An independent voice for ethical adoption
Open Records: A Civil Rights Issue
Ethica believes that every American citizen should have complete and unencumbered access to information about his or her identity, including access to his or her original birth certificate, medical records, and social history. Ethica believes that limits on such access are a violation of a person’s basic human rights, and that equality demands that adult adoptees be afforded the same freedom of access granted to every other American citizen today.
Adult adoptees do not need to be protected from the truth about their births and adoptions, as if they are forever vulnerable children. Refusing adoptees access to their own identity and history is a violation of their basic civil rights and creates a distinct category of persons who are being treated as second class citizens. Ethica believes that this action violates an adoptee’s constitutional rights.
Opponents of open records are predominately a well-organized, well-financed group of adoption agencies led by the National Council for Adoption (NCFA). NCFA often argues that records were closed to protect birth parent privacy, but a review of the legislative history debunks this argument. (See Ethica‘s Report on Open Records) In reality, records were closed to protect adoptive parents from intrusive birth parents, and to protect adoptees from the shame of being illegitimate.
The NCFA also has a long history of opposing open records by protesting that birth parents have a constitutional right to privacy. The courts disagree. Both the Oregon Court of Appeals (163 Or.App 543, 993 P.2d 822, 831-832 (1999)) and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (106 F.3d 703 (6th Cir. 1997)) have ruled that no such right to privacy exists.
In the wake of such decisions, opponents have tried using volatile issues like abortion to defeat open records measures–claiming without evidence that opening records will cause an increase in abortion. Such spurious arguments lead us to ask what open records opponents are really trying to hide by keeping records closed.
To open records and restore the civil and constitutional rights of adoptees, open records activists must become as well organized and as loud as their opponents!
LGBT Adoptions Conference
Newsletter
Information
Learn More
Can You Help?
Connect With Us
Follow Us
