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Who Is Access
Connecticut?
Access Connecticut is a grassroots
organization of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents and adoption
professionals dedicated to re-establishing the right of adult adoptees to
access their original birth certificates, which was taken away in 1975.
Access Connecticut has one goal: We
seek to re-establish the right of adult adoptees to access their original birth certificate, a right
which the all non-adopted citizens have under Connecticut law. Prior
to 1975 all adoptees born in Connecticut had the right to obtain their
true, original birth certificates (OBCs) upon reaching the age of majority.
Every adoptee has two birth certificates: A
true, original birth certificate (OBC) created the day they are born and a
false, amended birth certificate. The false birth certificate is created by the
state when their adoption is finalized (up to a year or more after their
birth), and says their adoptive parents are their biological parents. The false
birth certificate is the adoptee’s legal birth certificate.
Adoptee rights advocates are active in many
states. Their efforts have been successful in several states in recent years,
including Alabama, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.
(Kansas and Alaska never sealed original birth certificates.)
We are incredibly pleased
to announce that on June 6, 2014 Governor Dannel
Malloy signed into law Public Act 14-133 (House Bill 5144), which restores the
right of adoptees adopted after October 1, 1983 to access their original birth
certificates upon reaching the age of 18. We are completely thrilled and
grateful that the Governor signed the bill, which represents years of work on
the part of literally thousands of supporters of adoptee rights.
Access Is A Human Right
“The law must be consonant with life. It
cannot and should not ignore broad historical currents of history. Mankind is
possessed of no greater urge than to try to understand the age-old questions.
“Who am I?” “Why am I?” Even now the sands and ashes of the continents are
being shifted where we made our first steps as man. Religions of mankind often
include ancestor worship in one way or another. For many, the future is blind
without a sight of the past. Those emotions and anxieties that generate our
thirst to know the past are not superficial or whimsical. They are real and
they are “good cause” under the law of man and God.”
“In all of us there is a hunger, narrow and
deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have come from.
Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our
attainments in life, there is a vacuum, an emptiness and a most disquieting
loneliness!”
The Home Page of Ancestry.com states as follows: “Ready to discover your family
story? Simply start with yourself and we’ll do the searching for you. Find your
ancestors’ stories. Discover yours.”
What if you could never know your family
story? What if the State was hiding it from you? Adoptees can’t discover
their family stories because they are the only people from
whom the State hides their true, original birth certificate.
Adoptees Need Up-To-Date
Medical Information
“In 2009, the U.S. Surgeon General established
a Family History Initiative, which recognized that familial medical history can
be of vital important in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions and
illnesses that are genetically based. Similarly, The Centers for Disease
Control, Office of Public Health Genomics (CDC OPHG), in 2002 established the
Family History Public Health initiative ”to increase awareness of family
history as an important risk factor for common chronic diseases such as cancer,
heart disease, and diabetes, and to promote its use in programs aimed at
reducing the burden of these diseases in the U.S. population.”
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 27
“Adoptees for restoring access stress the
importance of OBCs to obtaining medical information. Without access to birth
family names, adopted persons are barred from gaining fuller knowledge of their
medical histories and genetic risks in order to make the best decisions about
their own heath treatment and that of their children. They may have only
outdated information provided at the time of adoption, so adoptees without
access to their birth families may not know they should have early screenings
for certain conditions manifested by their biological relatives at a later
time. They also may need answers to medical questions that were not included on
a checklist completed long ago, perhaps before family patterns of illness were
known. “
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 19
Substitutes for Access
Don’t Work
“Critics of mutual consent registries – also
sometimes called “passive” registries – point out that they make few matches;
reunion rates through them range from “a high of 4.4% to a median of 2.05%….
