Category Archives: Public Health

Even beloved public libraries say ‘no’ to adoptees

My proposed presentation on the U.S. adoption system would have explained how facilities like Detroit’s former Crittenton General Hospital, shown here in 1965, promoted adoption and the separation of millions of mothers and their children in the decades after World War II

Between July and December 2018, I made five written attempts to offer a free, adult education program to the public at the Multnomah County Library. The library is a major cultural institution in this region that prides itself on promoting all voices and advancing knowledge and reading, particularly the issues highlighted in books shared with the public.

My presentation and reading would have mirrored the one I gave at the Tigard Public Library on Sept. 25, 2018. You can see my proposal here. 

In the end, the library refused my idea, which would have showcased the little-known research I shared in my newly published memoir on the American adoption experience and on the history of that system in the post-World War II years, along with ways adoptees are denied basic equal rights.

Not only did library event planning staff say, “No,” but they also shared that adult adoptees in the United States weren’t the “marginalized” community that they wanted to focus on with adult programs. Those activities include public events and conversations about books that highlight historic and political issues in American life. 

Don’t Count on “Progressives Allies” to Care About Adoption History or Adoptee Rights

The Multnomah County Library shared this statement with me by email after I asked event planning staff to reconsider my proposal for a free public lecture on the history of the U.S. adoption system. Staff did not change their minds.

As an adoptee, I am not surprised by this outcome.

When it comes to the story of adoptees, articles about adoptee rights, columns on the history of adoption, adoptees seldom find anyone who cares to give them a platform or who really gives a damn what adults adoptees have to say. 

Sadly, the library’s tinny tone reminded me of ways public health officials denied giving me my original birth certificate decades after I had found my birth families. It is hard to ignore that “paternal tone” if you have heard it for decades.

The irony for me is that I used the excellent resources in this library to research my book, including great works on adoptee rights and adoption history, and other works on the larger issue of sociological bias toward illegitimately born people, such as adoptees.

The library also secured many interlibrary loans for me, which was crucial for my work. This facility also has dozens of others books on adoption issues. But that information will stay on the shelves, mostly unknown to this community for now, in part because of the library’s decision.

In my two replies sent to the library asking them to reconsider its decision, sent on Dec. 12 and 13, 2018, I failed to convince the lower level librarian staff that the library decision was not consistent with the library’s stated mission. I wrote: “Among your stated goals are to be a ‘trusted guide for learning,’ a ‘leading advocate for reading,’ and a ‘champion for equity and inclusion.’ My proposal aligned with all three, particularly of a historically marginalized group in U.S. history and to this day.” 

For that email, I copied Vailey Oehlke, library director, and Terrilyn Chun, deputy director. I documented for both senior managers why the library failed, and in a way that showed adoptees that even so-called advocates of reading and knowledge will turn their backs on proposals as simple as a free public lecture.

Neither Oehlke nor Chun replied to my emails.

Why I Care About this Experience with the Library

As an adoptee, I decided long ago I never would apologize for promoting awareness of adoptee rights issues or for my advocacy that tried to educate the public by using facts and research.

That is why I am writing this post on this disappointing experience with the library concerning a human rights issue about millions who are denied basic rights. This interplay with staff showed me even librarians, who may self-identify as progressive, do not see adoptees rights as an issue that deserves a modest platform to discuss ongoing legal inequality in 2018.

I am moving on to find others who care about this issue and the story that still remains hidden in the shadows of shame. 

If you are a Portland area adoptee and care about this issue, you are welcome to contact Oehlke and Chun and encourage them to change the minds of the subordinates who made this decision; find their email addresses here. About the only thing a public official responds to is public shaming through fact-based news reporting and self-concern about their jobs. There is never a wrong time to engage public officials who are responsible for the actions of the public bodies they manage. 

Finding that rare picture, taken at my birthplace

photo of six nurses and six infants, Crittenton General Hospital

A photo taken at Crittenton General Hospital in 1965 shows young infants in the care of nurses (photo courtesy of Patricia Ibbotson’s Detroit’s Hospitals, Healers, and Helpers and the Detroit Public Library collection). Most infants born here were placed for adoption.

This week I read a wonderful photo history book on the hospitals, orphanages, and mental health facilities that were built and operated in Detroit and the surrounding area from the 1800s through the late 1900s. The slim tome, called Detroit’s Hospitals, Healers, and Helpers, by Patricia Ibbotson, is a great piece of storytelling. It shows how our society, in one major metropolitan area, cared for the sick, the infirmed, and the needy.

