Birth Mother

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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)

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."