Another limitation of mutual consent
registries is that they are state-specific, so they cannot facilitate matches
across borders, and they require adopted persons to know that dates and places
of their birth (the latter of which may have been changed on their amended
birth certificates). For example, in North Carolina from 1949 until rewriting
of the statute in 1995, the law specified that amended birth certificates for
adoptees change their birth place to the residences of their adoptive parents
and omit the names of the attending physicians and the local registrars
(General Statues of North Carolina, Section 48-29 of Chapter 48 Adoption of Minors).
Finally, matches are impossible if either the birth parent or the adoptive
person does not register because he/she has died, though the other may still
want to find identifying information for other relatives.”
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 32; citing Samuels, E.J. (2000-2001). The idea of adoption: An
inquiry into the history of adult adoptee access to birth records. Rutgers Law Review., 53, 367-437.
No “Horror Stories” Have
Resulted From Access
“By the end of June, [Oregon] Ballet
Initiative 58 attorney and adoption activist Thomas McDermott suggested that
most adopted adults and birth parents were reuniting quietly because, as Helen
Hill, founder of the Ballot Initiative 58 campaign put it (Taylor, 2000b),
“it’s a personal and private experience for most people.” Significantly, Frank Hunsaker (Taylor, 200b) (Taylor, 2000b), who was the leader
of the opposition to Ballet 58 and the chief counsel of the constitutional
challenge to Ballet Initiative 58, admitted that, “I have not heard any
so-called horror stories.” (emphasis added)
(p.E1). Hunsaker, who was in contact with a network
of birth mothers, including the Jane Does he had initially defended and dozens
of distraught birth mothers who called him in the aftermath of Ballot
Initiative 58’s passage, was poised to publicize any social disturbance he came
across. Hunsaker’s statement that
birth mother’s lives had not been destroyed nor their privacy invaded, as he
had repeatedly predicted, seriously undermined the adverse social impact theory
that had been used repeatedly to attack Ballot Initiative 58.”
Carp, W.E., (2007) Does opening adoption
records have an adverse social impact?Some lessons from the US., Great Britain, and Australia, 1953-2007. Adoption
Quarterly, 10 (3-4), p. 37.
“A commission [in New South Wales, Australia]
that was set up to study the impact of the law reported that “triad
members complied with the provisions of the contact veto to an
extraordinary degree….It is not easy to think of other laws which have such
a high level of compliance.” (emphasis added)
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 33, citing Carp, W.E., (2007) Does opening adoption records have
an adverse social impact? Some lessons from the US.,
Great Britain, and Australia, 1953-2007. Adoption Quarterly, 10 (3-4), 29-52.
“Triseliotis’ research on the impact of birth
certificate access worldwide found that “a policy of open records has been
operating in Scotland since 1930 and in England from 1976 onwards, with no
evidence of adopted persons misusing or abusing this facility. The
experience of countries such as Finland, Israel and New Zealand, where open
records operate, has been similar. (Triseliotis, 1992) With regard to New South
Wales, Australia, Carp (2007) concluded: “None of the dangers people had
feared – that their privacy would be invaded and their families destroyed – had
materialized” (p. 48) Additional countries that provide OBC access include
Germany, the United Kingdom,. Belgium, Holland,
Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, some Canadian provinces, Israel and Taiwan.”
(emphasis added.)
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 34, citing Triseliotis, J. (1992) Letter To Members of the Senate
and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey.
The Vast Majority of
Birth Mothers Want Contact
“For statistical evidence of birth mother’s
preferences, access proponents rely on a variety of types of data. With respect
to New Jersey searches on behalf of adoptees, the New Jersey Division of Youth
and Family Services reported that 95% of the birth parents it contacted
agree to some form of contact.” (emphasis added)
Letter from Delores Helb,
Adoption Registry Coordinator, State of N.J., Dep’t. of
Human Servs., Div of Youth
and Family Servs., to N.J. Senator Joseph F. Vitale
(December 13, 2004) (on file with the author). Surrender and
Subordination: Birth Mothers and Adoption Law Reform, Elizbeth
J. Samuels, University of Baltimore School of Law, Michigan Journal of Law and
Gender, p.
