We still don’t know to this day how many adoptees there are in the United States. That also means we don’t know how many of them are now at elevated risk of genetically-based medical conditions. But we do know that knowing one’s family medical history is a best medical practice. This is not rocket science here.
As an adoptee, I still am baffled why so few of my fellow adoptees speak the language of medical harm that is foundational to this system. Even adoptee rights activists I know who are really smart either don’t get this or refuse to talk about this.
I always have talked about it and I will continue to raise this issue, as I did in my book on how adoption also is a public health issue that causes harm. In chapter 8 of my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, I outlined the extensive research documenting the critical importance of knowing one’s family medical history: “Having access to family health history and information on other relatives—relatives who are genetically related—is considered by the nation’s foremost health experts to be necessary and beneficial for individual and population health. But as of 2018, there is no national campaign or policy initiative to promote giving hundreds of thousands of adoptees the ability to learn about their family medical health history.”
In my case, I’ve known my bio-family since 1989. This week I just learned that my family has a medical condition with genetic risk factors that mean I likely will be at risk. The right to know one’s family medical history is a basic human right that is denied to most adoptees by law. This must end. And if adoptees can’t even talk about it, shame on all of us.