Adoptions Hidden History: Steps to Sealing the Records

Over the next four decades, like falling dominos, 48 states enacted adoption laws that prohibited original birth certificates from public view and made them inaccessible to all parties involved in the adoption. Amended birth certificates were issued stating that the adoptive parents had given birth to the child.

In this closed adoption process, the original, factual birth certificate is sealed away and not legally recognized as valid. Kansas and Alaska never adopted such practices and remain open-access to this day. The laws in the remaining 48 states, however, created an enormous group of Americans who—depending on their birth state—had and have vastly different rights to their origins, ancestry, and, in many cases, updated medical histories. Since , nine states have reversed course and granted adoptees restored access.

Four others have passed partial access legislation, which allows adult adoptees access to their records, if they were born within certain years. For example, as of December 5, , Massachusetts made original birth certificates available to those born prior to July 14, A registered number is typed in at the upper right hand corner of both the short form birth registration certificate and the long form medical record of birth. When a child is adopted, a similar, but different, form is used.

It appears the same in every way, except for a few details. The registered number follows the child to adoption and appears in the upper right hand corner of the amended birth certificate form. Some medical information is included, such as birthdate, time, place, single or twin or triplet birth, and name of hospital. This child was created upon the finalization of adoption, but that is not indicated anywhere on this document.

Some state laws allow adopters to change the city, state, and birthdate as well. The state director of vital statistics is authorized to lie. If anyone else gives false information on a government form, that is perjury. While the method of re-homing is new, some adopted people have experienced being adopted twice. In addition to being thrust into new family constructs, these adoptees have three or more birth certificates because two or more court ordered name changes were implemented through the finalization of adoption.

To non-adopted people, this may not seem to be a problem. To adopted people who have lived through this as children, one or more identity re-assignments is not only confusing, but it is disruptive to normal human development and is psychologically damaging. In the s, lawmakers believed that they were providing legitimacy to those who they thought needed a life free from shame.

Their seemingly well-intentioned alteration of the facts had unintended consequences. Half and full orphans who lost one or both parents to an early death, and children who were removed from their parents due to abuse or neglect, were also adopted. As divorce and remarriage became commonplace, many children were adopted by step-parents or other family members. These legitimately-born adoptees did not need to be legitimized through adoption, but we were and are now subjected to the same identity erasure as were illegitimates who were seen to be in need of legitimation.

It took decades, but adopted children grew up to resent these lies. Our birth certificates are false. Our state governments prevent us from knowing who we are. We are prohibited from self-determination and are not completely free citizens.

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Adopted people are segregated by law from non-adopted citizens who are free to own their authentic birth certificates, to know their own families, and to associate with anyone they wish. Supreme Court heard the case in They merely exchanged one set for another. Since the adoptees did not question the constitutionality of the adoption laws, their challenge to sealed records was turned back to the states. Two states, Kansas and Alaska, have never sealed original birth certificates from adoptees over age 18, but they have always created amended birth certificates, just as in every other state.

In the 37 years since the ALMA civil rights case failed, only a few states passed laws allowing varying degrees of access-only to confiscated birth certificates.

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Because most adopted people had no tangible proof of our identities before adoption and our made-up names were all we knew, there was no demand to eradicate the act of falsifying documents. At that time, very few of us knew our names at birth or owned our actual birth certificates.

For the handful of us who did, there was no consensus as to what should be done with the evidence. Access bills and laws provide only limited access to uncertified copies of the sealed birth record.

Closed adoption - Wikipedia

We are then expected to believe that and behave as if legal parentage is more important than genetics and actual parentage. No one should keep their children. Imagine that laws will be passed to mandate that all children will be removed at birth and raised by someone else. If that does not seem right to you, then why is it permissible for the adoption industry to use coercive tactics to persuade young, vulnerable and poor mothers to give up their infants at birth to adopters who catch the baby immediately upon birth and cut the cord? DNA does not work that way. While LGBT adults desire a baby, they are not concerned for the civil rights of the children they are adopting, or producing via donor-conception, or both.

Donor-conceived individuals are completely displaced from their genetic families. Their identity rights have also been violated. Birth certificates of donor-conceived people are completely false from the very beginning since the names of the gamete donors and surrogate mothers are not placed on the birth certificate. These differences segregate donor-conceived and adopted people from non-adopted people who never need to question the truthfulness of their birth certificates. Historically, the four primary reasons for married couples to obtain a child via closed adoption have been in no particular order infertility , asexuality , having concern for a child's welfare i.

