(This article appeared in the Winter 1999 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Years ago, in a European city, a young adopted woman confronted a political dissident from Korea with the words: "You are a leader of a country that sold its own children, that continues to sell its children. Are you not ashamed?" At a press conference last October, the same man, Kim Dae Jung, tearfully apologized as president of his country to the 150,000 infants and children divested of their identities and exported around the world in order to spare their communities the "shame" of their existence (http://akaworld.org/wwwboard/messages/2111.html ). Now, a president agreed to take upon himself another type of shame, that of a nation for treating its children in such a manner. With slaughter in Kosovo, politicians facing morals charges in Kuala Lumpur and Washington, and his own country under the brutal discipline of IMF trusteeship, the world barely noticed this president's apology. In distant North America, only two radio programs even bothered picking up the story, yet I am convinced that someday this event will be seen as a milestone of sorts for the cause of adoptee human rights.

1998 may be remembered by activists as the time when politicians around the world first took responsibility for injustices committed in the name of adoption and acknowledged that those separated by adoption have an entitlement to social justice. In Argentina, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Maserra was arrested for ordering the adoption and identity deprivation of the children of his political enemies (http://europe.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/9812/07/BC-ARGENTINA-JUNTAS.reut/ ). In Australia, a parliamentary commission was convened in New South Wales to investigate abuses alleged to have been committed by agencies over four decades of closed adoption, and to recommend measures of redress for those affected (http://www.angelfire.com/or/originsnsw/inquiry1.html ). Once unquestioned, lawyers, social workers and bureaucrats are now squirming on the witness stand, the hostile questions now directed at them instead of by them. Guatemala and Romania moved to properly regulate the often under-monitored and undocumented flow of infant babies from their countries to the developed world. In Canada, Premier Lucien Bouchard apologized on behalf of Quebec for the plight of the Duplessis

Orphans, whose records were falsified and who were subjected to years of abuse in state and church-supported orphanages (http://www.colba.net/~jgodbout/Page46.html). In Ireland, the apex court of that country refused to acknowledge the right of birthmothers to perpetual anonymity and ordered their parliament to draft legislation resolving issues relating to the informational rights of adoptees, a process which is still underway (http://www.irish-times.com/irish-times/paper/1998/0414/hom5.html). In London, the U.K. government expressed regret for 160,000 "child migrants," many relinquished under coercion, sent from Britain to destinations around the Commonwealth for adoption through 1967, and set aside public funds to facilitate the identification and reunification of those involved (http://www.smh.com.au/news/9807/31/text/national3.html). Just this month, Korea's National Assembly, acting on the country's official apology in October, tabled legislation to add the right of abode and other measures to the benefits offered its 150,000 persons lost to adoption. Finally, as we all know, in the U.S., voters in Oregon took the first step toward reconciliation by passing historic legislation allowing adoptees access to their original birth certificates for the first time in nearly half a century.

These victories are of limited and ambivalent scope. Maserra may yet be freed by a military court. Some Australian states still have contact vetoes, although, to their credit, these are subject to sunset provisions and languish on the books unenforced. Canadian reform legislation in several provinces seems stuck in committee, thanks to unrelated filibustering and legislative gridlock, and, to a fault, they all contemplate compromise provisions. In Ireland, compromise in the form of disclosure vetoes seems to be the byword. The U.K. avoided a full and unconditional apology for the horror of its child migration program (in diplomatic doublespeak an expression of regret falls just short of saying sorry). Korea, an OECD country, is still exporting the odd undocumented and unidentified baby. In the U.S., the NCFA continues its tactic of obstruction, litigating against reform legislation in Oregon and Tennessee. Meanwhile, fly-by-night facilitators continue to peddle their wares from the third world to the infertile rich, with few or no precautions for full disclosure, assuring yet another generation of the identity-deprived. The American government officially concedes that there are no reliable systems in place for statistical monitoring of adoption (http://www.calib.com/naic/publications/data/adoptsta.pdf ), although the AFCARS system and the Evan B. Donaldson Institute have made some progress in that direction. Many of the 50,000-odd non-relative adoptions in the U.S. each year take place without any precautions to ensure that the informational, civil and political rights of adoptees will be protected.

As of this writing, the U.S. has still failed to ratify a single international instrument protecting the rights of the adopted. Those opposed to change around the world seem to have two emotions in common: fear and shame, the traditional engines of reaction. The fear side of the equation includes many involved in adoption. There are parents fearful of losing perpetually infantilized children. There are adoption agencies, lawyers and facilitators who, having forgotten they operate in the public interest, are fearful both of what lies they might have told in years past, and of losing their inventory in years ahead. There are bureaucrats and politicians fearful of dredging up old secrets, now conveniently cached in locked file drawers, or of losing the benefit of future patronage. On the shame side, we are told, birthparents live in shame of their indiscretions or of the violence committed against them. Adoptive parents live in shame of their infertility. Adoptees are creatures of shame and must live to gratefully serve in order to atone for the sins of others. We are also told that all of these people live in fear of being confronted with their shame, and hence all the king's horses and all the king's men must protect everyone from their fear of everyone else by treading underfoot just a few civil and political rights. Of course, the only way we can ascertain the truth of these claims is from the mouths of the fear-mongers themselves. Meanwhile, the baby sellers, their legal counselors, certain government and orphanage officials and professional searchers continue to operate, often in an atmosphere of relative unaccountability and benign regulatory forbearance, capitalizing on markets made possible, in large measure, by this fear and shame. This cycle remains intact and, in large measure, unchallenged. Dismantling these impediments to change, through advocacy, education, bureaucratic transparency, reconciliation, reform and, where necessary, legal retribution, will be the next challenge.

1998 only laid some rather tenuous groundwork. Nonetheless, I believe this past year will be seen as the point where adoptees got their first glimpse of something which might sustain optimism in the years to come. It was the year when a sizable piece of the world recognized that adoptees have rights, even if only observed in the breach; that to know one's identity, to grow up and become independent adults in the eyes of the law, to expect accountability from those who placed them, to have their cultural and ethnic roots respected, not to have secret and often doctored files maintained on them, and to have the legally-protected expectation of being told the truth about their own lives, are all basic human rights. It was the year when, for the first time, a sizable minority of interests acknowledged that adoptees, too, should benefit from equal protection and non-discrimination under the rule of law and that they should be allowed to live free from the shame and fear of others. Thanks to the efforts of adoptees and their allies around the world, this minority now understands that only those who have abused the rights of others need experience shame, and only those who have not yet owned up to the policy mistakes of the past and present need feel fear. In these respects, adoptees have in 1998 grabbed for themselves the gift of hope.

About the author: Albert S. Wei is an adoptee presently residing in Asia. He is an investment banker and his academic background is in international public policy.

(This article appeared in the Winter 1999 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

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