“According to the testimony of a New
Jersey-based private investigator, in his experience reuniting 1,700 birth
mothers and the children they surrendered, only 2% “of those mothers
did not want to be found.” (emphasis added)
An Act Concerning Adoptees: Hearing on A.
3237 Before the A. Comm. On Family, Women & Children’s Servs.
Comm., 211th Leg., 2d Ann. Sess. (N.J. 2005) (statement of James (Joe)
Collins) Surrender and
Subordination: Birth Mothers and Adoption Law Reform, Elizbeth
J. Samuels, University of Baltimore School of Law, Michigan Journal of Law and
Gender, p.
“A study published In the UK in 2005 found
that 93% of birth mothers who have had contact with their children with either
“pleased” or “very pleased” and only 1% of birth mothers were “not
pleased.” (emphasis added)
John Triseliotis et al.,
The Adoption Triangle Revisited: A Study of adoption, search and reunion experiences 124 (2005)
In Oregon, Maine and New Hampshire (which
restored access in 2000, 2005, and 2009, respectively), the combined
percentage of birth parents who requested no contact on their Contract
Preference Form was less than 1%.(0.14)
“Reform Access Success”, report by the
American Adoption Congress
“The number of birthparents filing
no-contact preference forms in all of the four states granting unconditional
access constituted 1 percent or less of the total OBCs released……Some may
question whether the small number of contact vetos of
non-contact preference forms is the result of the lack of birthparent knowledge
about this provision in the law, or perhaps even a lack of knowledge that the
law exists. This seems unlikely to have been the case at least in Oregon,
however, since the change was on the ballet and received extensive, prolonged
attention in the state’s media.” (emphasis added)
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 29
Contact Preference Forms
Allow Birth Parents To Communicate With the Adult Adoptee Without Contact
The bill proposed by Access provides a system
for birth parents to file a Contact Preference Form, like this form succcessfully
used in Rhode Island, which gives them the following options:
▪ I would like to be
contacted;
▪ I would prefer to be
contacted only through an intermediary; or
▪ I prefer not to be
contacted at this time.
Adoptees, Birth Parents
and Adoptive Parents are Natural Allies, Not Enemies.
Research has shown repeatedly that members of
the adoption triad have mutual, not antagonistic, interests related to adult
adoptee access to identifying information.
Madelyn Freundlich, Confidentiality Becomes
Political: The New Strategy in Opposition to Open Records. American Adoption
Congress Decree, Winter 1997/Spring 1998, at 4.
“Thus, it was the protection of
children from public knowledge of their illegitimacy, rather than
the protection of the parties from one another, that led to the sealing of
OBCs”… (emphasis added) By 1948, nearly
all states began issuing amended birth certificates, with the new documents
listing the names of the children’s adoptive parents as their biological
parents (Carp, 1998). The original certificates were sealed from the public –
but through the late-1950s generally not from adult adoptees – again, so that
an out-of-wedlock birth or unknown parentage would not stigmatize the children
(Samuels, 2000-2001, Car, 1998). By the 1940s, organizations such as the U.S.
Children’s Bureau were offering additional reasons for sealing records, at
least until the adopted person reached the age of majority. These included the
desirability of protecting adoptive families from the intrusion of the “natural
parents” (Morlock, 1945). The Bureau
explicitly recognized the importance of access for adult adoptees, however,
noting “every person has a right to know who he is and who his people were” (Morlock, 1946, p. 168) (emphasis added)
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 11
Complete Birth Parent Anonymity
Is An Illusion Under Connecticut law.
Connecticut Probate Courts have the ability
to order access to the OBC in their discretion if the birth parents cannot be
located, and they determine it does not harm the public interest, the adoptee,
or the birth or genetic parents. In doing so, the Court is NOT required
to notify birth parents that the OBC has been disclosed to the adult
adoptee. See Conn. Gen. Stat. Section
7-53.
