Golden Rule: Do to the Infant What You Would Want for Yourself

Universal Law

Every major ancient culture arrived at the same moral instruction. Treat others as you wish to be treated.

The Egyptian vizier Ptahhotep wrote “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” Confucius said “do not do to others what you would not like for yourself.”

The Talmud echoes the same words. The New Testament offers the positive version. A universal law for social survival emerged independently across Egypt, China, India, Greece, and the Middle East.

This convergence points to something real. Human beings, separated by oceans and centuries, recognized a single truth. Morality begins with reciprocity. The test of any action is whether you would accept that action done to yourself.

Failed Test of Closed Adoption

Apply the Golden Rule to closed adoption. Ask any adult adoptee what they wish had been different. Most will say the same things:

• I wish I had known my father’s and mother’s names.
• I wish I’d known my family.
• I wish I had kept my original birth certificate.
• I wish someone had asked my permission before changing my name, sealing records, and calling my past irrelevant.

Now apply the reciprocity test. Would any adoption agency director want their own mother’s name erased from their birth certificate? Would any judge want their medical history sealed and their ancestry hidden? Would any adopter want to grow up wondering why an unrelated stranger’s last name replaced their true surname on official documents?

The answer comes quickly. No human being would choose this for themselves. No one wakes up hoping to lose their entire origin story, genetic mirror, and real family’s medical history.

The system chooses these losses for infants who cannot speak. The Golden Rule demands a different approach.

What Reciprocity Requires

A truly reciprocal adoption system would look nothing like the current one. Open records from the moment of birth. No sealed files, no amended certificates, no erasing one set of parents to install another. The original birth certificate remains untouched, a permanent record of biological truth.

The state provides resources to the birth family before separation becomes the only option. In the very rare instances when a real family member cannot keep and raise a child, caregivers can step into guardianship, not ownership. The child keeps their authentic name, identity, and family connections.

The Golden Rule asks one simple question. Would you want this arrangement for your own child at birth? Answer honestly, then build that system.

Industry Refusing the Mirror

Adoption professionals do not apply the Golden Rule to their own work. They cannot. The answer would end their industry.

Agency directors would never choose sealed records for themselves. Social workers would never volunteer to lose their medical history. No judge would trade their original birth certificate for a falsified one.

The reciprocity principle exposes the moral bankruptcy of closed adoption. The system does to infants what no adult would accept for themselves.

The only noble and dignified response is abolition. Guardianship preserves truth and human rights. Adoption, as currently practiced, fails every ancient test of moral reciprocity.