The Adoption Council of Canada ACC

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The Adoption Council of Canada (ACC)
Response to Bill 60, An Act to Amend the Family
Services Act (Safe Haven Legislation)
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Agenda

• About the ACC
• Our Position
• History
• Istituto degli Innocenti
• Research
• Unintended Consequences
• Testimonials
• Recommendations
• Conclusion
• Contact
• Questions

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Our Mission

• The ACC is a federally incorporated charitable
  body which aims to
• Inform and educate about all aspects of the
  adoption of children for Canadians
• Provide understanding of the benefits and
  challenges of adoption for children,
  birth-families, and adoptive parents
• Promote the placement of waiting children in
  permanent loving families
• Stress the importance of post-adoption services
  for families and adoptees and,
• Facilitate communication among all groups and
  individuals concerned.

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Our Position on Safe Haven Legislation

• The ACC strongly supports policies and practices
  that protect the safety and health of all
  children and youth, but we DO NOT believe that
  safe haven legislation is an effective way to
  meet this goal.
• The ACC believes that children have a right to
  information about their identity (their birth
  mother, birth father, or other family members
  their heritage their culture their family
  medical history, etc.) and that theyand their
  adoptive familieswill benefit from having this
  information.

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The History of Safe Havens

• Istituto degli Innocenti , early orphanages
• 15th Century (1419) in Florence, Italy
• At first, abandoned babies were left in a kind of
  holy-water basin, which stood on the right side
  of the loggia.
• Physical and moral protection of the "gettatelli"
  (literally, "thrown away" children) was provided
  up to the age of 18 for the boys, while the girls
  were offered hospitality until they married.

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Istituto degli Innocenti

• In the second half of the 17th century the basin
  was replaced by a "wheel", a revolving stone
  placed at the opposite end of the loggia, which
  remained in service up to the second half of the
  19th century.
• Era of secrecy and shame around pregnancies of
  young, unwed mothers.

The "wheel" at the Hospital of the Innocent,
Florence.
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Safe Havens in the 21st Century?

• Do we want to take social policy back to the
  middle ages?
• Safe haven legislation has been implemented in
  numerous states and we can look to their findings
  as yet another example of why NOT to proceed with
  Bill 60.

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Research Unintended Consequences of Safe Have
Legislation

• According to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
  Institutes report, Unintended Consequences,
  safe haven laws are CAUSING problems, not solving
  them.

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Research Unintended Consequences of Safe Have
Legislation

• Available information suggests few babies are
  left at safe havens in states that provide them.
  Even when they have this option, girls and women
  continue to leave newborns in bathrooms, trash
  bins and parking lots.
• Furthermore, experts question whether the people
  using safe havens would otherwise have abandoned
  their babies unsafely.

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Research Unintended Consequences of Safe Have
Legislation

• There are also indications that these new laws
  lead to unintended consequences, including
• perpetuating the idea that an unplanned pregnancy
  is shameful and that a mother in this situation
  should abandon her child
• encouraging women to conceal pregnancies, then
  abandon infants who otherwise would have been
  placed in adoptions through established legal
  procedures or would have been raised by
  biological parents or relatives
• creating the opportunity for upset family
  members, disgruntled boyfriends, or others who
  have no legal rights, to abandon babies without
  the birth mothers consent
• inducing abandonment by women who otherwise would
  not have done so because it seems easier than
  receiving parenting counselling or making an
  adoption plan

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Research Unintended Consequences of Safe Have
Legislation

• depriving biological fathers of their legal right
  to care for their sons or daughters even if they
  have the desire and personal resources to do so
• ensuring that the children who are abandoned can
  never learn their genealogical or medical
  histories, even when the consequences for their
  health are dire
• precluding the possibility of personal contact
  and/or the exchange of medical information
  between birth parents and children in the future
  and
• sending a signal, especially to young people,
  that they do not have to assume responsibility
  for their actions and that deserting ones
  children is acceptable.