Birth Mothers Weren’t
“Promised Privacy”: Secrecy Was Imposed, Not Chosen. Many Birth Mothers Were
Banished and Shamed.
“In this deeply moving work, Ann Fessler brings to light the lives of hundreds of thousands
of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the
years following World War II and before Roe v. Wade. The Girls
Who Went Awaytells
a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating
double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women
and the children they gave up for adoption.”
From the Publisher of The Girls Who Went Away, by Ann Fessler
“We deplore the shameful practices that
denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love
and care for your children. You were not legally and socially
acknowledged as their mothers. And you were yourselves deprived of care
and support.
To you, the mothers who were betrayed by a
system that gave you no choice and subjected you to manipulation, mistreatment
and malpractice, we apologise.
We say sorry to you, the mothers who were
denied knowledge of your rights, which meant you could not provide informed
consent. You were given false assurances. You were forced to endure the
coercion and brutality of practices that were unethical, dishonest and in many
cases illegal.
We know you have suffered enduring effects
from these practices forced upon you by others. For the loss, the grief, the
disempowerment, the stigmatisation and the guilt, we
say sorry.
To redress the shameful mistakes of the past,
we are committed to ensuring that all those affected get the help they need
including specialist counselling services and support, the ability to
find truth in freely available records and assistance in reconnecting
with lost family.” (emphasis added.)
From the March 21, 2013, national apology delivered by
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to birth mothers for practices of
forced adoption in that country during the Baby Scoop Era. The
apology results from an extensive, remarkably detailed Senate Committe Report and investigation on
the history of adoption in Australia.
“The birth mother advocates, who are among
the most vocal advocates for access, stress the fact that birth mothers were
neither offered a choice of being, nor guaranteed that they would be, forever
unknown to their children….As a means of assessing these competing claims, this
article analyzes the provisions in a collection of birth mother surrender
documents assembled by the author — seventy-five mid-twentieth century
documents executed in twenty-six different states. In order to establish the
significance of the provisions with respect to these claims, the article first
relates depictions by birth mothers of a journey from silence to legislative
advocacy. The article then examines the conflicting claims about birth mothers
that pervade legislative contests over adult adoptee access to original birth
certificates. Finally, the article analyzes the provisions of the surrender
documents. The analysis of the provisions definitively supports birth
mother advocates’ reports that women were neither offered a choice of nor
guaranteed lifelong anonymity. Their opponents’ contentions to the
contrary, whether motivated by concern for birth mothers or other interests, reinscribe an earlier culture of shame and secrecy,
subordinating women’s own wishes and silencing their newly raised voices…..An
examination of the collection of seventy-five surrender documents from
twenty-six states shows that their provisions are consonant with women’s
reported feelings of lack of agency and powerlessness, as well as their
contention that they were neither offered nor guaranteed lifelong anonymity.” (emphasis added)
Surrender and Subordination:
Birth Mothers and Adoption Law Reform, Elizbeth J. Samuels, University of
Baltimore School of Law, Michigan Journal of Law and Gender
“Confidentiality for most was not a choice,
but an inherent part of the adoption process.”
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 21, citing Schooler, J.E. & Norris,
B.L. (2002. Coping with birthparent loss in adopted children. Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry. 43 (2), 213-223.
“Forty percent of the documents do include
provisions about future identity disclosure or future contact. Under
the terms of these provisions, it is the birth mother who promises she will not
seek information about the child. She affirms her understanding that
she is not entitled to information about the child’s new identity or
whereabouts. She promises she will not interfere with or harass the adoptive
family. (emphasis added)
Surrender and
Subordination: Birth Mothers and Adoption Law Reform, Elizbeth
J. Samuels, University of Baltimore School of Law, Michigan Journal of Law and
Gender, p. 139
“The idea that adopted persons’ own birth
identities should be concealed from them, an idea that arose and enjoyed its
heyday in the last century, was a novel invention, a historical anomaly.”
