Adoption in the United States did not start out as a closed process. With the often-informal practices common in the early part of the 20th Century, birth parents and adoptive parents often knew each other’s names. Over time, societal trends moved toward secrecy in adoption, but the history of adoption law and practice makes clear that the impetus for this change had little to do with protecting the privacy of birth parents, who were not given the option of any form of adoption plan other than a confidential one. Rather, the rules of confidentiality that evolved in the mid-1900s were driven by the then-common belief that adopted children fared better when treated to the greatest extent possible as if they were born into their adopting families.
House Bill 4623, which would permit adoptees to seek copies of their original birth certificates when they reach 21, is a carefully devised and balanced effort to reflect changing times and values. The bill — for the first time in the history of Illinois adoption law — acknowledges the interests of adoptees in the equation of confidentiality, by recognizing that a growing number of adult adoptees want (at the very least) to know important basic facts about where they came from.
Giving an adult adopted person access to his or her original birth certificate does not mean that the adopted person will initiate contact with a birth parent. Very often, the adopted person simply wants one thing: his or her identity.
The bill also recognizes and respects the interests of birth parents. Today the overwhelming majority of The Cradle’s birth parent clients (85 percent) agree to sharing identifying information with the children they placed. For these parents, closed adoption only exacerbates their grief and feeling of loss. (Immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, The Cradle’s switchboard lighted up with calls from birth parents asking if we knew whether the child they had placed for adoption was on any of the four airplanes.)
And for the diminishing minority of birth parents who may have relied on expectations of confidentiality and still wish to guard their privacy even 21 years after surrendering a child, the bill permits them to do so by simply filing a form, no questions asked. Before any adult adopted person may obtain an original birth certificate, this bill requires the state to conduct a broad informational campaign.
