. 

From 1956 to 1984, thousands of young women in the Netherlands gave up their children for adoption. This usually happened under pressure from family, authorities and the church. Babies were often taken from their mothers immediately after birth. This was a relatively unknown story until a few years ago, until more and more mothers and children came forward with their stories.

The Domestic Distance and Adoption Committee conducts independent research into the history of domestic distance and adoption in the period 1956-1984. Last week, this Commission launched the website www.cbaa.nl. This contains more information, and children, mothers, but also fathers and other involved parties can report.

In June 2023, Anke Wesenbeek, a 30-year-old Belgian donor-conceived woman won a landmark court case after a year-long battle to gain information about her paternal heritage...

In June 2023, Anke Wesenbeek (co-author), a 30-year-old Belgian donor-conceived woman won a landmark court case after a year-long battle to gain information about her paternal heritage.

Two years before, after extensive research through commercial DNA-testing companies, she identified a man as her probable genetic father, but a direct DNA-comparison was needed for absolute certainty. The man was offered professional mediation and support by the Flemish Ancestry Centre, but their correspondence went unanswered. When Wesenbeek engaged a lawyer to send similar offers, the man's lawyer formally confirmed his client's unwillingness to cooperate. Wesenbeek therefore decided to take her quest to court.

Belgium is one of the few remaining European countries to still operate an anonymous donation policy. It wasn't until 2007 that the traditional preference for donor anonymity was enforced by law. The 'Law on Medically Assisted Reproduction' (MAR) followed the parliamentary committee's view that sharing any donor information must be avoided as this could reinforce the 'myth' that the donor's genes determine the donor offspring's characteristics (Nys & Wuyts, 2007). In 2012, advocacy by donor-conceived people reopened the discussion, leading to law proposals to abolish donor anonymity, but no parliamentary majority has been achieved.

• Ben, Mitch, and Benjamin live in Los Angeles with their 20-month-old adopted daughter, Tegan.
• The throuple have spent over four years and more than $170,000 on having their children.
• They want to draw attention to the hidden and emotional costs of adoption and surrogacy.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mitch Rolam, 37; Benjamin Rolam, 35; and Ben Rodriguez Rolam, 38, a Los Angeles throuple — or a three-person romantic relationship. This essay has been edited for length and clarity. Insider verified their adoption and surrogacy expenses through receipts they provided.

We became a throuple after two of us — Ben and Mitch, who had been together for 14 years — met Benjamin on the Atlantis gay cruise in February 2019.

All three of us got ceremonially married in Kauai, Hawaii, in September that same year. And at the same time, two of us — Benjamin and Mitch — also got legally married.

Mitch works in finance, Benjamin in e-commerce, and Ben in a beauty company. The three of us live together in Los Angeles with our 20-month-old daughter, Tegan, whom we adopted in 2022.

I am a Chinese International Transracial Adoptee. I reunited with my biological family five years ago. Five years ago already, and going on six years soon. Some days it still feels surreal and other days it feels like I have always known them. 

Six years ago, if you asked me when my birthday was, I would have said December 5, with an uncomfortable feeling and painful reminder of my unknown past. Now, I answer the same question with a pause of whether or not to share my birthday is July 16. If you asked me six years ago how many siblings I have, I would have said half the number I have now. 

 As a child, and even in my teenage years, I was told and convinced that if I was still in China I probably would not have made it through school. I would not have the same opportunities if I still lived there. I might have been hidden or, even yet, maybe not alive. I would not have had the medical care I needed. Being deaf, I would be rejected by society. I would have been poor because my family was assumed to be poor and would not have a “successful” or “happy” life. I wrestled with this supposed “truth” and “luck” I had over the years.

The wonders and beliefs continuously changed through different seasons of life. Sometimes, I could only hold anger because there was no other identifiable feeling. I often became numb and would find myself assimilating to the beliefs around me: “lucky”, “chosen”, “thankful”, “grateful”, and “God’s plan” even when I did not feel like those comments were true. Other seasons, I missed, grieved, and carried the weight of the ambiguous losses alone. 

The experience of the unknown often leaves uncertainty, anxiousness, fear, and confusion. As a child, the unknown was not concrete. The differing answers about my birth parents and my past were what I had to make sense of why I was here. My understanding of my past was based on many different theoretical situations and imaginary scenarios of what possibly happened and a few documents with almost no information. Not even my birthday or finding spot was known to be exactly correct.

Foundation for Intercountry Adoption Mediation Netherlands (via Ebbinge), Baarn

DISCIPLINE

Healthcare management

FUNCTION

Chairman of the Supervisory Board

A Greek adoptee in the US eventually discovered the identity of his biological father after 63 years thanks to the Eftychia Project.

The Project is a nonprofit organization that provides assistance and support free of charge to Greek adoptees searching for their roots and Greek families searching for their children lost to adoption.

Thousands of Greek children were sent from Greece for adoption abroad, mainly to the United States, through often questionable means during the Cold War decades of the 1950s and 1960s.

The story of the Greek adoptee retracing the past

Stephen Grater from Tennessee had saved the black-and-white photo of himself in his stepmother’s arms on the balcony of the “Mitera” baby center in Athens in May 1960 on his mobile phone. He was just four months old and preparing for a trip that would end in the United States.

Something was just wrong, but Olivia Maurel did not know what. Until she found out that her parents paid for her. She found her biological mother after a long search.

Olivia Maurel always knew something was “off” about her birth. The secretive behaviour of her mother made it clear to her: the woman who raised her did not give birth to her. “There were no pictures of my pregnant mother, and I am five days old in the first pictures of me.”

The 31-year-old was born through surrogacy in the American state of Kentucky. In her home in Cannes, southern France, the now mother-of-three opens up about her search for her identity, the daily consequences of surrogacy and her fight against the legalisation of the practice in France. “We neglect the effect surrogacy has on children.”

Growing up as an only child in a well-off family, Maurel says she got everything she could ever ask for. “I had a very good education, and my parents dressed me in the best clothes.” However, emotionally speaking, Maurel claims to have lacked a lot. “It was difficult for me to grow up in a family where emotions and feelings were little talked about.”

Maurel faces the consequences of that every day. “My husband sometimes says that I hardly ever hug him. Well, no one ever taught me to hug.”

This decision was justified by the conclusions of a report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child pointing out the flaws in adoption procedures in Madagascar.

International adoption procedures for children from Madagascar by people residing in France have been suspended, according to a decree published on Sunday, October 22, in the Official Journal (OJ) .

“All international adoption procedures concerning children habitually resident in Madagascar by any person habitually residing in France are suspended ,” according to this decree dated October 17.

Adoption procedures for Malagasy children were already subject to a provisional suspension for one year since October 2022.

Stop illegal adoptions

The report contains a transition plan for the phasing out of the 4 permit holders for intercountry adoption and transfer of knowledge and skills to 1 Central Mediation Organization: the Intercountry Adoption Mediation Netherlands (IAN).