On Jan. 3, 2020, The Detroit Free Press published my guest column on Michigan’s discriminatory and restrictive adoption records law that denies Michigan’s adoptees legal access to their original birth records, except by overcoming restrictive barriers.
In my adoptive sister’s case, she falls in the 35-year period, between 1945 and 1980, for which the state statutes have almost impossible barriers for an adoptee to overcome to get what is theirs as a legal and human right. My sister, who is seriously ill and bedridden in a skilled nursing home, will likely die in the near future without knowing her biological kin, her biological parents, and her ancestral past.
This unfortunate outcome is intentional. In fact, this scenario was the design of those who created Michigan’s biased law that is zealously enforced by Michigan’s vital records guardians at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
My sister and I both were born in these post-World War II boom years of adoption, that saw nearly 3 million adoptees separated from their biological kin through the U.S. adoption system.
It is no coincidence that Michigan’s lawmakers adopted the most restrictive rules for adoptees in this cohort, because records secrecy continues to hide from the public how widespread and systemic that system was in the United States, impacting literally millions of Americans.
My book on my own experience challenging this discriminatory records-keeping system details how adoption history has been hidden, preventing adoptees from knowing themselves and their past and the public from knowing the truth about the many players who promoted this system for decades.
Author note: The guest column published by The Detroit Free Press has slight changes from the original I submitted, without changing the substance of the submitted column.