If you were an adopted child, you would have wondered about it. Probably still are.
Did you happen to read Steve Inskeep’s For Fifty Years, I Was Denied the Story of My Birth in the New York Times on March 28? He was adopted at birth. It was a ‘closed adoption.’ The biological parents and adoptive families were not allowed any identifying information about each other. Whereas he knew he was adopted, he knew nothing about the woman who gave birth to him, his father, or if he had any siblings. It was only in 2018 when the Indiana law changed—the state in which he was adopted—that he was able to obtain his adoption documents and learn about his mother.
The story wrenched enough hearts that the New York Times today, replaced its editorial page with letters from people who have spent their life yearning to know where they came from, from birth parents who yearn to know what happened to their baby, arguing if adoption records be open. I ran through my pack of tissues.
Should adoption records be made accessible? Are we rocking the boat by allowing adoptees to reconnect with their biological families? Do adoptees have a right to know? Psychologists, ethicists, et al can deliberate and make arguments for both sides, perhaps adding the caveat of mutual consent.
Decades ago—and I wasn’t even looking for it—I found the answer in the Qur’an, instructing mankind to call children by their father’s name. I dug deeper. What I learned was that the faith allows adoption, but it has to be an open adoption. The child should know his lineage and be identified as such. The Qur’an repeatedly urges us to take care of orphans. You can raise them as you raise your own, but there are boundaries. The boundaries maintain appropriate separation of the sexes, ensure legitimacy of relationships to prevent incest, and protect the inheritance rights of biological relations, while making provisions for adopted children. Adopted children are not in the line of inheritance, but one can will up to one-third of one’s assets for an adopted child.
Why would incest be a consideration? Allow me to explain. In Pakistan, adoption among families was quite common when I was growing up in the sixties. A couple is childless, a family member offers to give them their next born, they accept, the baby is handed over at birth, and the non-biological parents become the legal parents. Why not adopt a child from an orphanage? Why deal with the messiness of in-family adoptions? Because prospective parents want to know what they are getting, as in good genes. It’s an ‘all in the family’ attitude. Pakistanis are clannish.
So, do the parents tell the child the truth of where he or she came from? That the nice gentleman the child calls ‘uncle’ is really his biological father? In Pakistan, that is? Some tell, some don’t. And when they don’t is when they run into trouble. That is where incest becomes relevant. This dialogue actually took place:
Son: Dad, there is something I have to tell you.
Dad: Sure son, what is it?
Son: I think I am falling in love with …. and one day I would like to marry her.
Dad: Son, we need to talk.
At that point, Dad had to tell son that the girl he is falling in love with, is his sister.
There is more to the wisdom of open adoption, which we are discovering in the age of science and technology. Family medical history is a big one. Who qualifies to be a kidney donor? Is one at risk for heart disease? Then there is the DNA testing, making closed adoption a moot issue. And as the centuries roll by, who know what else will make sense to us—about open adoption. What American lawmakers are coming to terms with today i.e. the right to know, God, the All-Knowing, ordained in the Qur’an in the 7th century.
Tell the child where he came from.
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