Tag Archives: Finland

Countless adoptees could have slowly ticking health issues and are intentionally robbed of life-saving information

The Finnish population, thanks to genetic health research, has had specific health problems identified with genetic markers, helping the country plan population measures to help all residents of Finnish heritage.

One year ago yesterday, my bio-uncle, twin brother of my bio-mom, died of heart conditions. It was not a surprise, and his mortality outcome at the end of December 2023 was entirely predictable because he was half ethnically Finnish.

Such health risks that my bio-uncle had are very well-documented among Finns at the population level and among tens and tens of thousands of Finnish-Americans because of genetic risk factors. My deceased birth mother’s slightly younger cousin, who is 100 percent Finnish, lost her father to a heart attack while he was in his 40s, and he was also 100 percent Finnish from another Finnish family line. She also just had a heart procedure for her problem heart. That is the genetic health landscape for many Finnish Americans.

Though I remain mostly healthy at my age, I still carry those risks in my genes because I’m one-quarter Finnish. My Finnish kin in Finland have shared with me there are heart issues in our genetic line we share.

Knowing such information is considered a best tool to promote individual and public health, yet U.S. public health and health professionals still refuse to help end adoption secrecy or support any adoptee rights group in state policy debates to reform harmful laws denying family health history to adoptees. These barriers deny this potentially life-saving information from literally millions of people only because of their status as adoptees in the United States.

U.S. public health and its many professionals do not care about adoptees’ wellbeing  

On January 13, 2024, and shortly after my uncle’s death just before the end of 2023, I published an essay, “Adoptee rights is also a moral issue to ensure equal rights to good health, yet public health and health professionals ignore this intentionally,” about this issue and how public health and nearly all disease-focused health groups and medical professionals do nothing to help address issues for adoptees whose medical health history remains hidden from them by discriminatory state laws.

I wrote: “These groups and experts have never cared, based on facts showing no documented efforts to support adoptees, even in public relations messaging. There is no public evidence visible anywhere they will reverse course and advocate to change laws helping adoptees. Their failure is palpable.

“Collectively, this represents a complete moral and collective professional failure of these systems to improve the health of individuals and population health. Because those harmed are adoptees, this failure remains an acceptable form of collateral damage to ensure the U.S. adoption system remains a broadly accepted and beloved institution, that continues to be supported by the medical and public health professionals at all levels.”

I did a search of the American Public Health Association website on December 29, 2024 to see if it had information published about “adoptees,” and my search yielded no information.

I even wrote to the American Public Health Associations publication, in January 2024, with a letter to the editor of its flagship publication, “The Nation’s Health,” to raise this issue. I was greeted with silence after repeated follow ups for a response. After I flagged their silence on social media and wrote another essay on April 7, 2024, where I read my letter on a video, I suddenly received an email reply that amounted to a bureaucratic blow off.

In short, they found ways to ignore my letter and then blow off my submission with a hallow reply that normally one hears from indifferent and low-level bureaucrats. I decided to reply about the harm such indifference causes. I told the publication’s staffer:

“You intentionally chose the path where there was no leadership and absolutely no evidence of needed moral courage to help support overdue reform and end adoption secrecy laws.

 “It is fitting that this is all now encapsulated in the memory of the death of my birth kin and the people who don’t care what this means to ordinary people denied health and basic rights.

 “Congratulations for what you and your peers willingly choose to be by your chosen actions. Remember, it is always a choice. And in life, we are always remembered by our deeds, not the words.”

Nothing has changed as 2024 ends

The experiences associated with the meaning of my close biological relative’s genetically related and sad death once again come to mind as 2024 is about to end, and adoptees still do not count to public health and health professionals.

Not one thing has changed nationally since my bio-uncle died at the state level in 2024 to restore rights to adoptees, with the exception of laws passed a year earlier.

Adoptees are acceptable and—I argue—necessary collateral damage for this system that these professionals helped to grow, legitimize, and support for decades.

In short, the groups that claim to help individuals and the wider population, including all at-risk groups that adoptees clearly are, remain comfortable with their massive cognitive dissonance. Nothing has changed.

NOTE: For more history and background on denied family health history to millions of adoptees and the role of public health, medical, social work, and other professionals who created the modern American adoption system, including the legitimization of mass family separation by adoption by state public health agencies, you can order my book, “You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are,” published in 2018.

Death finally takes my birth mother, did you come to gawk at the photo?

Rudy Owens took this photograph of his birth mother in 2009; what do you see and why are you looking at it now?

The entire time I have communicated about my history as an adoptee and the widespread denial of basic human and legal rights to all adoptees, I held a line.

That demarcation point, for me, represented a conscious act of power and an act of defiance.

Until today, April 27, 2024, I have never publicly published a photograph of my closest biological family relative that showed their face.

Here it is. Are you amused? Do you care?

On a few occasions I published very old pictures of my biological grandparents, on my maternal and paternal family sides. These are so buried in my archive, they are likely impossible to find. These photos are also old, and they are more like museum artifacts than documentation of blood lineage.

But now I have arrived at a new destination, because the Angel of Death arrived late this week.

In fact, I started writing this essay when my birth mother* was among the living, a day before her passing. Now she is among the dead, having died in a Michigan hospital this week after a long declining trajectory to death’s final clutches.

SEE COMPLETE ESSAY ON THIS WEBPAGE.

