Monica Yant Kinney: A matter of life and love: Adoptee finally finds roots

Susan Perry never felt the urge to pry. Adopted at 3 months in 1950 by a Haddonfield couple, the English teacher lived a rich life made possible by the sacrifice of a stranger.

"I looked at my birth mother as an integral part of my life, but I had tremendous parents," says Perry, 60, a grandmother from Cherry Hill. "I didn't need a new family."

Ultimately, "a scary bout of melanoma" in her late 40s convinced Perry she could ill afford to remain in the dark about her roots.

Doctors urgently needed to analyze her family tree to decide whether to put her in a clinical trial. To her astonishment and disgust, Perry learned New Jersey adoptees' original birth certificates are forever sealed and off-limits.

That singular slight - a denial of "my basic human rights" - led Perry to wade into a decades-long state fight that was to have been resolved this summer. But then Gov. Christie shot down the adoptee rights and records bill that had finally passed both the Assembly and Senate.

This from a governor whose sister is adopted.

"When I started, I really didn't know where I stood on the issue," admits Sen. Diane Allen (R., Burlington), who spent more than a decade holding hearings where anguished adoptees bemoaned their unique identity crisis.

Who else in society must rely on doctored documents that tell an incomplete life story? Who else is presumed guilty of intending harm by mailing a letter to a stranger with matching DNA?

"After taking hundreds of hours of testimony and reading information I could stack 10 feet high," Allen continues, "I came to believe, as did everybody on our committee, that adoptees were being treated like second-class citizens."

The trick, the veteran legislator realized, was how to grant adoptees rights without trampling on those of birth mothers harboring painful secrets.

Critics include an odd coupling of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Catholic Church. The Church argues that abortion rates could soar if birth mothers are not guaranteed anonymity. But that claim is undercut both by the trend in open adoptions and by the long arm of the Internet.

"The opposition is built on mythology, stereotypes, and generations of secrecy," counters Adam Pertman, who runs the nonpartisan Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York. "We have research showing 95 percent of these women are fine with opening records and having contact. They want to know about the lives they created."

Christie, meanwhile, wants adoptees to use paid adoption-agency intermediaries to conduct searches and control information. He'd allow birth parents to refuse identification and contact, but would require them to provide health histories.

At a news conference, Christie said both his sister and his faith had influenced his decision.

"When you can get the Catholic Conference and the ACLU to agree on something," he joked, "man, you'd better run for that door."

Perry sees nothing funny about the setback the governor created, having spent $2,500 on her quest.

She tried the intermediary route, unsuccessfully. One adoption-agency employee dismissed her search as "idle curiosity."

She hired a lawyer, in vain.

Finally, after having a toe amputated and remaining fearful the cancer would spread, Perry hired a private investigator.

"Twenty-four hours later, I knew my birth mother's name and wrote her a certified letter." A week later, the 80-year-old woman called.

"I told her about my daughters and thanked her for giving me life."

Perry's ailing birth mother didn't want a relationship, but gladly provided medical information and explained that she had kept the pregnancy a secret from family.

"She told me she loved me," Perry sniffs. "That's what they're blocking - reconciliation and closure. How can anyone be against that?"