The Criminalization of Adoptee Truth:
When the Law Protects Secrecy Over Survivors
In Australia, adoptees — particularly those from the era of forced adoptions — have long been denied access to their own histories. Now, with new laws criminalizing the public sharing of adoption papers, the state has gone a step further: not only were these individuals taken from their mothers without consent, their identities erased by legal fiction, but they are now threatened with up to seven years in prison if they attempt to reclaim and share their own records.
This is not about privacy. This is about state-enforced silence.
The Injustice of Adoption Secrecy
For decades, Australian adoption laws have prioritized the secrecy of the system over the rights of adoptees. Forced adoptions — practised widely from the 1940s through the 1970s — ripped thousands of infants from their unmarried mothers, often under duress, coercion, or outright deception. These children were placed into adoptive families where their original birth certificates were sealed, and new ones were issued as if their biological parents had never existed.
Now, many of these adoptees, now adults, are fighting to reclaim their past — only to find that the government is doubling down on its commitment to keeping them erased.
The fact that an adoptee can now face up to seven years in prison simply for sharing their own adoption documents is a moral disgrace. These are not confidential government files detailing national security risks. These are personal records of who they are, records that were falsified by the very system now punishing them for wanting the truth.
Adoptees as Criminals in Their Own Lives
Imagine being stolen at birth, handed to strangers, your name altered by the state, and decades later when you try to uncover your origins, you are threatened with prison. This is the reality for many adoptees in Australia, where the law protects the anonymity of the adoption industry but punishes those who were victimized by it.
- An adoptee’s birth certificate is a state-altered document, often erasing the names of their biological parents and replacing them with their adoptive ones.
- Many adoptees are denied access to their own unaltered records without extensive legal hurdles.
- Now, sharing what little they have found can be classified as doxxing, despite the fact that these records concern their own identities.
The state, which once dictated where they would live, who would raise them, and what names they would answer to, now dictates who is allowed to know their truth.
What Are They Hiding?
The Australian government formally apologized for forced adoptions in 2013. But what is an apology worth if the same government continues to uphold the secrecy, shame, and punishment that defined these adoptions in the first place?
These laws are not protecting the vulnerable. They are protecting the system.
They are protecting the people who profited from the separation of mothers and babies.
They are protecting institutions that falsified records, altered identities, and told generations of adoptees they were unwanted when, in reality, their mothers had fought for them.
They are protecting the fiction of adoption, where children are “chosen” rather than taken, where mothers “gave up” their babies instead of being forced into it.
If the adoption industry was truly ethical, it would not need secrecy laws to function.
Where Is the Justice?
It is an outrage that no one involved in Australia’s forced adoption era was ever held legally accountable. Hospitals, churches, social workers, and government agencies systematically stole babies under the guise of “helping” unmarried mothers, and yet not one perpetrator has faced criminal charges.
And yet, an adoptee, sharing their own truth, could now face up to seven years in prison.
What does that say about who the law truly protects?
The Right to Exist, Uncensored
Adoptees are not state secrets. Their histories are not government property. The criminalization of sharing adoption records is not about privacy — it is about controlling the narrative, about maintaining the power structures that have kept adoptees silent, disempowered, and erased for decades.
Australia must reckon with the reality that its adoption laws are not about the best interests of children but about protecting the institutions that built their power on the erasure of family ties. Until adoptees are given full, unrestricted access to their own records, until they can share their truths without fear of prosecution, the apology for forced adoption remains meaningless.
The Criminalization of Adoptee Truth: Bureaucratic Erasure and State Control
In the first part of this discussion, we explored how adoptees — particularly those affected by forced adoption — are systematically denied access to their own histories. This is not an accident, nor is it a simple oversight. It is by design, a function of state control that ensures adoptees remain dependent on bureaucratic permission to reclaim their own identities.
But what does this look like in practice? How does an individual, taken as an infant and reassigned a new name, experience the weight of this system decades later? The answer lies in the documents themselves — the paper trail of legal erasure that adoption leaves behind.
Erasing the Birth Identity
One of the most insidious aspects of forced adoption is how it legally rewrites history. When a child is placed for adoption, a new birth certificate is issued, replacing the original. This new document:
- Removes the biological parents’ names
- Lists the adoptive parents as if they were the birth parents
- Erases any record of the child’s original identity
To the state, the adoptee’s past is gone. It does not exist. The new identity is the only one that matters.
This practice — still legal in many countries, including Australia — is a fundamental violation of an individual’s right to the truth of their own existence. While some may argue that it is done for the sake of integration or protection, the reality is much darker: it is about control.
An adoptee who does not know their origins cannot challenge the system that took them. An adoptee who is forced to navigate government red tape just to access their own birth records remains under the state’s authority long after childhood has ended.
The Speed of Erasure
One of the most alarming details in historical adoption records is how quickly the process was finalized. In many cases, within just a few weeks of birth, the child was:
✔️ Taken from the mother
✔️ Given to adoptive parents
✔️ Assigned a new identity
✔️ Legally erased from their original family
There was no reconsideration period. No time for the mother to assess whether she wanted to raise her child. No thorough search for the father’s consent. The goal was efficiency — because adoption was not about the child’s best interests. It was about providing adoptive families with babies as quickly as possible.
The question must be asked: If adoption was truly about the well-being of the child, why was speed prioritized over thoughtful decision-making?
Paternal Rights: The Unseen Parent
Another glaring issue in adoption records is the routine exclusion of the birth father. In many cases, his name was either:
🚫 Never recorded
🚫 Marked as “unknown”
🚫 Legally deemed irrelevant to the process
This was not accidental. The system was built to ensure that fathers — especially those who were unaware of the pregnancy or separated from the mother — had no opportunity to claim their children.