Everything is fine with Finland, my ancestral home

Rudy Owens in Helsinki, Finland, February 2024

As a Finnish-American by birth, with one quarter of my ancestry rooted in the Nordic nation of Finland, I am by birthright personally and biologically attached to this country. Today, this is cause for celebration, as suddenly all things Finnish, in the eyes of the world and social media, are wildly cool—or as the Finns say, “Siistia!”

In March 2024, it was named, for the seventh year in a row, the world’s “happiest country,” according to a United Nations report examining major areas of individual and societal wellbeing. But that is not the reason I have taken a strong and later-in-life interest in my core Finnishness and my biological family history that can be traced to Finland’s farming belt.

I am a long lost “son” of Suomi because of my origins being separated from my kin through adoption. Naturally, my Finnish “sisu” prevailed. I found my kin and my heritage, against improbable odds. This also became part my book I published in 2018 called: You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. Not only did I find my U.S. kin, I connected in 2023 and 2024 with my wonderful and long-lost Finnish relatives in a nation that is suddenly popping up in health research, documentaries, wonky policy research, and on countless social media streams.

All told, I’ve written 15 articles and some long-form stories (one is 9,000 words!) about Finland and my ties to it since March 2023. I’ve had my writing published the Genealogical Society of Finland (a 4,000 word story is available to its members) and I’ve been interviewed on the Michigan Radio news magazine “Stateside,” to discuss my story connecting with my Finnish kin. I’ve put all of my writing and my in-depth Finnish photo essays on my page that I’ve branded: “Celebrating all things Finnish—Kaikkea suomalaista juhlitaan.” Let me know what you think. We can learn a lot from the Finnish people, especially how they care their people.

(Note: I’ll be updating this page later with more photo essays and an essay about what I learned taking saunas in Finland, including the “sauna capital of the world,” beautiful Tampere.)

Enjoy/ Nauttia!

‘Stateside’ interviews focus on Finland, adoptee rights, and our right to know our origins

Rudy Owens and his newly found Finnish relatives from September 2023

I want to thank Michigan Radio, “Stateside” host April Baer, producer Mercedes Mejia, and all of the Michigan Radio crew who help inform Michiganders about important issues.

I am especially appreciative of their news reporting and also generous consideration to host two interviews this past week on: adoptee rights legislative proposals in the Michigan Legislature, and another with me, as an author and advocate for adoptee rights as a Michigan-born adoptee.

As always, patience and professional persistence opened these doors (I started in November 2023), along with the timing of the legislative debates on this important policy issue for thousands of Michigan-born adoptees.

My March 20, 2024 interview with “Stateside” host April Baer broadly explored my recent two visits to Finland in September 2023 and in February 2024, to meet my biological family I only recently connected with last summer. I shared why such a visit to an ancestral home country, to meet long-lost biological kin, matters for adoptees, who are denied rights to their original birth certificates and family information like ethnicity by state law. (If you want to quickly find my interview segment, jump to the last 20 minutes of the podcast–you can get there quickly by dragging the mouse on the podcast recording player.)

“Stateside’s” March 19, 2024 interview on adoptee rights legislation before lawmakers included three members of the Michigan coalition that has been working to pass legislative reform in Michigan to restore rights to tens of thousands of Michigan-born adoptees. That interview featured Michigan Adoptee Rights Coalition members Valerie Lemieux, Erica Curry Van Ee, and Greg Luce. All are adoptees. The interview can heard found here.

Not every radio news magazine would provide more than 15 minutes of valuable airtime for each interview to discuss issues of adoption secrecy in Michigan, legislative reform efforts that were launched last fall, and the importance to all of us to know who we are and where we come from, all secured for all persons by law. But “Stateside” decided this issue merited time for a meaningful dialogue that examined many aspects of this human rights issue, including discussing arguments used by adoptee rights opponents.

Thank you, “Stateside”/Kiitos, “Stateside”!

See my stories about my visits to Finland to meet with my biological kin and what these stories mean to those denied our ancestry and birth records by law:

What I learned about happiness in Finland, my ancestral homeland

Some photos from a family meal capture the warmth of connecting with family, a joy almost like summer, in Kurikka, Finland (February 2024).

Today I published a new story examining my ties to one of my ancestral home countries, Finland, and why it consistently scores at the top of the charts for social wellbeing.

I think the Finnish people must be tiring by now of the many articles that latch on to the country’s consistent ranking, six years in a row, as the world’s “happiest country.” That’s the analysis provided annually in a big and well-researched report on individual and national wellbeing generated by the United Nations.

As a Finnish-American who only last year found his biological kin/family in Finland, I have a strong interest in “cracking the code” to what has made this Nordic nation of about 5.6 million rise to such lofty heights. It is certainly not the weather. On my last fabulous trip there, in February 2024, I had a mix of rain and snow, and mostly clouds.

Mostly I feel lucky to be Suomalainen (Finnish), at least one-quarter by birth, and to have had a chance to learn more about Finland from people who call it home.

On my last trip, to Helsinki, Tampere, Seinäjoki, and Kurikka, I visited my newly found “distal” kin/family and stayed in their homes. Naturally, we shared the joy of taking saunas. That gave me great perspectives that have warmed me even more to the Finnish people and their country. Thanks for the great memories, Finland/ Kiitos upeista muistoista, Suomi!