Florence Anna Fisher was an American adoptee and author of The Search for Anna Fisher, an autobiography that told of her experiences as an adopted person who set out to search for her biological roots and pre-adoption identity. [1] She is considered one of the founders of the modern adoptee rights movement in the United States, having founded the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association in 1971.
Fisher spoke out strongly against the sealed records of closed adoption, which became commonplace in the mid-twentieth century. In a 1974 Time article, Fisher said, "People today are finding secrecy evil. They are more open and they want to know the truth." [2] She maintained that whether an adoptive home was supportive or abusive is irrelevant to the damage done by adoption, because adoptees still grapple with questions of identity. [3]
She died in Brooklyn, New York on October 1, 2023. [4]
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
The international adoption of South Korean children started around 1953 as a measure to take care of the large number of mixed children that became orphaned during and after the Korean War. It quickly evolved to include orphaned Korean children. Religious organizations in the United States, Australia, and many Western European nations slowly developed the apparatus that sustained international adoption as a socially integrated system.
A family reunion is an occasion when many members of an extended family congregate. Sometimes reunions are held regularly, for example on the same date of every year.
Closed adoption is a process by which an infant is adopted by another family, and the record of the biological parent(s) is kept sealed. Often, the biological father is not recorded—even on the original birth certificate. An adoption of an older child who already knows their biological parent(s) cannot be made closed or secret. This used to be the most traditional and popular type of adoption, peaking in the decades of the post-World War II Baby Scoop Era. It still exists today, but it exists alongside the practice of open adoption. The sealed records effectively prevent the adoptee and the biological parents from finding, or even knowing anything about each other. However, the emergence of non-profit organizations and private companies to assist individuals with their sealed records has been effective in helping people who want to connect with biological relatives to do so.
Operation Babylift was the name given to the mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other Western countries at the end of the Vietnam War, on April 3–26, 1975. By the final American flight out of South Vietnam, over 3,300 infants and children had been airlifted, although the actual number has been variously reported. Along with Operation New Life, over 110,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War. Thousands of children were airlifted from Vietnam and adopted by families around the world.
In the United States, adoption is the process of creating a legal parent–child relationship between a child and a parent who was not automatically recognized as the child's parent at birth.
Open adoption is a form of adoption in which the biological and adoptive families have access to varying degrees of each other's personal information and have an option of contact. While open adoption is a relatively new phenomenon in the west, it has been a traditional practice in many Asian societies, especially in South Asia, for many centuries. In Hindu society, for example, it is relatively common for a childless couple to adopt the second or later son of the husband's brother when the childless couple has limited hope of producing their own child.
The Adoption Information Disclosure Act, formally An Act respecting the disclosure of information and records to adopted persons and birth parents, also known as Bill 183, is an Ontario (Canada) law regarding the disclosure of information between parties involved in adoptions.
Interracial adoption refers to the act of placing a child of one racial or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another racial or ethnic group.
Beulah George "Georgia" Tann was an American social worker and child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an unlicensed adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s to 1950. Young children were kidnapped and then sold to wealthy families, abused, or—in some instances—murdered. A state investigation into numerous cases of adoption fraud led to the institution's closure in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.
Tennessee Children's Home Society was a chain of orphanages that operated in the state of Tennessee during the first half of the twentieth century. It is most often associated with Georgia Tann, its Memphis branch operator and child trafficker who was involved in the kidnapping of children and their illegal adoptions.
Jane Jeong Trenka is a South Korean activist and an award-winning writer. She is the president of the organization TRACK.
Concerned United Birthparents, Inc. (CUB), a non-profit organization established in 1976, is one of two primary nationwide organizations offering support to the biological parents of adopted people in the United States. The organization is credited with the creation of the term "birthparent."
Sasha Alexander Gilbert is a Russian-born New Zealand adoption advocate, writer and media presenter, and is the founder of the organisation I'm Adopted which he established in 2015.
Transracial is a label used by people who identify as a different race than the one they were born into. They may adjust their appearance to make themselves look more like that race, and may participate in activities associated with that race. Use of the word transracial to describe this is new and has been criticized, because the word was historically used to describe a person raised by adoptive parents of a different ethnic or racial background, such as a Black child adopted and raised by a White couple.
There have been several high-profile cases of deportation of Korean adoptees from the United States. Prior to the passage of the Child Citizenship Act of 2000, the adoptive parents of adoptees had to file for their child to naturalize before the age of 16. Many parents were unaware of this requirement, assuming that their adopted children automatically derived citizenship from them, and therefore did not apply. The Child Citizenship Act sought to remedy this issue by extending citizenship to all international adoptees who were under 18 at the time that the bill was passed, but did not apply retroactively. This left those adopted by American families prior to 1983 vulnerable to deportations.
Bernice Gottlieb is an early leader in the trans-racial adoption movement in the United States. In later years, she led a residential real estate firm and authored several books, including one on adoption.
Found is a 2021 documentary film directed and produced by Amanda Lipitz. An international co-production of the United States and China, it follows three adopted teenage girls who discover they are blood-related cousins on 23andMe and travel to China seeking answers about their identity and family history.
Return to Seoul is a 2022 drama film written and directed by Davy Chou, starring Ji-Min Park as a 25-year-old French adoptee who travels to South Korea seeking her biological parents.
Adoptee rights are the legal and social rights of adopted people relating to their adoption and identity. These rights frequently center on access to information which is kept sealed within closed adoptions, but also include issues relating to intercultural or international adoption, interracial adoption, and coercion of birthparents. Adoption reform efforts are often led by adoptee rights activists.