Bill would drastically change adoption laws

COLUMBUS - A sweeping bill aimed at improving Ohio adoption laws by speeding up children's placement in permanent homes is expected to he on the house floor for a vote next month.

The House Family Services Committee is continuing to hold hearings on adoption, an emotional subject that evoked tears yesterday from some of the Ohioans who told their stories and from others who listened

"Anything to reduce the wait is good," said Terri Kowaliw, a Galloway woman who adopted one of her foster children, now 12, after enduring a long wait. "We have tried to fill a hole in him left by 5 1/2 years in and out of the foster-care system."

She wiped away tears as she spoke. "I'm sorry" she said. "It's a very emotional thing for me."

Marley Elizabeth Greiner, a 49-year-old-Columbus woman who was adopted as a child, told the committee of her prolonged search to learn her birth roots. She strongly supports provisions of the bill to open more records to adult adoptees.

"Is there anyone here today who can look me in the eye and say I do not share the right of the rest of the people of Ohio to know who my mother, father, sister and brother are?" she asked.

The bill. sponsored by Rep. Cheryl J. Winkler, a Cincinnati Republican, and drawn from a report issued by an adoption task force named by Gov. George V. Voinovich, has drawn broad support from a variety of groups involved in adoption.

Among its key elements are:

• Reducing the four years it now commonly takes to remove children from foster care and other publicly funded placement and give them a permanent adoptive home. Public children's services agencies currently have custody of about 3,300 children who could be adopted.

• Hastening the process by ordering courts to render a decision in permanent-custody cases within 200 days.

• Helping foster parents who decide to adopt by counting time spent in foster care toward the six-month probationary period before an adoption is considered final..

• Prohibiting public agencies from delaying adoption based solely on the race of the prospective adoptive family.
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• Opening adoption and birth certificates to adopted children when they turn 21 unless birth parents deny access.

Currently, adoptees have no access to adoption records unless they and their birth parents have registered with the state.

Although there is general agreement on opening adoption records, if the birth parent approves it, the issue of how to open them has created a dispute that may put substitute provisions in the bill.

Adoption groups now support a process, now in the bill, by which the birthmother would have to specifically decline to release the records. If she didn't decline, the records would automatically be open. The Ohio Right to Life Society wants to substitute a "yes" or "no" box the birthmother would check off.

Voinovich aide Jacqui Romero Sensky said the governor has not decided which process he would support.

"I don't think anyone is backing away from open records," she said. "The trend is to more and more openness. We just want the birth mother to make a conscious informed decision."