Birth Mother

ABOUT one in 50 Americans is adopted, between 6 and 7 million people. We constitute a significant, if largely invisible, minority, and a lot of us are angry at what we see as a deprivation of a fundamental civil liberty: the right to see our original birth certificates.A little background:Adoption is a contract between a birth parent relinquishing her child, a set of prospective parent, and some intermediary, generally an adoption agency. While "the best interests of the child" are supposed to govern the transaction, the child, (or, more precisely, the adult the child will become)

AN ELOQUENT ESSAY written by Jessica Swiecicki about her mother's successful quest to reunite with her birth mother has brought local and national media attention to her extended Manchester family.Last fall, Jessica chose to write a true story for an assignment by language arts teacher Deborah Calhoun at North Carroll Middle School, and began by interviewing members of her family.Jessica wrote about how her mother, Claudia Swiecicki, spent 10 years searching for the mother who had allowed her to be adopted at birth.

BOSTON -- The way Helen Hill sees it, her life as an adoptee has been part of a vast social experiment: "What happens if we seal away the true facts of people's birth?" What happens if adoptees don't know their biological parents?For most of U.S. history, adoption was informal and fairly open. But at some point before the 43-year-old Oregonian was born, states began shutting down the records and keeping the birth certificates secret.This "experiment" was begun with good intentions. In an atmosphere of shame and secrecy -- the Scarlet Letter era of unwed births -- this was seen as a way to protect the birth mother, the child and even the adopting parents from the prying eyes of outsiders.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nik McGowan can't wait to see his father for the first time -- but he'll have to wait at least 18 months to begin looking for him.That's because a new Maryland statute designed to help adopted children find their birth parents -- which was signed into law last week -- does not go into effect until October 1999.While the law will not completely open the birth records of adoptees, it allows "confidential intermediaries" to work with adoptees or birth parents to find the relatives and inquire whether they will agree to a reunion.

Wednesday's story about Amy Fischer-Abbott's desire to find the mother who abandoned her on a Pimlico playground in 1966 provoked numerous comments and telephone calls - many of them from readers who have been involved in adoptions, but none so far from Fischer-Abbott's long-gone mother or anyone connected to her.The most interesting reaction came from a 37-year-old Baltimore woman who asked only to be identified as Toby. She offered a personal tale, some observations and warnings that could benefit Fischer-Abbott in her quest.

Eight years ago, a documentary entitled "Lean On Me" depicted how a tough-minded principal named Joe Clark produced positive results in a struggling school in New Jersey.If Hollywood decides to do a sequel, it could choose Annapolis as its site and Navy senior basketball co-captain Hassan Booker as its protagonist. For everyone -- family, friends, teammates and classmates -- seems to lean on the unusually mature and inspirational Booker for support."I've been coaching for 24 years," said Navy's Don DeVoe, whose team opens its season tonight at Wake Forest, "and I have to put Hassan in a class by himself.

Three hours after midnight, June 9, 1966, her husband's asthmatic coughing awakened Margaret Smith in their house on Palmer Avenue in Northwest Baltimore, near Pimlico Race Course. The coughing wasn't all that bothered her.Through an open window, Margaret Smith heard a baby cry, and the startling sound seemed to be coming from the Queensberry Playground across the alley behind her house. She called police.Two officers, Manuel Matias and Allen Griffin, came within minutes and discovered a naked infant on a small blanket on the playground.

To understand Hassan Booker's unique family background, start with the initials he inscribed on his Navy basketball shoes."JAB" stands for the late Joyce Astarte Booker, his biological aunt, who died of lung cancer in 1989."

Ellen Berman and Mitchell Rosenwald met two years ago for the second time in their lives -- and learned that reunions between a birth mother and the child she once placed for adoption can be complicated."

I have a 12-year-old son from my first marriage, and his birth mother is my sister. We never told him that his birth mother is his aunt (whom he really doesn't care for much). Circumstances have arisen now that we need to tell him. I do not want to see him hurt, and I worry how this will affect him. Can anyone help?-- C.B. of Dallas, TexasTell this child the truth without delay or run the risk of someone else in the family revealing the secret."There's no way family secrets stay family secrets.

By now we all have a story about a job outsourced beyond our reach in the global economy. My favorite is about the California publisher who hired two reporters in India to cover the Pasadena, Calif., city government. Really. There are times as well when the offshoring of jobs takes on a quite literal meaning. When the labor we are talking about is, well, labor. In the last few months we've had a full nursery of international stories about surrogate mothers. Hundreds of couples are crossing borders in search of lower-cost ways to fill the family business.