Surrender and
Subordination: Birth Mothers and Adoption Law Reform, Elizbeth
J. Samuels, University of Baltimore School of Law, Michigan Journal of Law and
Gender,
“Surrender” is such a
appropriate description of these documents. We had our backs to a cliff – every
single person we had ever trusted and loved betrayed our trust and were against
us; our parents, teachers, the sisters and priest of our church. The
only “choice” we were given was to surrender our child…(Letter from
Dorothea Copeck-Nolan to the author (June 6, 2009)
(on file with Elizabeth Samuels)(explaining that she married the child’s father
and that she and her husband, and the two songs they raised, were found by [her
adult son] when he was 35).” (emphasis added)
Surrender and
Subordination: Birth Mothers and Adoption Law Reform, Elizbeth
J. Samuels, University of Baltimore School of Law, Michigan Journal of Law and
Gender, p. 138
“In Australia, the majority of adopted adults
have unconditional access to their OBCs, because the two most-populated states
have passed relevant legislation.”
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 7
Secrecy Harms Adoptees
and Adoptive Families.
“Secrets within any family distort reality,
undermine trust, and destroy intimacy. Secrets create exclusion, destroy
authenticity, product fantasies, evoke fear, and kindle shame. For those
touched by adoption, there is a high cost to pay.”
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 31, citing: Schooler, J.E. &
Norris, B.L. (2002). Coping with birthparent loss in adopted children.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 43 (2), 213-223.
“Research has shown that secrecy
within adoptive families, attempts to deny or suppress children’s interest
in their birth families, and parents’ difficulty in communicating freely with
their children about adoption are all linked with greater distance in
the parent-child relationship in childhood and adulthood – as well as
with more adjustment difficulties for the children.” (emphasis
added)
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates,
Policy & Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption
Institute. p. 31, citing: Brodzinsky, D. (2006). Family structural openness and
communication openness as predictors in the adjustment of adopted children.
Adoption Quarterly, 9 (4), 1-18.; Ruetner, M.S. &
Koerner, A.F. (2008). The effect of family
communication patterns on adopted adolescent adjustment. Journal of Marriage
and Family, 70, 715-727; Grotevant, H.D. (2007) &McRoy, R.G. (1998). Openness in adoption: Exploring family
connections. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Passmore, N.
Feeney, J.. & Foulstone,
A. (2007). Secrecy within adoptive families and its impact on adult adoptees.
Family Relaionships Quarterly, 5, 3-5.
“According to both research and decades of
experience, adopted adults who choose to search make it clear that they
are not rejecting their adoptive parents or looking for new ones. Rather,
they are primarily manifesting a desire to complete their understanding of
their personal histories or heritage.”
For The Records II: An
Examination of the History and Impact Of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth
Certificates, Policy
& Practice Perspective, July 2010, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. p.
25, citing Treseliotis, J., Feast, J. & Kyle, F.
(2005). The adoption triangle revisited: A study of adoption, search and
reunion experience. London: British Association for Adoption & Fostering.
Openness Is The
Norm In Adoption Today
▪ “Closed” infant adoptions
have shrunk to a tiny minority (about 5 percent), with 40 percent “mediated”
and 55 percent “open.” In addition, 95 percent of agencies now offer open
adoptions.
▪ In the overwhelming
majority of infant adoptions, adoptive parents and expectant parents
considering adoption meet, and the expectant parents pick the new family for
their baby.
▪ Adoptive parents, like
most participants in open adoptions, report positive experiences; more openness
is also associated with greater satisfaction with the adoption process.
▪ Women who have placed
their infants for adoption – and then have ongoing contact with their children
– report less grief, regret and worry, as well as more peace of mind.
