The Adoption Files

by Marilyn Churney
Chatelaine
April 2008

Pregnant and terrified in 1968, Marilyn Churley was told to give up her baby and forget she had him. She couldn't. Now a politician, she's fighting so other kids and parents can uncover a crucial part of their history, too.

by Marilyn Churney, as told to Anna-Kaisa Walker

On January 30, 1968, I gave birth to a baby boy. Before I even go to hold him, I gave him up for adoption to strangers.

I was 18 and became pregnant my first year away from home, at university. I was too terrified to tell my parents. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution and I had tried to get birth control, but my doctor refused to prescribe it, saying it would make me promiscuous.

I gave the baby up, but not because I wanted to; I knew I could be a good mother. But there really was no other choice. As I stared at my son through the nursery window at the hospital, my last words to him were "I will find you someday." Twenty-eight years later, after much searching, I did. I wanted to know that he was happy and had found a good family. But I never imagined I would get involved in a whole new struggle.

Until recently, the world seldom heard a birth mother's side of the story. When I was growing up in Labrador, there was so much shame associated with getting pregnant out of wedlock. Some people considered it a fate worse than death. Girls were sent off to homes for unwed mothers, their families saying they had "gone to visit an aunt." After you gave birth and surrendered your child to the state, you were told, "Don't worry, dear. You've made a mistake, and now you can go ahead and get on with your life."

When I gave birth at a hospital in a small Ontario town I was alone for 24 hours in a tiny room, with just a clock on the wall and nothing to distract me from the terrible pain and fear. By the time they wheeled me into the delivery room, I was hysterical. At one point, I tried to jump off the table, but the nurses threatened to tie me down. I pushed the baby out - and then they started to take him away. I screamed at them to come back, and they relented and showed him to me. He was covered in mucus and blood, but I thought he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

It haunted me for the rest of my days that I never got to hold him. I thought about him all the time. I believed there was something wrong with me because I couldn't forget.

Adoption is a lot more common than most people realize, especially in the era between the Second World War and Roe vs. Wade. When you count up all the birth parents, adoptive parents, siblings and grandparents, there are over a million Canadians with a connection to adoption. A lot of women from that era gave their babies up, but not many of them became the registrar general of Ontario. As a cabinet minister in the early 1990's, I had access to all the province's birth records, including my son's secret file. But I never looked at it, because it would have been wrong. It drove me crazy. I had secret fantasies about sneaking a look, but I never did, because I didn't want to take advantage of my position and do what nobody else could.

Instead, I used my role as a legislator to work to get the laws changed. Ontario has had an archaic system: In order for an adoptee to get his birth parent's information and vice versa, both parties have to write in to the government and be included in what's called a disclosure registry. You could apply and wait up to 10 years for them to check for a match because the program was so underfunded. If there isn't one, they close the file. That's what happened to me.

Luckily, I was eventually able to find my son, Billy, through a non-profit called Parent Finders. We corresponded for a while, and finally we agreed to meet. I was so excited that day; my dream was finally coming true. When he opened his front door, we just stood there and drank each other in with our eyes. Then he held out his arms to me. Thinking about that still makes me soar.

In 1997, I read about Joni Mitchell's reunion with her birth daughter, Kilauren Gibb. I was an Ontario MPP at the time, and I read an article about how Kilauren's adoptive parents worried about losing her to her famous birth mother. For the first time, I felt compelled to speak out.

I wrote an article for The Toronto Star about finding my son. I wanted to make sure people knew there was another side to these stories. Before the piece ran, I phoned Billy's adoptive parents to warn them. I had never spoken to them before, and I was nervous. Billy's father was emotional when he told me they had always considered me a part of their family and that they recognized that my sacrifice created their happiness. It was the most incredible moment.

Over the past decade, I have introduced five private member's bills in the Ontario parliament, working with the adoption community to get provincial laws reformed. Some other provinces, like British Columbia, Newfoundland and Alberta, have new laws that allow adoptees and birth parents to access original records. They can find out each other's names and medical histories. A contact veto allows either party to say they don't want to be contacted, and there's a huge fine for violating it.

What other provinces also have, and what we're fighting against, is a disclosure veto: Either party can prevent the other from having access to any information at all. (Australia, for one, has thrown such a veto out.) We think this information is fundamental, in terms of the emotional well-being of the birth mother and the adoptee, and because of the health of thousands of Ontario adoptees is at risk. It's more important than ever for individuals to know their genetic histories. You can get pre-screened for certain kinds of cancers if you know they're in your family. As it stands, adoptees don't have that kind of information.

In 2005, the law we had been fighting for, called the Adoption Information Disclosure Act, finally passed. I was elated. But three adoptees and a birth father, led by a prominent lawyer Clayton Ruby, launched a consitutional challenge against it. The Ontario Supreme Court judge Edward Belobab struck down the new law last September, on the grounds that, without a disclosure veto, the law violated the rights to privacy.

But we're not giving up. Now, the Ontario Liberal government has introduced a new bill that includes a disclosure veto. It has the support of all three parties and will be passed sometime in the spring.

I know not all adoption reunions are happy, but there is ample evidence that people feel better just knowing the facts. I feel so fortunate that Billy has a great family and I continue to have a special relationship with him. But the bottom line is that a birth mother has the right to know what happened to her child, even if they never meet face to face. The monumental experience of carrying and giving birth to a child creates a bond that is unbreakable. The crime of the past was that young women were told we could give birth, relinquish the baby and then forget we'd ever had him or her. But for me, that was impossible.

Marilyn Churley is writing a book based on her experience.