records if they contacted the sister agencies in counties where their children were placed but top-level intervention might be required.

Originally, Ina Hiller, the social worker in Wicomico County, would not share information with Mrs. Brennan to enable her to search the files she still has. It was not until the state-wide coordinator instructed her to cooperate that she did so.

A genealogist in Rockville who has helped a number of adult adoptees and birth mothers to find the missing part of their biological family says that, in her experience, this is very often the first response. It is also almost always patently false.

Such was the case when Susan, desperate for medical information, inquired at Wicomico County Social Services. The social worker tried to excuse the loss of the records by telling Susan and her adoptive mother that she had discussed Susan's medical condition (or what she thought she understood of it) with a doctor and that the condition wasn't likely to be hereditary. In other words, Susan should not be unduly concerned that there were no records.

Confidential is not private

Susan and her mother were incensed over this invasion of privacy and glad that they had discussed only one minor aspect of her medical circumstances which, incidentally, is hereditary according to Terrence O'Brien, MD at Johns Hopkins Hospital. A doctor who would speculate based on second-hand information gathered by an unqualified individual about an unseen patient is careless at best. The offending employee was reprimanded for her inappropriate action.

If, in her desperation for medical background that might benefit doctors still trying to diagnose her problem, Susan had told all, much intensely personal information could be in the hands of yet another stranger. Little lasting damage was done because Susan was circumspect in her dealings with strangers, but the incident points out the pitfalls inherent in a situation where persons with no need to know are privy to intensely personal information while the person most closely affected is denied access. The potential for damage to be done when lawyers or social workers try to evaluate medical information is great.

When her own oral and written contacts with the agency produced no satisfactory response, Susan retained a lawyer. Peter Karras found the missing records almost immediately but only a pediatrician's report that should have been, but was not, made available to her adoptive parents 39 years ago was released. After more letters from her attorney and repeated contacts with the Social Services central administrative offices in Baltimore, the agency's legal counsel was brought into the case to find legal grounds to deny Susan access to full non-identifying information.

This situation is not entirely the fault of the Social Services Administration (SSA). Although social workers are still employed by this agency who assert, and probably believe, that no birth mother wants further contact ever with the child she relinquished, the agency knows better. The existence of several voluntary associations of birth mothers (and birth fathers), such as Concerned United Birth parents, puts this notion in perspective.

Evidently, SSA employs some professionals with more enlightened views since, in 1980, the department sponsored legislation to open records to adult adoptees in accordance with the recommendations of a gubernatorial commission to study adoption laws. This bill, like all similar bills that have followed it, was defeated by the predominantly male General Assembly.

Who opposes open records?

Unfortunately for persons adopted in Maryland, Annapolis is close to Washington, D.C. making it convenient for the Committee for Adoption, a political action committee formerly headed (at least nominally) by Barbara Bush (also an adoptive mother) and representing the interests of a number of private adoption agencies, to testify each time such a bill reaches the legislature.

This group speaks for adoptive parents who are afraid of losing the affection of their adopted children if these children are permitted as adults to know the truth about their origins. They also represent adult adoptees who have found reunions unsatisfying or had them forced upon them. Certainly, these parties to adoption have rights, but those whose rights are abrogated by current law are not represented by such a well-financed PACs.

Testimony by such groups overlooks the fact that adoptees and birth parents made uncomfortable by contact with this missing part of their family can seek tort relief to end it if necessary. It also overlooks the fact that adoptees like Susan, successfully transplanted to a loving home, also have legitimate needs to know, not limited to medical needs.

A more serious question is whether the Committee for Adoption represents any agencies and attorneys whose practices with regard to influencing birth mothers to relinquish a child are unable to withstand the legal scrutiny that open records would facilitate?

Who is injured by sealed records?

Social theories, rooted in Marxist philosophy, became popular among social workers in the 1930s. Legislation that grew out of these theories was based on the belief that the biological family could be wholly supplanted by a new family created artificially by law. This approach completely ignores, or fails to accept, the child's need for information about the time prior to their adoption under any circumstances, even after that child reaches adulthood.

The law does leave a tiny crack through which a few with the emotional strength and financial wherewithal for litigation have slipped. But their ability to slip through even this crack is dependent on the subjective evaluation of a circuit court judge. For the birth mother who relinquished her child there is no legal recourse, but if there was it would be to someone unlikely to ever have been a mother.

Medical information is important

Social and psychological development aside, medical science has made great strides in the past 49 years in documenting the importance of genetic history. New information is increasing more rapidly than ever before. Early detection is key to most preventive medical practices making access to one's personal medical history more vital than ever.

According to its own rules, SSA is charged with accepting medical information from the adult adoptee or birth family and "making efforts to communicate this" as appropriate. This system relies on the relinquishing parent(s), one of whom may not even be named or have knowledge of his parental status, taking responsibility for initiating this contact with a child. But, according to Mrs. Brennan, they never want to see or hear of the relinquished child again. It hardly seems that they can have it both ways.

But there is a larger inconsistency. Assume all parties to the adoption know and attempt to exercise their right under the department's mandate to provide post adoption services. How are they to get round the statutes that the agency's own attorney says runs counter to their mandate?

If an applicant overturns the attorney's interpretation of conflicting statutes during an administrative review, how will important medical information be transmitted? Over-burdened staff, none of whom are trained searchers and some of whom disagree in principal with search activities, would be charged with this task. It's also highly unlikely that any of these employees have medical training.

Factor into this the percentage of the state's adoption records, sealed since 1947, that are truly lost. Also consider that state-arranged adoptions account for only about one-sixth of those that take place in Maryland. Without tax revenue, it is reasonable to hypothesize that records maintenance is the lowest priority of private adoption agencies. And they are not obligated by law to assist in medical inquiries.

Elected officials no doubt think they have safeguarded the rights of adoptees and made adequate provisions to address their legitimate needs for information. Yet, adoption reform has been proposed during almost every General Assembly session since Governor Harry Hughes blue-ribbon panel issued its indictment of the current practices in 1970. And while contradictory statutes remain on the books, the alternative is an expensive and protracted legal battle? Is that, perhaps, the intended outcome of a system devised by lawyers?

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