Ibbotson notes, “All of the hospitals, as well as homes for the aged and orphans, evolved from the poorhouse system.” She also notes most were founded by religious orders. Orphanages stand out for me because I am by historic reckoning a child placed in institutional care: in my case, I was given up for adoption and put into foster care for more than five weeks, making me a bastard, orphan, and foster kid all at once.

Patricia Ibbotson’s 2004 photo history book, Detroit’s Hospitals, Healers, and Helpers.

Ibbotson’s book documents nearly a half-dozen orphan facilities, describing the “illegitimately born” and discarded infants as “foundlings,” and their shamed mothers as women who had “fallen by the way.” In the United States, society viewed both groups as outsiders and, like most of Europe, treated them poorly, if not lethally well into the 20th century.

According to Ibbotson’s research, Detroit had more than a half-dozen orphanages for homes for “unfortunate ones”— meaning the discarded infants—before 1900. Detroit’s long history of dealing with foundlings or so-called illegitimate babies resembled approaches used in other major cities, like New York City and its New York Foundling Hospital. The treatment or maltreatment of these infants left at these facilities in big cities helped spur the creation of the U.S. Children’s Bureau and reforms to address well-documented abuses of discarded infants in the early 1900s. That organization played a key reformer role making adoption a safer system in the United States, which personally impacted my life after I was born.

Detroit, a city of fallen women and foundlings

A shot from 1912 of the Detroit Woman’s Hospital and Foundlings Home shows some of the many illegitimately born babies in its care (photo courtesy of Patricia Ibbotson’s Detroit’s Hospitals, Healers, and Helpers and the Wayne State University collection).

Like New York City, Detroit was home to a large hospital dedicated to women and their “foundling” kids called the Detroit Woman’s and Foundling Home, which opened in 1869, created by a religious order to care for these socially scorned outcasts. It later became Hutzel Women’s Hospital.

Detroit also had multiple Florence Crittenton maternity homes and hospitals, which first opened in 1897 and later in grander fashion with opening of the Crittenton General Hospital in 1929, north of downtown. There were five homes and hospital/homes in all. Crittenton General Hospital, with three wings and dormitory facilities that also housed single pregnant mothers, became a future epicenter of adoption promotion in Michigan in the boom adoption years after World War II.

My life story began there, and that story was hidden from me for decades until I untangled the mystery, found my birth records, and put together the pieces of a tale showing how infants like me were part of a national system that separated millions of families in every state and territory. I recount this complex, national story in my newly released memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are (purchase here).

Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit is shown in a photo, taken shortly after its opening in 1929. I was born and relinquished into adoption here.

I requested Ibbotson’s book through my local library, hoping to find an image of the maternity hospital where I was born and then given up for adoption. That facility, Crittenton General Hospital of Detroit, was one of the nation’s largest maternity hospitals—it had 115 dormitory beds and two wings devoted to maternity care, according to Crittenton records. The Florence Crittenton Association of American and National Florence Crittenton Mission, which ran it and dozens of similar homes and hospitals for single pregnant women, promoted adoption in the three decades after World War II. I describe the significance of the hospital in my memoir and study of the American adoption system and experience called You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are.

A picture and its meaning

The picture included in Ibbotson’s book of Crittenton General Hospital could not have been more meaningful. It is a shot reportedly taken in 1965, the year of my birth, in front of the hospital. It shows six nurses in white outfits, each holding very young infants, all presumably being future adoptees. The cut line described the facility as a place for “’unfortunate women and girls’ and their babies.”

That same shot shown above, taken of Crittenton General Hospital in 1965, shows likely future adoptees in the care of nurses, though not every child born here was relinquished. Note, the cut line information has some inaccuracies from the source (photo courtesy of Patricia Ibbotson’s Detroit’s Hospitals, Healers, and Helpers and the Detroit Public Library collection).

On my computer, I zoomed in on the faces, wondering if I am in the half-dozen infants in the shot. I would have big ears, and I did not see that in two of the faces that are visible. The chances are perhaps one in several hundred I could have been captured in this unknown still, that is with the historical collection at the Detroit Public Library.

Unfortunately the picture and Ibbotson failed, like nearly every official source I have consulted, to even mention the word adoption, despite the hospital’s central role in that institution for the entire state and region.

My efforts to find the number of relinquished babies all failed, which I describe in my book in more detail. However, I peg the number of relinquished number of infants from Crittenton General at well over 20,000, mostly in the decades after the war, til the time of the hospital’s closing in 1974. It was torn down in 1975.

Based on all records I’ve found and my own original birth certificate, the cut line for this picture listed the wrong address for the photo as East Elizabeth Street, which is the address for the former Florence Crittenton Hospital, near downtown Detroit. Crittenton General Hospital was located at 1554 Tuxedo Street. Also the date of the hospital’s closure, according to the Detroit Free Press and other sources I consulted for my book, is 1974. The cut line lists 1976.

