Reader's Blog: Adoptees must receive their basic human rights
A blood relative loses touch with a family member and after many years decides they would like to know how that family member is, perhaps be in touch, but for the moment know that they are alive and well.
The only way to find this person is through a State agency but the State agency says there are no contact details on record. Disappointed, upset, the relative lets the matter drop but continues to think about that missing family member.
Sixteen years later the relative gets a call from the State agency to say that actually a name and address are on record but they refuse to provide the information. Instead they tell the relative to wait another two-and-a-half years after which time the agency will make contact on their behalf.
The relative persists, aware that the family member could have passed away during those 18 years. After many letters, phone calls, delays, the details are finally released in a document. They are however obliterated by Tippex.
How would that blood relative feel? Undoubtedly they would feel a sense of unnecessary interference by the State in what is essentially a private family matter.
This has been my experience as an adopted person and a familiar experience for 100,000 other adoptees in Ireland right now.
Despite being separated at birth and despite the best efforts of the Catholic Church and the State to keep us apart, we are families; blood relatives just like everyone else and have a right to private family interactions.
As adopted people, we are tired of the State and the Catholic Churches interference, tired of being denied access to our very birth certificates.
Tired of the nation ignoring 796 children and infants in a septic tank in Tuam and in another mass grave in Bessborough.
We have marriage equality, we have repealed the Eighth Amendment. We have made magnificent progress as a nation but we will never be a New Ireland until we acknowledge the everyday, casual discrimination, hurt and pain caused to those of us who were stamped with the label: “illegitimate”.
We are tired of being told to be patient that our turn will come once other issues have been dealt with. We have waited all our lives and have been fighting all our lives for basic human rights. It’s our turn.
