Contribution to the Green Paper on Adoption Policy and Law in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador

The secrecy traditionally associated with adoption raises human rights, democracy and health issues. These issues are discussed in great detail on our web site Adoption in Quebec: the right to know (http://www.total.net/~adoption). André Desaulniers, the founder of our group, demonstrates in another contribution to this Green Paper that the confidential nature of adoption records leads to human rights violations. Here, I will discuss briefly the very serious health issues raised by the confidential nature of adoption records and I will also show that confidentiality and democracy are incompatible when we are dealing with adult adoptees.

I- Health issues

In North America 15 % of the population is partly or totally ignorant of its heredity due to the secrecy traditionally associated with the adoption process. That so many people have incomplete medical records is less surprising when we consider the fact that many of these adopted persons are now parents and in many cases grandparents passing on their lack of knowledge of their own heredity to their children and grandchildren. But there is worse since, in many cases, people give their doctors the hereditary background of their adoptive family as being their own not knowing that they themselves have been adopted or are descendants of adoptees. In most provinces and states in North America, legislators have enacted laws that create the illusion that the adoptive parents are the biological parents, thus acting as if they could repeal the laws of biology. In so doing legislators are risking the lives of many citizens. In North America, the confidentiality of adoption records means that, every day, there are thousands of surgical operations carried out on the basis of incomplete or false medical records. How can a doctor prescribe drugs safely when one person out of every seven is ignorant of his or her heredity? How can a democratically elected government tamper, either actively or passively, with the integrity of medical files, one of the pillars of modern medicine? Confidentiality surely leads to many human tragedies and is in some way reminiscent of the tainted blood scandal. The people in power should know, based on a purely epidemiological analysis of the situation, that confidentiality is a killer.

II- Democracy

In a democracy, it is voters that delegate the power of the people to legislators. Therefore, legislators do not have the right to enact laws that lie, either directly or indirectly, to voters or a group of voters. If they choose to do so they exceed their mandate and undermine the legitimacy of the state. Usually when we discuss adoptees we think of minors but in reality most adopted persons are adults that have the right to vote for their representatives. How can legislators think that they have the power to hide the truth to voters and still have the mandate to represent them? Adoption is a legal process where the adopted person is considered a third party and thus has no right to review the process that led to his or her adoption. In fact when the state promised confidentiality to biological parents, usually the mother, it decided that it would hide the truth to people that were at that moment unable to defend their rights, the adoptees, in order to protect a group of people that was viewed at that time as having committed an immoral act, the biological parents. Legislators have exceeded their mandate when they agreed to enact legislation that would hide the truth to a future generation of voters.

III- Conclusion

The very nature of democracy and our medical system demand that legislators remove confidentiality as it now stands. Failure to do so as soon as possible would undermine the legitimacy of the state and the integrity of the medical system. It could also eventually lead to the prosecution of those people in power that willfully exceeded their mandate.

Jean-Pierre Arcoragi
Adoption in Quebec: the right to know
E-mail:adoption@total.net
Web site: http://www.total.net/~adoption