Ontario birth parents and adults who were adopted as children now have unprecedented access, starting June 1, to provincial adoption records that were previously kept secret under an 81-year-old law.
Last May, Ontario passed a new adoption information disclosure law. It grants adopted persons who are 18 and over access to their adoption records, including the original birth certificate.
This document can link an adopted person to his or her origins because it reveals the birth mother’s name.
Birth parents may also apply for information from these records.
“I have found my son, but I just want the paperwork anyway,” says Jennifer Charles, a board member for a local adoption support group called Parent Finders National Capital Region.
In 1968, Charles, who was then 19, surrendered her son to the Children’s Aid Society. She says it is wrong that she never received a copy of her son’s records, even though she signed them.
“I wasn’t given any options, they didn’t even let me see him in the hospital,” she says. “[The law] is like an acknowledgement; I should have received those forms and that birth certificate.”
As files are opened, so are the possibilities for contact and reunion. For some however, this causes concern.
Ottawa resident Laura Eggertson, who was adopted 46 years ago and now has adopted two children, says this law caters to her generation and does not consider certain realities for children being adopted today.
“Many children now have been abused, neglected; many of their birth parents have had problems, mental problems, problems with drugs and alcohol,” she says.
While not discounting their character, Eggertson says these issues make them unfit parents. They should not have automatic access to information identifying their child’s adoptive name, she says. “In some instances, it may endanger those children and their adoptive family.”
As an adoptee, Eggertson has chosen not to seek her own birth parents. As an adoptive mother, she says she was promised confidentiality and is concerned that the rules are now being changed without sufficient consultation.
Privacy concerns stymied another adoption disclosure law in September 2007. The Ontario Superior Court struck down that law, on a constitutional challenge, only two days after it passed. Now, adoption records can only be opened as long as those who wish to remain anonymous are sufficiently protected.
The new law allows them to stop their name from being released by filing a disclosure veto. They can also request to not be contacted or specify their preferred method of contact at Serviceontario.ca or by calling 1-800-461-2156.
As of Dec. 31, 921 people have filed vetoes with the province. This is a small number relative to the thousands of people who have been adopted in Ontario.
Besides, Natalie Proctor Servent, an Ottawa adoptee who has reunited with her birth mother, says it is possible to bypass these vetoes if contact is made without using provincial adoption records.
Though Parent Finders helped her search, she says she is relieved it will now be easier for others.
“It’s somebody’s right to have their own information,” she says. “Just knowing where I come from, I can answer questions.”