WOMEN PURSUED BY OUR PASTS

By Kathleen Hoy Foley

Countless, faceless terrified women across New Jersey are hiding from the pursuit of their pasts. Pasts that we have kept hidden from our families and friends, colleagues, all those who know us. Pasts that involve an unwanted pregnancy and an adoption. These pregnancies resulted from a myriad of devastating circumstances, including rape and incest and other abuses. Some of us were coerced into carrying pregnancies to term by religious beliefs, social pressure or the unavailability of personally appropriate options; some choose to go forward with an unwanted pregnancy for private reasons. For all of us, adoption with its guarantees of confidentiality and expectation of anonymity granted us the opportunity to rebuild our lives.

Continuing to label girls and women who endured crisis pregnancies with the antiquated and cruel misnomer, Birth Mother, promotes sentimental societal and adoptee fantasies of loss and longing. This familial terminology and attendant attitude encourages adoptees to selfishly disregard the realities of a catastrophic pregnancy and the emotional injuries that never subside over time. By way of misguided, self-proclaimed entitlement to biology, spouting new spun beliefs that perpetuate the lie that women who suffered unwanted pregnancies should be emotionally healed because of the changing attitudes of a more tolerant society, a contingent of adoptees persist in pushing legislation forward that will open adoption records that have been sealed by law for decades. Additionally, the fearful silence of women in hiding is exploited by “experts” brandishing statistics claiming we want to be found. In truth, the opening of these records exposes women to strangers demanding our most private medical and personal information. Information that our own families are not entitled to.

At fifteen years old I became entrapped in a relationship and suffered a year and a half of abuse and rape that resulted in pregnancy. Suicidal and wracked with despair, I was completely incapable of articulating what had been happening to me. With no other options available at the time, I had no choice but to go through with the pregnancy. What rescued me emotionally was the belief that the birth would be the end of my ordeal and I would be free to restart my life. Over thirty years later, after a violation of my confidentiality, the adoptee obtained my privileged information and sent me letters demanding contact. When I refused, she hunted down family members and divulged the secret I had been guarding. Despite my attorney advising her that her continued contacts were causing me severe emotional distress and requesting that she cease all contact with me and my family, ten years later she still continues her quest. Breeching all standards of decency, this adoptee recently circulated over the internet highly personal and private information about me she gleaned from my confidential files, along with the delusional love story she has created to deny the truth of her conception. Additionally, she revealed all this to unsuspecting extended relatives and acquaintances of mine.

Passage of this pending legislation assures that women in hiding will be tracked down and found either by the adoptee pursing them or the State of New Jersey—probably both—insisting we give up our rights to privacy and publicly disclose intimate information about ourselves. This legislation leaves us completely vulnerable; helpless against the power of the State and defenseless against ambush and harassment by unwelcome strangers who choose bullying to incite contact. Should we need a restraining order, we are not protected by the Domestic Violence Law and would be required to appear in court with the offending adoptee, whose mission—contact by whatever means necessary—is then accomplished.

New Jersey’s legislators and Governor Corzine need to respect and safeguard our personal rights. While the State may be able to facilitate mutually consensual meetings between the biological carrier and the adoptee, it must guarantee every possible protection for women rightfully choosing anonymity.

Women in hiding are hiding for a reason. We are frightened of being forced into reliving the nightmare of our ordeals and terrified of public exposure and its risks to the stability of our lives. To come fully forward and identify ourselves by name and fearlessly speak our truth in our own voices is an emotionally crippling, unachievable task for most of us. So, our voices go unheard. Our experiences trivialized. And we are left at the mercy of our silence.

Unwanted pregnancies are a tragic fact of life. Many of them end in termination. The torment the adoptee in my case has inflicted upon me over these last ten years has at times been unbearable. Who would opt for adoption and carry a crisis pregnancy to term when she knows years later she will face the possibility of such abuse? A girl or woman forced or who chooses to carry a crisis pregnancy to term must be guaranteed permanent anonymity by law, if that is what she chooses. Those of us who were guaranteed confidentiality in the past have every right to demand that our legislators respect and honor those promises, despite the emotional wishes of those who want to deny us basic human dignity of personal privacy.

We all enjoy the grace and blessing of life with all its beauty and injustice. Regardless of the personal stories of our beginnings, we are always who we choose to be. Never does our grief give us permission to impose anguish on another. The love and connection we seek rests already within us and inside those we love and who love us, not within a manufactured fantasy.