SWAPMEETIN’: NCFA, REFORMISTS, AND BASTARDS
Last week, the National Council for Adoption published its latest issue of Adoption Advocate: “Mutual Consent: Balancing the Birthparents Right to Privacy with the Adopted Person’s Desire to Know. The article (it is not a “report”) appears to be a better-late-than-never response to the November 2007 Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute report, For the Records: Restoring a Legal Right for Adult Adoptees, a document as activist, as say, the phone book. The fuss Mutual Consent has caused in AdoptionLaLaLand is as perplexing as why in the name of St. Jerome Emiliani NCFA waited so long to repsond…or why. It’s not exactly new news that NCFA promotes sealed records. NCFA was founded in 1980 specifically to fight the Carter initiative to open records on a federal level. Although NCFA in the last couple years has put on a happy face and begun to move to the center, (no more 5 signature registry! no more dour proclamations about open adoption or “spoiled adoptees”),it continues to oppose the unsealing of records without rigmarole worthy of a Soviet propiska. That doesn’t mean that Mutual Consent isn’t worthy of comment. But there is no need to legitimate Mutual Consent by making a big deal about Continue Reading →