Monday, February 28, 2000
Adoptees seek to safeguard their rights
Missouri Open 2000 is a grassroots organization that is trying to restore the rights of Missouri adoptees to have access to their original birth certificates. The Feb. 12 editorial is balanced, and for this I thank you. I would like to dispute a point or two.
House Bill 1216 is not about search and reunion. It isn't illegal for adoptees or birth parents to search, and it's not as difficult as it was in the past. Six
out of seven of our board members have searched and found their birth families without using the original birth certificate. In fact, the birth certificate has very little information on it that would help in a search, and that information is often 20 to 40 years out of date.
HB1216 is about civil rights. Why should adult adoptees have to have notarized permission slips from mommy and daddy to get a piece of paper that pertains to their birth? Nobody else has to do that.
The editorial mentions registries, but state-run registries have dismal records in their searches. They are underfunded and have enormous backlogs. Most citizens don't even know that they exist. As the laws stand now, to get any information the adoptee has to have someone contact the birth family to get permission. Some adoptees don't want to search. But to get any information, they have to allow the state to do the search. And pay for it.
The editorial says it's not fair to change the rules -- that these people were promised privacy. But the courts have always had the right to open the records, and they don't have to ask the birth parent's permission. The judge simply makes that decision.
What no one mentions is that when the records were sealed, it was done retroactively. I was adopted one year before the records were sealed. When I finally found my birth family, I also found that my birth mother had waited for my contact for several years before her death. She had been told that when I reached majority, I would be able to access my records and contact her if I wanted to. She wasn't informed that the rules had changed, and she thought I didn't want contact.
That angers me. I should have had the chance to thank her for giving me to a wonderful family, to tell her that she made the right decision.
As for contact vetoes, they are no more than a prior restraining order placed without due cause. If I want a restraining order against someone, I have to go before a judge and prove that I need it. Why should birth parents be able to place one without showing cause? That's discriminatory toward adoptees.
HB1216 would allow adult adoptees to get a copy of their original birth certificate, just like every other citizen of our country. We're not asking for special treatment, just to be treated the same as everyone else.
Pat Roderique
Chair, Missouri Open 2000
Festus, MO
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