When you're adopted, how do you find your birth parents?

What do you do when you were adopted at birth and you want to find out who your birth parents are?

In Minnesota, you must first find the agency where your adoption took place. Sometimes this information is hard to track down.

And you have to pay for the adoption agency to do a search.

If new legislation passes in Minnesota this year, people who have been adopted would be able to get a copy of their original birth certificate when they turn 19. They wouldn’t need to go to the adoption agency to start a search for their birth parents.

Eight states have already passed similar legislation. There is a growing movement in Minnesota to allow people who have been adopted the right to their original birth certificate.

Until 1982 in Minnesota, there was no formal way for a woman who was putting her child up for adoption to say whether she wanted her child to know who she was when that child became an adult.

Since 1982, a birth mother has to sign an affidavit (scroll to Birth Parent - Permission to Release Original Birth Record to Child), which is a legal document provided by the Minnesota Department of Health in which the birth mother states her preference for future contact.

The birth mother can check a box for disclosure, indicating that the child can find out who the birth mother is, or non-disclosure, meaning that the child cannot find out who the birth mother is.

If the bill that’s just been introduced to the Minnesota Legislature passes, anyone who was adopted in Minnesota will be able to get a birth certificate, unless there’s an affidavit of non disclosure on file.

But all those birth mothers before 1982 didn’t sign anything, and many of them were led to believe that their identity would remain secret

“We get calls from birth mothers that just beg us and say, ‘This would just devastate my family and all the relationships that I’ve built since that time,’” says Madonna King, president of Children’s Home Society and Family Services, an adoption agency.

“The reason that people want it to be kept secret is because they believed the promise of confidentiality and they went forward,” she says. “Probably we are talking about women that are in their 60’s, 70’s, 80’s-- that’s the group of women that we’re really concerned about."

The adoption agencies would like a clause in the new bill directing the Minnesota Department of Health to host an awareness campaign to let birth mothers know that if they don’t want their children to know their identity they should sign an affidavit indicating that they want non-disclosure.

Many of these women do not have access to the Internet and are not receiving information from the adoption agency they worked with. Many of them have indeed “gotten on with their lives” and the child they bore is a secret, sometimes to their current families and partners.

But the Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform (MCAR) wants people who are adopted to be able to access their birth certificates. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the adopted person will try to make contact, although the adopted person might have medical and emotional needs.

“The foundation of adoption has been secrecy,” says Mary Mason, a leader of MCAR. “That secrecy was a part of shame, related most often to women not being married and relinquishing children in the past. That changed the whole system. Now we know we don’t need to have that paradigm of secrecy.”

Sometimes it’s a matter of life and death for an adoptee who needs medical information. Sandy Sperazza is a birth mother who was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer. She wanted her daughter to know. They were reunited a few years ago, and based on the information Sperazza gave her, her daughter had a preventive masectomy.

Sperazza says that her experience taught her that it’s imperative for an adoptee who wants to know his or her history to have the ability to access it.

The bill, HF 3371, goes into committee this week.

My report about this bill and its controversy will air on Wednesday March 5, on Morning Edition.

Resources:

For the Record: Restoring a right to adult adoptees: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Give adoptees right to their identities: Minnesota Daily

Children’s Home Society and Family Services: Legislative Priorities

Lutheran Social Services post adoption information

Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform

As Adoptees Seek Roots, States Unsealing Records: USA TODAY

Bill No. 3371, introduced by Representative Kathy Tinglestad and Senator Ann Rest

Affidavit of Disclosure or Non-disclosure: PDF: Scroll to:
Birth Parent - Permission to Release Original Birth Record to Child

Why is it so difficult for those with "special interests" to understand the needs of the adopted person to find his roots and history? Birthmothers were not promised confidentiality: it was just an assumption and expection at that time, when adoption was shrouded in shame and secrecy. Now things have changed and adoptees have the right to know who they are.

If birthmothers in their 60's, 70's and 80's really do call CHS and express concern, then CHS should work with those women -- in a safe and helpful manner -- if they really want to help them and do the decent thing - reunite them with their children! The CHS has their name and number and should find ways to let them privately meet and know and support their children -- not help them to reject their children and abandon them yet again!

Sarah,

You've struck on the center of the controversy.

There are birth mothers who were promised secrecy, often to protect their own parents from shame.

These women still have the opportunity to keep their privacy, even if the new bill passes, IF they sign an affidavit indicating that they don't want contact.

I also talked with many adoptees and many birth mothers who are hoping that this bill passes so that they can be in touch with each other.

And... I heard a call for privacy from adoption agencies who work with both adoptees and birth mothers.

Eight states have passed similar legislation.

Nanci Olesen

As an over-sixty adoptee, I recently nearly lost my life due to lack of adequate and accurate health and family medical history. I have carried the old shame and guilt surrounding my birth and placement far too long already, as have so many of us placed into adoptive homes under the closed records system. Every adopted person needs at least complete and updated-yearly medical information in order to protect him or herself as well as any biological children he or she has. The unknown factor continues on through history long after any older birth parent has died. These records will not become public, but rather will be available ONLY to the adoptee listed on the birth certificate. In no other state with open records have any recorded dire consequences occurred. Minnesota has no reason to expect anything less. When weighed against the life and health of the "babies" placed so many years ago, privacy shrinks in comparison.

It is a violation of adoptee's rights to withhold their OBCs from them. Its a right to privacy violation. The right to privacy is about the right to be free from governmental interference. It is a fourth amendment right. They are holding our OBCs in seizure on the presumption of harm.

