Children of the heart

The nation is marking Adoption Consciousness Week on Feb. 17-24 with the theme, chosen by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, “Legal na Ampon Ako: Anak na Totoo.”

Adoption enables parents to bring up children who are not biologically their own and raise them in the joy, warmth and comfort of a loving family. The law recognizes the family as “the natural environment for the growth of the child” with the “greatest potential to protect the children and provide for their physical and emotional safety.” Even the best-equipped orphanages cannot substitute for the soothing feel of a mother’s or father’s embrace, or the inner confidence and assuredness of a helpless child that there is someone out there looking out for him/her.

In the distant past, as stated in a “Treatise on the Philippine Law on Adoption” written by Elizabeth Aguiling-Pangalangan and published by the UP Law Center, adoption was done to enable childless couples to maintain family lines and estates, but today adoption is governed by the paramount principle of the “best interests of the child.” In her foreword to the Treatise, Supreme Court Justice Teresita Leonardo de Castro recognizes that adoption is now seen not only “as a viable alternative for couples to experience parenthood but more importantly [as] the State’s effective means of finding suitable, loving and secure homes for children in need.”

But Justice De Castro likewise recognizes that “[e]ven among those who are enlightened enough to open their homes to children not biologically their own, the law on adoption is [seen as] burdensome and complex. Many couples choose to forego the legalities of a judicially approved adoption and fail to formalize their relationship with their adopted [child] or instead they avail of a procedural shortcut such as the unlawful simulation of birth.”

“Simulated birth” pertains to a specific Filipino “shortcut” for adoption. The prospective adoptive parents find a mother, typically poor or otherwise desperate, and contract with her to “adopt” the infant. The pregnant woman is admitted to the hospital under the name of the “adopting” mother and the fraudulent information is reflected on the birth certificate. This is prohibited by law and indeed it is punishable as a crime. That is why the Domestic Adoption Act of 1998 provided an amnesty to enable parents to rectify a record and fully legalize the status of their adopted children. Unfortunately, the five-year window, 1998-2003, for the rectification of simulated births has long expired.

Congress, when it is not so busy showboating on various issues or legislating new names for local bridges and plazas, should provide another five-year period for such rectification.

This is not to reward the delinquent adopters who, in the past 12 years since the period expired, should by now have realized that it is indeed in the best interests of the children they have raised in love to have their status regularized in law. Rather, this is to recognize the selflessness of adoptive parents who, while surely motivated by the human longing for the joy of nurturing a life, likewise assume parenting’s seemingly endless burdens, from the sleepless nights caring for their wards when they are young to the other sleepless nights worrying about them when they grow up. It also recognizes the anxieties of the adoptive parents who might have initially preferred “to let sleeping dogs lie,” but now realize that it is best to rectify the record in today’s complex world where biological filiation needs to be traced for medical or DNA purposes, or legal filiation is needed for immigration.

The salutary practice of adoption is increasingly supported by Philippine law. We have simplified and systematized the placement and “matching” of children with prospective parents. We have eliminated the discrimination against adopted children, and placed them on equal footing with biological children. Indeed, we have shifted away from archaic language; we say “biological parents” rather than “natural parents” because parenting is a social relationship. The parent-child relationship in adoption is created by legal fiction, but it is no fiction—it is a fact, a powerful fact—in the heart of loving parents and their children. Ask a child who is his mother. It is the woman who hugged and kissed him as he was growing up.

The Treatise cites an unknown poet, presumably an adoptive parent, who speaks to his child: “Not flesh of my flesh/ Nor bone of my bone/ But still miraculously my own/ Never forget for a single minute/ You didn’t grow under my heart/ But in it.”