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The News-Journal

Life & Leisure

Wednesday, March 25, 1998

Sunflower Birthmoms seek to change Adoption laws

When she was 14, Alana Miller got pregnant by a soldier she was "crazy in love with." He was an E-4; she was a colonel's daughter. He shipped out to fight a war in Vietnam. She was sent to Florence Crittendon Home for Unwed Mothers in Charlotte.

At age 15 years and five months, Miller gave birth to a daughter. She held her for two days. Crying hysterically, she begged her parents not to make her give up the baby she loved. They told her to sign the papers that would release her baby for adoption. "You'll forget," Miller was told. "Go on with your life."

"Birth mothers do not forget." Miller says. "It doesn't happen. Cut off your arm and forget? Every day of my life I wondered about her. Is she OK? Is she happy? Is she alive?"

Miller is a member of Sunflower Birthmoms, an international group of mothers connected by the Internet who gave up their children and are searching for them or were recently reunited with them.

Sunflower Birthmoms is a part of a growing movement to have adoption laws changed. These mothers who gave up their children for adoption want access to birth records, medical histories and biological families for adult adoptees, and access to information concerning the welfare of their children for biological parents.

It took Miller, who is now 41, seven years to find her daughter. When she held her baby, she says, " I promised her I'd find her the minute she turned 18."

After her daughters birth, Miller was whisked away to Kansas, where she lived until a year ago. After she found her daughter in a small town near here, she moved back - after 25 years- to be close to her.

LEGAL FICTION

Millers' daughter was born in Mechlenburg County and adopted in Cumberland County, but her birth certificate indicates she was born in Sampson County.

Sunflower Birthmoms want to see such "legal fiction" come to an end. They have had these words printed on T-shirts they wear:" No more secrets. No more lies. Adoptees deserve their birth certificates."

Not just North Carolina, but all states allow for falsification of birth certificates, says the Birthmoms organization. In Arizona, an amended birth certificate of an adoptee looks like the original so that a person may not be aware that he or she was adopted. In many states, the date of birth may be changed at an adoptee's request. In Illinois, an adoptee learned her date of birth had been changed by an entire year.

Birthmoms is planning a march on Washington, DC on June 13 to bring attention to what they call "The right to know dilemma." Marchers want to see changes in laws that forbid the unsealing of adoption records-even when both parties consent.

The march in Washington will "peacefully and wholeheartedly protest closed adoption records and a century-long trail of broken hearts and broken families," Birthmoms say.

In Preparation for the march, Birthmoms is putting together-"one square at a time"- a quilt to take with them to represent what they call the "adoption triad"-"one square for every child, lost or found, who has had to endure the pain of feeling abandoned, one square for every birthmom who has had to endure the pain of not knowing where their children are, or if they are even alive, one square for every adoptive parent who has taken on someone else's child without knowing who or where they are."

NC LAW

North Carolina law sealed adoption records in 1938. Under current law, court records are closed upon adoption finalization. Non-identifying information is released to adult adoptees. Birth parents are entitled to no information, and there are no provisions for updating the records.

A bill-House Bill 126- that calls for a passive adoption registry of adults is being studied by a committee. The bill calls for a registry that allows for a match between a birth parent and a child if both register.

"We don't want this," Miller says. She cites inaccuracies of birth certificates which would prevent matches. She thinks legislators have "thrown us a bon. They want us to go away."

Miller wants to see a law change that would allow for an active registry in which only one party may register then be allowed to find the other party.

:We're talking adults here," Miller says. "We're not talking children. We're talking civil rights."

Miller says, "An adoptee does not have the right to her medical history. She doesn't have the right to her correct birth certificate. That's not right. You're allowed to have your birth certificate. I'm allowed to have mine. But, because of the circumstances of their birth, adoptees are denied their original birth certificates.

"Adoptees are bound by contracts made by others. Since the Emancipation Proclamation, you can't make contractual agreements concerning the ownership of human beings. You can't make contracts which limit or deny individual rights without the consent of all parties to the contract.

"Yet an adoptee is expected to adhere for a lifetime to an verbal or adoption contract which he or she was not even a participant in." Miller says laws which close adoption records were made supposedly to protect the confidentiality of birth mothers. "Most don't want it" she argues. "I was never promised confidentiality. I don't want it. I have never denied my daughters' existence. Anybody who ever knew me knew about my daughter after 5 minutes."

