Grace Poe: My life as foundling ‘the stuff of movies’

Sen. Grace Poe. GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Senator Grace Poe on Wednesday likened her life story to a movie — a founding, abandoned and ended up being adopted by two movie stars.

Poe talked about her life when she spoke at the 13th Philippine Global Consultation on Child Welfare Services of the Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB) held at the SMX Convention Center, SM Aura Premier in Taguig City.

“For those of you unfamiliar with my life story, I wasn’t just adopted — I was a foundling, abandoned shortly after birth and left in a church,” she said.

READ: Alluding to critics, Poe says foundling issue ‘not stealing from gov’t’

“This is the stuff of movies, you might say, and in an instance of cinematic foreshadowing that proved to be true, I did end up being adopted by two movie stars.”

The senator was referring to her adoptive parents, veteran actress Susan Roces and the late action star, Fernando Poe Jr.

“But at that moment, as a newborn alone in that church, I was simply one tiny human being on the planet with the least agency and without help. I was at the complete mercy of destiny and dependent on the kindness of strangers. The slightest stroke of ill fortune could have rewritten my life story into something much different and perhaps less happy,” she said.

Poe also used the occasion to talk about her proposed measure, Senate Bill 2892, which she said was aimed at further strengthening the system of birth registration of Children in Need of Special Protection (CNSP).

READ: Poe files bill for foundlings

CNSP refers to all persons below 18 years of age, or those 18 years old and over but are unable to take care of themselves because of physical or mental disabilities or conditions; who are vulnerable to or are victims of abuse, neglect, exploitation, cruelty, discrimination, violence (armed conflict, domestic violence), natural calamities, man-made disasters, and other analogous conditions prejudicial to their development, at any given time.

While Memorandum Circular 2004-01 includes abandoned children under this term, the senator said, existing issuances (Administrative Order No. 01 Series of 1993 and Memorandum Circular 2011-5) provide for a separate registration structure for foundlings.

This, she said, has often resulted in both “confusion and discrimination of the child.”

“It is in this wise that foundlings, as defined under AO No. 01, is sought to be embraced in the term CNSP and thusly be accorded the same registration process under this Act,” she said.

The senator also stressed the importance of having a certificate of live birth, saying it ensures fundamental rights such as the right to vote and be voted for; the right to seek employment and to access social security benefits; the right to own property; the right to inherit; and the right to secure other documentary identification, like a driver’s license or a passport.

“My parents had to go through this process. In 1968, it wasn’t very clear what the process should be. And my father, at that time, was quite traditional, would say: ‘Why do we even need to have to go through this process of adoption? She is our child and we love her.’ And my mother insisted that eventually, it will be important to have a document to prove that because while they know that they love me and I know that, the state does not easily recognize that,” said Poe.

“Whenever I go to school, they would ask for a birth certificate. And a certificate that I always had to show was a foundling certificate. Not a birth certificate. And not everybody understood that. So it was a process that they undertook—from the time that they took me in that commenced many years later—at least 3 more years later—and so that adoption certificate became my birth certificate.”

“And even then there was much discrimination about it. Because every time you enroll in a school, instead of showing a birth certificate, what you had to show was an adoption certificate. So early on, even if I didn’t feel any less as a child of their own from my parents, society sometimes made me feel so,” she further said.

Poe’s being a foundling has been the subject of separate   complaints filed at the Office of the Ombudsman and   the Commission on Elections by defeated senatorial bet, Rizalito David. Maila Ager/IDL