From Time Magazine, March 15, 1999

Letters

Open Adoption Records

I was disappointed by your article on Oregon's Measure 58,
which would give adoptees the right to see their birth certificate
when they turn 21 [Law, Feb. 22].

It was full of inaccuracies and wrong-headed assumptions. Measure 58 isn't
about "tracking down" anybody. Most adoptees who wish to search already do
so. The article included references to "kids" and "children" as if they would
access their birth certificates. Measure 58 and other proposed open-records leg-
islation would make files available only to adult adoptees.

Measure 58 is about dignity and justice. It is not about "open season" or
"tracking down" anyone, both insulting hunting analogies. This is nothing revo-
lutionary or extreme; it's the way adoption law stood for years before the failed
social experiment of sealed records, which was founded on archaic notions of
stigma, secrecy and shame.

Shea Grimm, Legislative Chair
Bastard Nation
Redmond, Wash.

What about the Brave New medically created babies who are the product of
purchased eggs or sperm? If there are laws allowing adoptees to have access to
their birth parents, there should be access for all people to records of their
biological parentage. I hope legislators keep these people's rights in mind.

Peg Lopata
Francestowm, N.H.

You leave out the perspective of adoptive parents. They are required to jump
through many legal and social hoops to adopt a child. When they get a child
through legally binding adoptive procedures, they provide all the necessities of
life that natural parents would. But what rights, courtesies and considerations are
available to the adoptive parents? The possibly fragile foundation achieved by those
adoptive parents through years of love and support now may be jeopardized by open
adoption files.

Robert Erdmann
San Diego

TIME, MARCH 15,1999

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