Miller decries the argument that access to birth records will lead to more abortions. Some states allow adoptees to have their original birth certificates, and studies do not indicate an increase in abortions, she says.

REUNIONS

Birthmoms is connected by the Internet with The Council for Equal Rights for Adoption (CERA) and 354 other adoption reform groups, adoption agencies and mental health organizations. Miller's affiliation with the group came because she wanted to communicate with others mothers who had given up their children as well as adoptees. " I found out I wasn't alone. I was amazed. I never dreamed there were so many people on the Internet searching and helping each other."

Sunflower Birthmoms reunited more than 150 mothers and children last year, Miller says. She scans the reunion page. There's a photo of Michelle and Missy with the caption" 34 years and back in my arms again"

Pictured are Barb with her two sons - one she raised and the other she was reunited with.

Marie is shown with two beautiful daughters, twins she was reunited with 1991.

Jennifer was reunited with her mother just two hours after they found each other. Jennifer remembered delivering pizza to her on a previous occasion.

Paula was reunited with son Mike on the day upstate New York experienced its worst snowstorm in years.

Diedre, Miller explains, had never spoken of the daughter she gave up 36 years ago. But only two months after "coming out of the closet," the two were reunited. They are pictured in a warm embrace.

Dolly Mae's story had no photo of a happy reunion. She learned that the mother she was looking for had been struck by a car and killed as she walked to her mailbox. But Dolly Mae had had a reunion with a brother she never knew she had.

NO CHOICE

Millers' thoughts about the daughter she bore, had taken from her arms, and was reunited with 25 years later reflect a roller coaster of feels. She recalls the day she gave up her daughter. " I had no say in the matter, but tell that to my heart. My hearts said I had given my baby away."

But a glimmer of the guilt she has felt all these years come through, and she says defensively, "I had no choice. It was 1971. Times have changed since then. Logically, I couldn't have raised her. Emotionally, she was my child."

Even thought she was only 15, not old enough to drive a car or buy a car, drop out of school, or buy an alcoholic drink, the young mother was forced into signing papers giving up her baby for adoption.

She asks, "How on earth was a 15 year old expected to sign a lifetime, legally binding contract with no legal representation, no guardian ad litem? How am I supposed to be bound to that contract when I had no idea of the legal ramifications of what I had signed?"

Miller says she returned to school after the birth of her daughter-as if nothing had happened. Even her grandparents were not told abut the baby. "My daughter was never spoken of again," she says.

"She had what I wanted for her: parents who loved her, a stable home and upbringing, Miller says about her daughter, but her own mother had died of breast cancer at the age of 44. "My daughter needed to know that, and the State of north Carolina would not given her that medical information." Then there was the promise she had made to the tiny aby 25 years earlier-that she would find her = and "begging for her forgiveness was high on my list."

The reunion has had its ups and downs. Miller's daughter was glad she moved her, but some things have happened since to hurt the relationship. "She's confused," she says about the daughter who looks so much like her.

Miller has contacted her daughter's father. Although she had not heard from him in 25 years, she remembered his hometown in Georgia and found him there. He told Miller, he too, had always cared for and wondered about the daughter he never saw. He has since spent time with her.

Miller has another child, a five year old daughter, Stephanie. And Miller is a grandmother because she found not only her daughter but a seven week old granddaughter.

Miller was married in Kansas, but did not have another child until she was 36. She and her husband are separated, but are considering a reconciliation. She says he will come her to live if they get back together.

Millers' story is much like those of many teenage mothers who gave up their children for adoption. She' has heard stories of young mothers who were forced to physically hand over their babies to the adoptive parents. And some mothers says pain medication was withheld during the birth process to "punish" them for getting pregnant without benefit of marriage.

On Millers' front door there is a large sunflower wreath. All her curtains have sunflower designs, in fact anywhere you look in her home, you see a sunflower. In the back yard, the daycare center she runs, the children have planted sunflower seeds that are just beginning to sprout.

Miller explains the sunflower symbol: "It starts from a sprout, gets bigger and stronger, and opens into a gigantic bloom. Birth moms are like that..They begin timidly. All have fear of rejection.

But then they find the child they lost and they blossom."