MOTHER'S DAY is normally one day of the year when I feel no ambivalence. As the often exhausted mother of three children, ages 10 years, 8 years and 9 months, I am perfectly clear that I deserve every card and muffin that's heading my way. In past years, I have serenely enjoyed breakfast in bed, fancy brunches and even that rarest of joys - time alone to read. I have graciously accepted gifts of handmade picture frames and pins, and I have received cards praising me in words big and small.

After eight years of frustrating and unsuccessful fertility treatments, Joyce Frost and her husband, Richard, thought they had finally found a guaranteed way to bring a child into their family - the adoption of a newborn from the Marshall Islands. The Marietta, N.Y., couple paid a fee of $21,500 to Southern Adoption, a nonprofit agency based in Philadelphia, Miss., that promised them an infant in a short time with minimum problems, they said. The birth mother named Mera, they were told, was due March 16 and had already been flown to Hawaii to deliver her baby.

The story sounded bizarre to Michael Jenkins, head of the Marshall Islands' newly created Central Adoption Authority. But his recent experience convinced him that it was also plausible. A pregnant young woman from the Marshall Islands had traveled to Hawaii to visit friends and family. Shortly after her arrival, she was approached by an agent from an adoption agency, and she signed over her unborn child for adoption. "It sounded aggressive, almost predator-like," said Jenkins, recounting the complaint registered recently with his agency by a relative of the expectant mother.

The Hawaii attorney general's office has launched an investigation to determine whether adoptive parents and Medicaid were double-billed for the hospital costs of women flown to the state from the Marshall Islands to give birth and then relinquish their newborn children. Christopher Young, the lawyer who directs the attorney general's Medicaid fraud unit, acknowledged that an investigation focusing on the billing practices of the agencies arranging the adoptions had begun. He said subpoenas had been issued to obtain records of adoptions involving recently arrived Marshallese women but declined to discuss details.

A MOTHER takes $300 in spending money and gives up her baby, not understanding that the child is lost to her for good. Another says an adoption agent told her she would shame her family if she didn't go through with the adoption. Luckily for the second mother, the adopting family saw her pain and sent her and her baby back home together. But many adoption stories of babies conceived in the Marshall Islands hold mischief and pain for both sides, as The Sun's Walter F. Roche Jr. reported Sunday and Monday.

For Valerie Shefik, the effort to adopt a second Marshallese child led to what she calls one of the most heart-wrenching experiences of her life. Valerie, 44, and her husband, Robert, 46, first adopted a Marshallese child in late 1997 through the TLC Adoption Agency in Washington state. The boy's adoption was approved by the Arizona courts and went smoothly. Nearly three years later, the Scottsdale, Ariz., couple were exploring the possibility of another adoption when Valerie Shefik got a call from TLC around Thanksgiving, telling her that a 7-year-old Marshallese girl "had to be placed quickly."

SARASOTA, Fla. - For two families in Florida, the pain of an adoption gone wrong is plainly visible on their faces. Carmen and Darlene Scoma talk sadly about the child from the Marshall Islands they thought they had legally claimed in Hawaii in 1997. For 4 1/2 years, Atina Erakdrik had been their daughter, until they lost her early last year after a bitter court battle. "She's our daughter. She will always be our daughter," says Darlene Scoma, her voice quavering. In Fruitland Park, 130 miles north, Atina's birth mother, Molly Juna, 31, who traveled more than 7,000 miles to reclaim her child, talks about the pain she endured during the protracted court fight.

Gale Monahan had an experience Thursday evening that some adoptees only dream of. She met her sister Teresa Muse, 47, for the first time in her life. The tearful meeting at Baltimore-Washington International Airport was a pivotal moment in a series of recent events that have introduced Monahan to a long-secret family, including two half-sisters and a half-brother. An avid trail rider, Monahan, 51, lives on Mink Hollow Road, just north of the Patuxent River in a rural corner of Howard County, with her husband and two horses.

The Supreme Court's ruling supporting Oregon's law allowing adult adoptees access to their birth records may have serious consequences for the future of adoption of American-born children. For decades, the prevailing practice in adoption has been to assure women who wanted to relinquish their newborn infants that, if they did so, their anonymity would be preserved. This promise of anonymity was also given to pregnant women contemplating adoption of their as-yet unborn. Their records would be sealed.