▪ The primary beneficiaries
of openness are the adopted persons – as children and later in life – because
of access to birth relatives, as well as to their own family and medical
histories
Openness In
Adoption: From Secrecy and Stigma To Knowledge and Connections, Practice Perspective,
March 2012, Deborah H. Siegel, Ph.D., & Susan Livingston Smith, LCSW
“In summary, the majority of adoptive parents
thought that New York State law should allow an adult adopdtee
to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate, and that this access
should be retroactive (access should be given regardless of when the child was
adopted).”
“It’s Time To Speak For
Ourselves” Adoptive Parents Attitudes Towards Openness in Adoption Records: Summary of A Study
of NYS Adoptive Parents Conducted in 1994-1995
Connecticut
& National Expert Endorsements
Although Access Connecticut seeks to
re-establish the right of access for adult adoptees only, adoption and child
welfare organizations are in a position of trust in regard to minor adoptees,
and have an obligation to preserve their rights until they reach the age of
majority.
These licensed child-placing agencies and
social welfare organizations in Connecticut have provided Access Connecticut an
endorsement of the following statement:
“This agency supports restoring the right of
adult adoptees to receive a copy of their original birth certificate upon
reaching the age of majority. We believe this right should apply
retroactively as well as prospectively.”
Connecticut Association of Foster and Adoptive Families
Connecticut Council on Adoption
Connecticut Voices for Children
Family and Children’s Agency, Inc.
FamilyAffirmation Center for Treatment
Jewish Family Services of Bridgeport
Jewish Family Services of New Haven
Lutheran Social Services of New England
National Association of Social Workers – Connecticut Chapter
Rainbow Adoptions International, Inc.
The Village for Children and Families
Many national experts and organizations with
extensive experience in adoption support adult adoptees access to their
original birth certificates. The following is a partial list of such
organizations, and other interested parties, along with their statements of
support.
Concerned United
Birthparents (CUB)
Child Welfare League of
American (CLWA)
National Association of
Social Workers (NASW)
North American Council on
Adoptable Children (NACAC)
American Adoption Congress
(AAC)
American Academy of
Pediatrics
Parents for Ethical
Adoption Reform
Holt International
Children’s Services
• Concerned United Birthparents (CUB). The only national
organization focused on birth parents – their experience, healing and wisdom.
“CUB supports adult adoptees’ right to access
their records, without restrictions or qualifications. Knowing one’s identity
is a civil right which is being consistently abused by the practice of sealed
records adoptions. All human beings have the right to know their original
identity which includes their genetic roots, their medical history and
biological history.”
http://www.cubirthparents.org/open_records.php
• Child Welfare League of America . The largest adoption-focused organization in the U.S. with
thousands of state and private agencies as members.
“The interests of adopted adults in having
information about their origins have come to be recognized as having critical
psychological importance as well as importance in understanding their health
and genetic status. Because such information is essential to adopted adults’
identity and health needs, the agency should promote policies that provide
adopted adults with direct access to identifying information.”
CWLA Standards of Excellence for
Adoption Services 87 (2000)
• National Association of
Social Workers. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is the
largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world,
with 140,000 members. NASW works to enhance the professional growth and
development of its members, to create and maintain professional standards, and
to advance sound social policies
“The need and right of adoptees to know their
birth origin should be recognized and respected. This right extends to requests
from adult adoptees for identifying information.”
NASW: Social Work Speaks: NASocialWPolicy
Statements, 2000-2003 131 (5th ed. 2000)
• North American Council on
Adoptable Children (NACAC). The largest adoptive parent organization in the U.S. Founded in
1974 and committed to meeting the needs of waiting children and families who
adopt them.
“NACAC believes that every adopted person has
the right at the age of majority, to receive personal information about his or
her birth, foster, and adoption history, including medical information, and
educational and social history. NACAC supports efforts of adoptees to have
access to information about and connections with their birth and foster
families……Recognizing that many adult adoptees have a need for more complete
information about their birth families, NACAC supports their right to this
information and supports access to original birth certificates to any adult
adoptee at age of majority.”
NACAC, Position
Statements: Access To Records.
