Letter to the Editor

Errors marred conclusion in adoption editorial

Oregon is not "the first state in the nation where people who were adopted can gain access to their birth certificates even if their birth mothers object." Alaska, Kansas, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands all make original birth records freely available to adult adoptees. Earlier this year, Alabama and Oregon were the first states to retroactively grant adult adoptees unconditional access to original birth records.

While New York does not provide adult adoptees unconditional access to their original birth records, it does not forbid them access, nor does it grant biological parents a statutory right to anonymity from their relinquished offspring. The same can be said of court or agency records of adoptions.

As was noted in the 1976 Joint Public Hearing of the Temporary State Commission on Child Welfare and the Assembly Standing Committee on Child Care, "there is no specific pronouncement in the law that an adoptee is precluded from learning what is in the adoption records."

New York Public Health Law Section 4138 provides that original birth records of adoptees may be released "upon order of a court of competent jurisdiction," something it has provided since 1936 (not 1935). It does not grant biological parents a right to veto disclosure.

It is highly unlikely that changing New York's adoption and birth records laws will result in more abortions: "Open records have not led to a rise in abortions in Alaska, Kansas, and European and other countries that have open records" (Connecticut Law Revision Commission Adoption Committee).

Evidence suggests that open records might actually result in lower rates of abortions. New York should join those U.S. jurisdictions noted above (and the rest of the world) in providing adoptees the unconditional right to obtain their original birth records.