New law forces DNA tests to find 'disappeared' kids
Search is on for people who might have been born to slain political prisoners, even if they don't want to know their birth parents.
By Mayra Pertossi
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, November 28, 2009
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Valuing truth over the right to privacy, Argentina's Congress has authorized the forced collection of DNA from people who might have been born to political prisoners slain a quarter-century ago — even if they don't want to know their birth parents.
Rights activists hope that the new law will help find about 400 people who were stolen as babies, many from women who gave birth inside clandestine torture centers during the 1976-83 dictatorship.
But others see the law as unacceptable government intrusion.
Thousands of leftists disappeared in what became known as the dictatorship's "dirty war" against political dissent. Children of the "disappeared" were often given to military or police families seen as loyal to the military government. Some did not know that they were adopted until activists or judges announced efforts to obtain their DNA.
The law — a key project of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, close allies of President Cristina Fernandez — was approved with a 58-1 vote in the Senate last week. It had already been approved in Congress' lower house.
Finding their grandchildren has been a priority for the group's members since they first began demonstrating in front of the presidential palace in 1977, carrying pictures of relatives who had disappeared.
DNA has helped them identify 98 of 500 children that the activists think were born in prison or kidnapped as infants.
Using survivors' testimony, documents from birth families and adoption records, they have persuaded some judges to seek DNA from suspected victims of the "dirty war." But courts sometimes ruled that a child's right to privacy outweighed a grandmother's right to know.
The new law legalizes the extraction of "minimal amounts of blood, saliva, skin, hair or other biological samples" to determine identity. If a person refuses to provide a sample, a judge can issue a warrant for genetic material from a hairbrush, toothbrush, clothing or other objects.
"It's an absolute invasion of the right to biological privacy," constitutional lawyer Gregorio Badeni said. "No one has the right to know what I have inside my body. That belongs only to me. I can give it up voluntarily, but no one can obligate me to deliver it."
Estela de Carlotto, who leads the grandmothers group, disagrees.
By allowing officials to extract DNA from personal effects, the law "doesn't violate in any way the body or the privacy," she said. "It will surely help discover the identity of the grandchildren we have been searching for for so many years."
Elisa Carrio, a leading rival of the president, suggests another motivation: targeting Fernandez's political opponent Ernestina Herrera de Noble, director of Grupo Clarin, Argentina's dominant media group.
The grandmothers group thinks that two children Herrera adopted in 1976 were stolen from women who gave birth in prison before being killed. For years, their efforts to resolve the case have been stymied because Herrera's children — now in their 30s — have refused to submit to blood or saliva tests.
The Argentine law might be unprecedented in requiring DNA tests of people who aren't suspected of crimes, said Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director for the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, Calif.
Some who have discovered their identities welcome the law, saying that it removes a heavy burden from people who suspect they might have been stolen at birth.
"The state cannot leave in the hands of a young person, raised by a member of the military, manipulated by guilt, the decision of whether or not to learn his true identity," said Horacio Pietragalla, who learned in 2003 that he was taken as a baby from his biological mother, Liliana Corti.
Under the new law, the state "tells you the truth," he said. "After that, you have to decide what you want to do with that truth."
In the past, DNA findings have sometimes been made public against a person's wishes, either because a judge announced it or because the biological family released the information. The new law gives no guarantee of privacy.
Pietragalla has reconnected with his biological family, but others want nothing to do with their blood relatives.
Among them is Evelyn Vazquez, who refused in 2001 to submit to a blood test, hoping to prevent DNA results from being used against her adoptive father, former naval officer Policarpo Vazquez. He faced charges of child theft during the military dictatorship. The Argentine Supreme Court upheld her refusal at the time, citing her right to privacy.
In 1999, Vazquez admitted that he and his wife had adopted her as a baby when she was offered to them without documents in 1978, although he said he didn't know if her biological parents had been kidnapped and killed.
As part of the continuing investigation, a federal judge ordered a search of Evelyn Vazquez's personal effects last year, and DNA proved that her parents had been militants who were killed in 1977.