• American Adoption Congress (AAC). The American Adoption
Congress is comprised of individuals, families and organizations committed to
adoption reform. We represent those whose lives are touched by adoption or
other loss of family continuity. We promote honesty, openness and respect for family
connections in adoption, foster care and assisted reproduction. We provide
education for our members and professional communities about the lifelong
process of adoption. We advocate legislation that will grant every individual
access to information about his or her family and heritage.
“Enacting legislation in all states that
guarantees access to identifying information for all adopted persons and their
birth and adoptive families through records access and preservation of open
adoption agreements.”
“Adoption: No Secrets. No Fear. is about normalizing the reunion and reconnection process.
It is about access and adoptees’ right to know who they are. It is about the
connection that birth parents feel with their children and their desire to know
them as adults. It is about adoptive families and their support for openness at
every stage of the adoption journey.”
• Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. A non-profit education,
policy and research organization. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
develops and implements a range of ethics-based policy and practice initiatives
to address the critical issues facing the field of adoption.
“Every state should restore unrestricted
access to original birth certificates for all adult adoptees, retroactively and
prospectively. The experience of many other countries, of U.S. states
where birth certificates have never been sealed from adopted persons, and from
those states that have restored access, all indicate that there are few if any
problems when access is granted. There is no significant legal,
experiential or factual rationale for denying adopted adults the right to
access their OBCs – a right that is enjoyed by all non-adopted Americans.
Allowing access with the provision for contact preference forms is a practical
solution that affords birthparents a greater opportunity to express their
wishes – and therefore greater “protection” – than they currently have with
sealed records.”
For The Records: Restoring
A Legal Right For Adult Adoptees
• National Adoption Center . Provides adoption opportunities
particularly for children with special needs and children from minority
cultures.
“The National Adoption Center believes that
it is an inalienable right of all citizens, including adopted adults, to have
unencumbered access to their original birth certificates. In keeping with this
position, we believe that copies of both the original and the amended birth
certificate should be given to the adoptive family at the time of finalization
unless specifically denied by the birthparents. In any case, the National
Adoption Center advocates that the adoptee, at age 18, be granted access to
his/her original birth certificate.
The National Adoption Center also supports an
adult adoptee’s unencumbered access to all medical and historical records.* These records should be given to adopting families prior to
finalization.”
• American Academy of Pediatrics. A professional association
of pediatricians with more than 60,000 members, which has the largest pediatric
publishing program in the world.
“The most helpful thing a human being can
learn in life is to be conscious of himself as an individual, and to be aware
of who and what he is. Determining identity is a difficult process for some
brought up by his natural parents; it is more complex for the individual whose
ancestry is unknown to him (p. 948)…”(t)here is ample
evidence that the adopted child retains his need for seeking his ancestry for a
long time: (pp. 948-949)”.
American Academy of Pediatrics Commission on
Adoption, (1971). Identity development in
adopted children, Pediatrics, 47 (5), 948-950.
• Parents for Ethical Adoption Reform (PEAR). PEAR is a 501(c)(3)
Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation. PEAR started as a grassroots group of
adoptive and prospective adoptive parents who came together to discuss the lack
of a unified, respected voice for adoptive families.
“PEAR supports unrestricted access to birth
records for all adults adopted as minors. We do not believe any citizen should
be discriminated against by removing the right to obtain their personal,
official documents. We oppose the imposition of contact vetoes, court orders or
third-party agency interference with an adoptee’s right to access his or her
original birth certificate.
Adoption should be about the formation
of a family for the benefit and best interests of children, not the destruction
of identity. As an organization we will support clean legislation submitted in
any state that seeks to achieve the goal of opening records.”
• Holt International Children’s Services. Holt International,
a Christian organization founded over 50 years ago, continues to be a world
leader in international adoption and child welfare programs that enable
children to have families of their own.
“Holt International Children’s Services
supports access by adoptees and birth parents to identifying information about
each other.”
Holt Open
Adoption Position