Adoptees’ bid for access to birth certificates

People who were adopted lack access to their original birth certificates in many U.S. states, as advocates for access clash with opponents citing privacy and other issues.

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 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 adopteerights organization Bastard Nation.

The issue remains highly contentious. Some opponents of full access argue that making 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; others say it’s wrong to accept anything other than unrestricted access equal to what’s available for non-adopted people.

“What we have is statesanctioned discrimination against adoptees,” said Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy, an activist campaigning for full access in New York. “It’s no different from giving you a different water fountain to drink from.”

One striking aspect of the debate is how it doesn’t reflect the Republican-Democrat, liberal-conservative divide that pervades U.S. politics.

The states offering 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 birth certificates.

Here’s a look at those struggles:

NEWYORK

For many years, there have been unsuccessful efforts in New York’s legislature to expand access to original birth certificates.

This year, legislators passed a bill that would enable some adoptees to more easily obtain those records. Yetmany activists, outraged by restrictions in the bill, want Gov. Andrew Cuomo to veto it. There’s no timetable yet for his decision.

Rather than letting adoptees access birth certificates on the same basis as other adults, the bill would require them to apply to a court. 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 namewould be redacted before the records are released.

Corrigan D’Arcy, a birth mother who has lobbied for unrestricted access, 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. “Birthmothers don’t throw themselves off roofs; adoptees don’t become stalkers.”

JANE DELL VIA AP This May 13, 2017photo shows Larry Dell at the opening of an art exhibition he curated in Livingston, N.J. Dell, 68, 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...