For additional information on the history of the National Florence Crittenton Mission, I can recommend a couple of sources: 

Kunzel, Regina. Fallen Women, Problem Girls. Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.

Wilson, Otto, Robert South Barrett, and National Florence Crittenton Mission. Fifty Years Work With Girls, 1883–1933: A Story of the Florence Crittenton Homes. Alexandria: The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1933.

Sharing my story with the public and learning how adoption impacts their lives

Rudy Owens holds a copy of his memoir on the U.S. adoption experience.

I gave my first book reading on my recently released memoir on the U.S. adoption experience and the larger issue of adoptee rights last night (Sept. 25), at the Tigard Public Library. There was a good turnout, and the audience was fully engaged in the topic and the information I shared. My talk covers many of the larger themes in my memoir and study of the American adoption system.

One of the attendees was a respected state lawmaker who I admire, and I appreciate that she took time from a busy schedule to learn more. I had some friends attend as well, which is always welcome. At events like these, you never know who you may meet or why they care about this issue.

After the presentation, one attendee told me a story about a now-deceased loved one who was adopted and who was unable to get their family and medical history. This was critical information because the adoptee had a genetically transmittable illness. That illness was also passed to that person’s kids, who then had to use other means to try and find their family past when they became adults.

This is a very common story, and I have heard variations of this story from many adoptees and loved ones of adoptees, who describe the frustration of having potentially critical medical information withheld from the one they love just because they are adopted.

Harm occurs to adoptees’ families as well as adoptees

This is one of many travesties of our adoption system and the discriminatory state laws that have potentially life-saving information withheld from adoptees and, equally, their loved ones who may be related as offspring. Tens of millions of American likely have medical conditions with genetic origins. The National Institutes for Health reports there are more than 6,000 genetic and rare diseases. These afflict more than 25 million Americans, and about 30 percent of early deaths can be linked to genetic causes.

Book reading at the Tigard Library, Sept. 25, 2018

Many in this country overlook that spouses of adult adoptees and children of adult adoptees are also impacted by the laws that deny basic rights and medical and family history to millions.

This simply must end, and it is a scandal of our public health system and medical system that no major medical group is an ally of adoptee rights groups or is advocating with adoptee rights advocates to restore rights to records for adoptees. I highlight this decades-long failure of our medical, public health, and political system in my book in Chapter Eight. You can order the book online to learn more.

I look forward to many more readings and more conversations with people who care about the much larger story that impacts countless families in the United States, Canada, and other countries that promoted adoption and still don’t give adoptees rights to their past or even their own family medical history. 

AAC highlights Rudy Owens’ memoir on American adoption experience

Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience

This month, the nation’s oldest adoptee rights group, the American Adoption Congress, featured an essay I wrote on my recently released memoir. I appreciate being recognized by this national organization that is committed to promoting the rights of all U.S. adoptees. I also appreciate the group for bringing my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, to the adoption of adoptees nationwide.

You can find a complete copy of the post I wrote here.

Here is my introduction to my essay in the newsletter:

When I began writing my story as an American adoptee, I wrote a mission statement and committed myself to telling a different kind of story with a larger goal of changing how adoptees are treated by law.

That tale would also show how U.S. adoption became a national social-engineering experiment that today remains mired in discriminatory state laws, not equality and fairness. I mixed the stories of my experience with data and research and employed the methods of an investigative journalist and a public health advocate.

Specifically, I used a “public health lens,” examining adoption’s impacts on the people most impacted by it. I also examined the institution’s historic, social, legal, biological, and religious underpinnings, as well as the political forces that created it and still sustain it.

My resulting memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, recounts spending decades of my life seeking my family, records, and ultimately justice. On each leg of what I call a “hero’s journey,” I reveal how my tale sheds light on the adoption system that emerged in the post-World War II decades.

By focusing adoptee rights as a public health issue—which it always has been—I call out numerous ways that adoptees and the public can more clearly see underlying inequities in the U.S. adoption system. … [see more]

Rudy Owens’ book reading highlights the U.S. adoption experience

Join Rudy Owens for a free public talk and book reading on his newly released memoir that explores the secretive world of American adoption.

What: Rudy Owens’ book reading and lecture on his memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are
Where: Tigard Public Library (13500 SW Hall Blvd., Tigard, OR 97223)
When: Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2018, 6-7:30 p.m.

All media are encouraged to attend. See this press release sent to Portland-area media on Sept. 12.

Owens is available for interviews before and after the event.

Owens’ memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, offers insights on the widespread American institution of adoption, a national social engineering experiment that remains mired in discriminatory laws and partisan politics, not equality and fairness.