In , Minnesota was the first U. Usually, the reasons for sealing records and carrying out closed adoptions is said to be to "protect" the adoptee and adoptive parents from disruption by the natural parents and in turn, to allow natural parents to make a new life. Many adopting parents in non-private adoptions would apply to a local, state licensed adoption agency.

Prior to adoption, the infant would often be placed in temporary and state-mandated foster care for a few weeks to several months until the adoption was approved. This would also help ensure that he or she was healthy, that the birthparent was sure about relinquishment, and that nothing was overlooked at the time of birth. Also, much better medical testing is available, both prenatally and postnatally. Many children also developed orphanage-type behavior including head banging, rocking and hand flapping. Many adopted adults still retain this rocking behavior especially when tired.

Once the adoption has been approved, the agency transfers the infant from foster care if used to the adoptive parents. After the infant has spent a few weeks or months with the adoptive parents, a local judge formally and legally approves the adoption. The natural mother has until the final court hearing. The infant is then issued a second, amended certificate, sometimes stated to be a birth certificate, that states the adopting parents are the child's parents.

This becomes the adopted person's permanent, legal "birth" certificate. In the post WWII era laws were enacted which prevented both the adopted person and adoptive family from accessing the original, and the information given to them can be quite limited though this has varied somewhat over the years, and from one agency to another. Originally, the sealed record laws were meant to keep information private from everyone except the 'parties to the action' adoptee, adoptive parent, birthparent and agency. Over time, the laws were reinterpreted or rewritten to seal the information even from the involved parties.

In some states, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia the city and county of the adoptees birth is changed on the amended birth certificate, to where the adoptive parents were living at the time the adoption was finalized. Often, the states will not give the adoptee the correct location of their birth. Some adoptees have been denied passports for having incomplete birth certificates.

The hospital may also be omitted on the amended birth certificate, especially if it primarily serves unwed mothers. In the United States, many such hospitals were run by the Salvation Army , and named after its founder, William Booth. By the mids, all of these hospitals had closed due to high costs and the reduced need for secrecy, as the social stigma of having a child out of wedlock in America had decreased.

More and more mothers were raising their child as a single parent often with the help of the newly created institution of government welfare. From the early s when Jean Paton began Orphan Voyage, and into the s with the creation of ALMA, International Soundex Reunion Registry, Yesterday's Children, Concerned United Birthparents , Triadoption Library, and dozens of other local search and reunion organizations, there has been a grass roots support system in place for those seeking information and reunion with family.

Reunion registries were designed so adoptees and their birth parents, siblings or other family members can locate one another at little or no cost. In these mutual consent registries, both parties must have registered in order for there to be a match. Most require the adoptee to be at least 18 years old. Though they did not exist until late in the 20th century, today there are many World Wide Web pages , chat rooms, and other online resources that offer search information, registration and support.

From the very beginning, there have been Search Angels who help adoptees, siblings and birth families locate their relatives for free. Usually, these are persons personally touched by adoption who do not feel anyone should be charged a fee to get information about themselves or their family. Laws are ever changing and in a few states of the USA, a few provinces in Canada, the UK and Australia there are now various forms of open records giving adoptees and birth family members access to information in their files and on each other.

Some states have confidential intermediary systems. This often requires a person to petition the court to view the sealed adoption records, then the intermediary conducts a search similar to that of a private investigator.

About Sealed Records

This can be either a search for the birth mother at the request of the adoptee, or vice versa. Quite often, in the many years which have passed since the adoptee was born, a birth mother or female adoptee has both moved to another address , and married or remarried resulting in a change of her surname.

While this can make the search difficult and time consuming, a marriage certificate may provide the needed clue as to the person's whereabouts. If and when the intermediary is able to contact the birth mother or adoptee , she is informed that her adopted child or birth mother is inquiring about her.

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In the few states that have open adoption records, should this party indicate that he or she does not want to be contacted, by law, the information would not be given out. Upon completion of the search in which the birth mother agrees to be contacted, the intermediary usually sends the adoptee the official unamended birth certificate obtained from the court. The adoptive parents' application to an adoption agency remains confidential, however. For persons who can not afford the fees, there is usually assistance available from the tax-payer supported state department or the non-profit agency, and anyone can request from them how-to request this help.

Most agencies charge a fixed fee which includes everything, and only in the most extreme and unusual circumstances ask for additional funds.