The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Adoptees’ bid for access to birth certificates stirs debate
Back in 2000, Oregon and Alabama acted to ensure that people who’d been adopted could get access to their original birth certificates. Advocates of that goal, calling it an overdue recognition of basic rights, hoped the trend would sweep through the nation.
It didn’t happen. The momentum slowed amid fights over personal privacy and other divisive issues. Today, just nine states give adoptees unrestricted access. Others provide limited access. And there’s no systematic access at all in about 20 states, including the four most populous — California, Texas, Florida and New York.
“After Oregon, after Alabama, we thought, ‘Wow, we’re on a roll. These laws are going to topple.’ And then we had to wait years,” said Marley Greiner, cofounder of the adoptee-rights organization Bastard Nation.
The issue remains highly contentious. Some opponents of full access argue that making the birth certificates available on demand would violate birth mothers’ privacy and induce some pregnant women to opt for abortion rather than adoption.
Adoptee-rights activists, while calling those arguments groundless, have divisions in their own ranks: Some are willing to consider compromise bills that provide limited access, while others say it’s wrong to accept anything other than unrestricted access equal to what’s available for non-adopted people.
“It’s a civil rights issue,” said Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy, an activist campaigning for full access in New York. “What we have is state-sanctioned discrimination against adoptees. It’s no different from giving you a different water fountain to drink from.”
There’s little chance presently of Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court wading into the debate to forge a nationwide policy; so, for now it’s a matter left to the states.
One striking aspect of the debate is how it doesn’t conform to the Republican-Democrat, liberal-conservative divide that affects so many political topics these days.
The states that offer unrestricted access are mixed in their political leanings — Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Kansas and Maine. California and New York are two of the most liberal states, while conservatives control the statehouses in Texas and Florida, yet the adoptee-rights movement has struggled in all four to make headway on the birth certificate issue.
Here’s a look at those struggles:
FLORIDA:
State Rep. Richard Stark, who was adopted as an infant in New York State, introduced a bill in Florida’s legislature this year that would allow adoptees access to their original birth certificates after they turn 18. The bill never received a hearing in committee; Stark said there was opposition from some adoption lawyers and adoption agencies.
One key opponent was Rep. Jason Brodeur, who like Stark was adopted as an infant. Brodeur said he would oppose any bill that set the stage for birth parents to be found against their wishes by any adult offspring they had made available for adoption.
“There should be a guarantee that if those birth parents don’t want to be found, they won’t be, but also an avenue where if they want to be found, they can be,” Brodeur said.
Acknowledging that some are frustrated in trying to find their birth parents, he suggested that the state health department could become more active in helping birth parents and adoptees make contact voluntarily. “Maybe we can put together a clearinghouse.”
Stark said he plans to reintroduce his bill next session and noted that the lead sponsor of a similar bill in Illinois fought for a decade before the measure prevailed.
If necessary, Stark said he would accept modification of his bill so that, as in some states, birth parents would have a chance for their names to be redacted from the birth certificate before the adoptee obtained it.
“Yes, I’d like a clean bill, but I don’t think it’s going to happen here in Florida,” he said.
NEW YORK:
For adoptee-rights activists, New York has been perhaps the most frustrating state. For many years, there have been efforts at the legislature in Albany to expand access to original birth certificates, and all have failed.
This year, legislators passed a bill that would enable some adoptees to more easily obtain those records. Yet many activists, outraged by restrictions in the bill, want Gov. Andrew Cuomo to veto it. There’s no timetable yet for when the governor’s decision will come.
A letter to Cuomo from several child-welfare agencies called the bill “fatally flawed.”
Rather than letting adoptees access birth certificates on the same basis as other adults, the bill would require them to apply to a court, and the state health department would then try to contact the birth parents to inform them of the application. If a birth parent is located, and requests continued anonymity, the parent’s name would be redacted before the birth certificate is released.
Corrigan D’Arcy, a birth mother who has lobbied for unrestricted access in New York, says the bill ignores the experiences of states such as Oregon and Alabama, where there has been little outcry about expanded access causing harm to birth parents.
“In states where they did it well, nothing bad happens,” she said. “Birth mothers don’t throw themselves off roofs; adoptees don’t become stalkers.”
Of the bill headed to Cuomo, she says: “It codifies much of the harmful practices and negative mythology that’s been attached to adoption. You’re giving in to this fear tactic.”
Democratic Assemblyman David Weprin said he supported a no-restrictions bill that failed to advance, but he rejected the argument that the successful bill was harmful. “It’s a first step,” he said. “Some people will get their original birth certificates who were never able to get them before.”
Among the adoptees who hope to benefit is Larry Dell, 68, who grew up in New York City with parents he loved. He learned only nine years ago that he had been adopted as an infant, and that he was one of five siblings in his birth family.