Adoption is also a transfer of parental rights. The natural parents lose all of their rights including their right to privacy. The right to privacy applies to parenting, contraception, and abortion. With adoption, a mother is transferring her rights. She doesn't gain additional rights. She looses all of them. You are also holding adult adoptees to a contract that they didn't sign or even agree to. This sealed records system violates the adoptee rights all together.

There is no promised natural parent privacy. Up until 1982, there was no documentation ever for this so called privacy.

You might want to check into Bastard Nation's website.

http://www.bastards.org
http://www.origins-usa.org
Check out those websites.

I hope Madonna King at Children's Home Society of Minnesota understands that the "confidentiality" assured mothers who surrendered their babies to adoption had nothing – nothing – to do with withholding information from their children. I know, because I'm a birthmother. Of course I didn't want my child's birth to be published in the newspaper or have her birth certificate on file at the local county clerk's office where busybodies could snoop and cause trouble. But in all the months of counseling I received, and in the admonishment I received from the judge (making sure I understood the finality of my decision), NOT ONCE did anyone mention to me the possibility that my child might one day wish to contact me. In fact, my counseling was aimed squarely at convincing me that I would completely forget about the child I bore; the judge said she would be "as if dead" to me. So how in the world can anyone think that I was asked how I'd feel if the child I'd forgotten all about and was 'dead' came to them and asked for information about me? The word 'reunion' in conjunction had never been used together with the word 'adoption' back then.

I have an article from a 1947 social work publication that tells of the counseling of relinquishing mothers back then. It told how mothers were helped to understand how vitally important it was for their children to have access to their own identities, and that this information had to be preserved and made available to them. Yes, their birth certificates!

The only ones who have benefited from secrecy in adoption have been the adoption brokers, who have been protected from being held accountable for their less-than-honest dealings. Before there was a push for transparency in adoption and before the Internet made search easier, agencies got away with all kinds of devious activity. Today, agencies are being sued for withholding information, lying, and otherwise manipulating people's lives. One agency at the moment is being sued under federal racketeering laws.

It's time for honesty in adoption. Minnesota is on the front lines of the attempt to put an end to the shame and the darkness of closed, secret adoption. If adoption is a good thing, then why should it hide in the shadows?

I learned today from The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute that most European countries allow access to original birth certificates.

In Oregon, New Hampshire, there have been no issues with stalking adoptees.

In Kansas and Alaska, again no issues. In fact, adoption has gone up and abortion has gone down in those states.

I am an adult adoptee that didn't know that I carried three genetic mutations for blood clots until I was 12 weeks pregnant with my 2nd child and in the hospital with pulmonary emboli that could have killed me. I was adopted almost 39 years ago in Minnesota and would like to know my birthmother's name and to obtain my original birth certificate. The way I look at it is that I had no decision in closing my file and saying it was ok to keep this important information away from me all my life, I was a tiny baby and someone else spoke for me on my behalf. Now that I am an adult, I would like that file opened. Why is a birth mother's supposed right to privacy trump my right to my own information as an American citizen? My ignorance about my own genetic makeup could have lead to my and my son's death.

I am amazed that any agency is still opposed to access. There will always be loss around adoption, that is what it is based on. The fear of birth mothers around being 'outed' could be addressed as stated above, not by shutting down the rights of so very many adopted people to their own information. Agencies could more wisely take this opportunity to enhance their post adoption services to adopted adults and birth mothers.

These adoption agencies professing to be protecting former young unmarried mothers who lost their baby to adoption decades ago...are lying thru their teeth! This is all a smokescreen to protect the agencies, their agency records and the Truth that is in those records. The Baby Scoop Era (Closed Record Era) was nothing more than a giant social engineering project and a Baby Meat Market for the HWI (Healthy White Infant). Please people do not believe what the Adoption Industry is saying about 'birthmothers' needing protection, it is totally untrue. You only have a tiny minority of former unmarried mothers living in the Shadows, in The Closet of Shame. The vast majority of mothers are either searching for their now adult child or hoping upon hope their now adult child will find them. This is all a smokescreen, this 'protection' propaganda. They just don't want those records opened up. The question should really be....What is the Adoption Industry hiding?? I am a former unmarried mother from 1964, I left the Closet of Shame and chose to against all odds, find 'my baby' and I did....9 years ago!

I am an adult adoptee who was born, relenquished, and adopted in Iowa, have successfully searched for and been reunited with my birth family for over 12 years now. During my search, I learned that my birth mother was coerced and threatened by the social worker handling her case into relenquishing me for adoption. Her alternative...to have my 11 yr old sister and 8 yr old brother, along with myself removed from her (my older siblings were also born out of wedlock). I was born in 1954, and social workers had free reign. My birth mother was gainfully employed, lived with her parents, so child care was never an issue (an aunt also lived next door) and was able to provide everything any married mother would be able to, and probably moreso. Yet, because I was her third child born out of wedlock, she was deemed an unfit mother, and coerced into relenquishment. After I found my sister, I learned that my birth mother had carried my hospital photo with her in her wallet until the day she passed away, 4 years before I began my search.
I am in possession of my Original Birth Certificate, after petitioning the court where my adoption was finalized and presenting all of the identifying information I had garnered from my search.
Every adoptee I have spoken with (except those in open adoptions) has problems with separation and bonding issues. Because we were removed from the only person we had ever known, the voice we had come to know, the heartbeat we spent nine months listening to, was suddenly and permanently removed from us. Our birth mothers were never allowed to breast feed us, as that would promote any bonding between us.
Had I net searched and been successsfully reunited with the remainder of my birth family, I never would have known about certain serious genetic medical problems.
I will do everything within my power to work for open records and adoptees free and total access to their OBC's when they reach legal age.