To the Editor:

“Mea (Totally Sincere, if Overdue) Culpa,” by James Collins (Op-Ed, Oct. 17), while tongue in cheek, was still so offensive that I hardly know where to begin.

As an adult adoptee, I have listened to all the reporting about Steve Jobs’s death with weariness. We adoptees are by turns curiosities, objects of derision and seemingly another species that some people just do not comprehend.

I’ve heard other adult adoptees describe us as “the last bastion of legal discrimination” for the lack of rights we have (in most states) to our own histories. Who would make such derogatory jokes about any ethnic group, physically or mentally disabled group or economically disadvantaged group?

It is not funny when a child, for whatever reason, cannot be reared by the people who created him. It is a tragedy for that family, yet one that turns into joy for another family. This conundrum is difficult to reconcile, and we adoptees often have to do it internally and alone. There is nothing to laugh about.