If adoption was truly about the best interests of the child, then:
- Why were fathers systematically erased from the process?
- Why were children not given the chance to know both sides of their biological history?
The answer, again, lies in control. A child with missing information is easier to assimilate into their assigned identity.
Restricted Access: The Adoptee as a Second-Class Citizen
For decades, adoptees have had to fight for basic access to their own birth records. Even today, in cases where records are unsealed, there are restrictions:
- Names and addresses are often redacted.
- A birth parent’s consent may still be required to access certain information.
- Legal hurdles remain in place to “protect privacy” — but whose privacy is really being protected?
The answer is clear: not the adoptee’s. The privacy that is being protected is that of the system — the agencies, institutions, and governments that built their power on these separations.
If a person cannot access the truth of their own birth without government approval, then who truly owns their identity?
The Lasting Impact of State-Controlled Identity
The effects of these practices do not end when an adoptee turns 18, 30, or even 60. They last a lifetime. The psychological, emotional, and legal consequences of forced adoption remain embedded in the lives of those affected.
Adoptees continue to experience:
🔹 Legal barriers to retrieving their full birth records
🔹 A lack of medical history, creating health risks for themselves and their children
🔹 A disrupted sense of identity, exacerbated by the knowledge that their original name, family, and history were erased by law
This is not just a historical injustice — it is an ongoing human rights violation.
What Needs to Change?
For adoptees to truly have justice, the system must be reformed to recognize:
✔️ Full access to original birth certificates without restrictions
✔️ The right to know biological family medical history
✔️ Legal recognition that forced identity erasure was and is a violation of human rights
✔️ Accountability for past and present forced adoptions
The Australian government apologized for forced adoptions in 2013, but words without action are meaningless. Until adoptees have full ownership over their own histories, the state remains complicit in the crime of identity erasure.
Adoptees are not state secrets. Their histories are not confidential government property. The act of sealing, redacting, and restricting access to personal information is not about protection — it is about continuing to exert control over a population that was never given a choice.
In the first part of this discussion, we explored how adoptees — particularly those affected by forced adoption — are systematically denied access to their own histories. This is not an accident, nor is it a simple oversight. It is by design, a function of state control that ensures adoptees remain dependent on bureaucratic permission to reclaim their own identities.
But beyond access to information, there is another fundamental injustice: adoptees are permanently trapped in a legal identity that they did not choose, even if the adoption has failed or they have reunited with their original family. Unlike marriages or other legal arrangements, there is no available method to discharge an adoption, even in adulthood.
The Permanent Legal Fiction of Adoption
One of the most insidious aspects of forced adoption is how it legally rewrites history. When a child is placed for adoption, a new birth certificate is issued, replacing the original. This new document:
- Removes the biological parents’ names
- Lists the adoptive parents as if they were the birth parents
- Erases any record of the child’s original identity
To the state, the adoptee’s past is gone. It does not exist. The new identity is the only one that matters.
For many adoptees, this legal fiction becomes an unbearable burden — particularly in cases of:
✔️ Failed adoptions — where the adoptive family was abusive, negligent, or severed ties with the adoptee
✔️ Adoptees who have reunited with their biological families and wish to legally restore their birth identity
✔️ Adoptees who do not wish to remain legally bound to adoptive parents for personal, emotional, or legal reasons
Unlike a marriage, which can be dissolved through divorce, or a legal name change, which is a straightforward process, an adoptee cannot legally discharge their adoption — no matter how harmful or unnecessary it has become.
The Lack of a No-Fault, No-Fee Adoption Discharge
Currently, there is no immediate, accessible process for adoptees to opt out of their assigned legal status. If an adoption has failed, if an adoptee has reunited with their birth family, or if they simply do not wish to carry the identity imposed upon them, they are trapped in a legal status that was never their choice.
This is an egregious violation of personal autonomy and human rights. No other legal arrangement binds an individual in this way without their consent.
To rectify this, adoptees must be granted immediate access to a No-Fault, No-Fee Adoption Discharge, which would allow them to:
✔️ Legally reinstate their original birth certificate
✔️ Sever legal ties to their adoptive parents if desired
✔️ Restore their original name and identity without financial or legal barriers
✔️ Make the decision for themselves, without requiring approval from adoptive or biological parents
This is not just a bureaucratic issue — it is a fundamental question of bodily autonomy, legal self-determination, and the right to exist as oneself.
Why is Adoption Treated as Irreversible?
If adoption were truly about the best interests of the child, then why does the law refuse to acknowledge the reality that not all adoptions are beneficial, and not all adoptees want to remain in a legal status assigned to them as infants?
The answer is clear: the adoption industry, and the state structures that support it, are invested in maintaining control over adoptees’ identities, even into adulthood.
- Adoptees are the only group of people who must seek permission to access their own birth records.
- Adoptees are the only group of people who cannot legally sever ties to a legal status imposed upon them as infants.
- Adoptees are the only group of people who remain permanently assigned to an identity they did not consent to, with no way out.
This is state-enforced identity imprisonment.
Adoption Without Escape = A Human Rights Violation
For true justice, Australia must immediately implement:
✔️ Unrestricted access to original birth records without conditions
✔️ The right to discharge an adoption at any time, for any reason
✔️ The legal restoration of birth names and identities without financial barriers
✔️ An end to the bureaucratic control of adoptees’ personal histories
Adoptees are not property. They are not permanent legal extensions of adoptive families. They deserve the right to self-determination, just like every other citizen.