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Testimonial

• How can this Bill pass when Child Abandonment
  is an offence under the federal criminal code? A
  provincial law to supersede the federal criminal
  code is not possible. Even if this bill could be
  re-written it would still be a violation for the
  rights of the child. If a desperate mother is
  allowed 72 hours to place their newborn at an
  emergency room without penalty, how can it be
  proven that this is the mother of that child?
  How are we to know that this child wasn't taken?
  How do we know the mental state of the mother?
  Babies and children do need to be protected,
  however this Bill is not the answer. This Bill
  is encouraging babies be abandoned, when there is
  a good possibility that these children could be
  raised by biological families. In being
  abandoned 'legally' these children will lose all
  of their biological background that can never be
  found. These children have a right to their
  identity, to their heredity and to their medical
  information. If they are abandoned in this
  proposed 'Safe Haven' this will all be lost. I
  hope this Bill does not pass. I am a reunited
  adoptee, and I know how important my biological
  information is. I know how important identity
  is.
• Marnie Tetz

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Testimonial - FMNFS

• FMNFS believes that children have a right to
  know who they are and all the information about
  them. They have a right to know who their family
  is, as well as their biological, hereditary and
  medical information. Although the Safe Haven
  Legislation may offer a place to protect babies
  and children, it does not go far enough in
  addressing the personal and emotional needs of
  the relinquished child. The Legislation should
  support the connection of a child to its mother
  and/or any other family members. The Legislation
  should support the need for a child to know their
  history, culture, and lineage in order to help
  the child develop and maintain their identity.
• About FMNFS The Forget Me Not Family Society
  (FMNFS) is a provincially registered, non-profit
  society, and a registered federal society,
  located in the lower mainland of British
  Columbia. The Society was formed for education,
  consultation, peer counseling and to offer
  support to all those touched by adoption.

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Testimonial Parent Finders Canada

• Because we recognize the fundamental social and
  psychological importance of knowing ones
  origins, Parent Finders cannot and does not, in
  any way, support the idea of anonymous baby
  drops. These baby drops operate under the false
  idea that unwed motherhood is something to be
  hidden and a source of deep shame to the family
  and the community of the unfortunate woman in
  such circumstances. The idea that the mother can
  safely drop off her "source of shame" with no
  ties and no obligations, and that the child will
  go on to lead a happier life without the attached
  stigma of her origins, is simply wrong. All
  important information about the genetic and
  social history of the child is completely lost in
  the process, and the mother, rather than putting
  this event behind her, often suffers lifelong
  issues of loss, shame and sadness. (continued)

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Testimonial Parent Finders Canada

• Parent Finders of Canada knows, from long
  experience, that such thinking is not only wrong
  it is damaging to all parties concerned. The
  child does not live in a vacuum, and without
  knowledge of his or her origins, can have
  lifelong identity problems. Leaving a baby on a
  turn-table basket attached to a wheel in a wall
  is not a donation to the Goodwill store. Young
  distraught women need to be assisted and
  supported within their communities and not
  offered "quick fix" answers which lead them to
  think they have done the right thing because
  society sanctions it. Such legislation smacks of
  old-fashioned secrecy and a return to the days of
  no-name maternity homes and orphanages.
• About Parent Finders Canada Parent Finders of
  Canada was founded in 1974 as a volunteer run
  organization dedicated to reuniting families
  separated by adoption.

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Policy and Practice Recommendations

• Rather than move to safe haven legislation after
  the death of an abandoned child, the ACC
  recommends that provinces and territories
• Strengthen their investment in prenatal and other
  family support for young, single, or at-risk
  parents or prospective parents
• Create and fund a community awareness campaign
  about the options of adoption, kinship care, and
  family support
• Develop a child welfare helpline and,
• Create and fund programs to educate teachers,
  parents, doctors, counsellors, and others about
  how to identify concealed pregnancies and support
  affected women.

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Concluding Thoughts

• The ACC echoes the conclusions reached by the
  Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
• Despite the wide and rapid proliferation of
  safe haven statutes, girls and women are still
  endangering their newborns by abandoning them.
  The vast majority of those who do use safe
  havens, in the absence of these laws, would
  likely be willing to make adoption plans. Others
  undoubtedly would leave their babies in hospitals
  after delivery, especially if they received
  confidentiality and easy access to those medical
  facilities. By providing a no hassle route for
  ending parental responsibility, safe haven laws
  encourage mothers to conceal their pregnancies,
  give birth unsafely and leave their children
  anonymously, undermining established and
  effective child welfare and adoption policy as
  well as the long-term interests of birth parents
  and their infants.

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Contact Information

• To learn more about the ACC, please do not
  hesitate to contact us or to visit us online
• Adoption Council of Canada
• Toll free1-888-54-ADOPT (1-888-542-3678)
• Local number 613-235-0344
• Email info_at_adoption.ca
• Online www.adoption.ca
• It is our belief that together, we can further
  the cause and increase adoption understanding
  among the public, the media, and the key decision
  makers.

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Questions?