Alabama Restores Adoptee Rights

Victory in Alabama!

By David C. Ansardi and Sandra Pears-Wilson

The phone call finally came late in the day on May 25^th, 2000. Alabama Governor Don Siegelman had signed House Bill 690, reopening Alabama's original birth certificates to adult adoptees and others who had been issued amended birth certificates as children. These were amazing words for the members of AWARE (Alabamians Working for Adoption Reform and Education) to hear. We had successfully overturned a violation of adoptee rights enacted just ten

years earlier. Prior to passage of the 1990 bill, Alabama's adoptees had been allowed to view, but not obtain copies of, all of their adoption and birth records. Since then, the records were released only upon written, notarized consent of the birthparents and/or a rarely obtained court order.

AWARE was founded as an internet-based activist group for adoption law reform in Alabama in late 1998. The membership included those who had met through past RegDay events and/or who had interacted through the BAMAdopt internet mailing list for search and support. In early January 2000, we learned that an adoptee member of BAMAdopt, Sharon Dolbare, was the sister-in-law of an Alabama State Representative, Jeff Dolbare. Rep. Dolbare agreed to sponsor open records legislation, and we decided to go forward in the 2000 session, despite fears that we were descending into disaster without more preparation. Representative Dolbare both reassured us and warned us up front to be ready for a hard 2-3 session fight.

But what had been deemed a 2-3 session fight ended in just a little over two months. HB-690 breezed through the House to a 92-0 unanimous passage after being placed on a "ten minute" calendar for non-controversial bills that required little floor time. The Senate gave us a reality check as two crises developed which threatened the bill until the last day of the session. The first was when Senator Vivian Figures of Mobile announced that she would offer an amendment requiring notification of the birthparents when a birth certificate was requested. We decided to lobby for an Oregon-style contact preference form as a substitute, but would not learn of our success in those efforts until the Senate vote. The second crisis occurred when Senator Bill Armistead, a member of the Rules Committee, objected to HB-690 because of the traditional abortion arguments. His objections blocked the bill almost to the end, but finally, Armistead backed down and HB-690 was brought before the Senate for a vote after much pressure from the Lt. Governor and other supporters of the bill.

We truly regret not having a cameraman on hand to film the three of us in Montgomery for D-Day, as we confiscated an empty office (the Senate gallery was full) and painfully listened to poor audio feed as Armistead did his best to trash the bill on the floor by citing an inevitable rise in abortions. Our Senate sponsor, Phil Poole, slam dunked him with the Kansas and Alaska statistics. We breathed a sigh of relief as the contact preference form amendment was unanimously passed, while the notification amendment was not even addressed. Moments later the final verdict on the bill itself: 27-2! We had won, and our hyperventilation moments before was replaced with playground-caliber hollers and frantic dashes for cell phones and laptop computers.

It may take some time to generate a complete post-game analysis for why HB690 passed with comparatively few hitches. While undoubtedly the short history of sealed records in Alabama reduced one of the biggest hurdles faced in other states, other factors were instrumental. One was the dedication and hard work of our prime sponsor, Rep. Dolbare, who designated HB-690 as his pet project of the session and arranged meetings between AWARE and key figures including the Governor. The other obvious factor was the efforts of AWARE members and supporters in BN and other organizations nationwide who had truly united behind HB-690. The volume of supportive letters, E-mails, FAXes, and phone calls received by the Alabama State House was overwhelming and impressed both chambers. Senator Figures, who had proposed the notification amendment, commented privately to us that she had never received so much E-mail about a bill.

Finally, we focused our arguments on fundamental rights and fairness for adults who wanted their own birth and adoption records, and Rep. Dolbare kept repeating his mantra to his colleagues: "Let's be honest." Though we expected a much different outcome in "conservative" Alabama, perhaps we overlooked something else about our state: a prevalence of "down- to-earth" folks who maybe, just maybe, "got it" when we talked honesty and fairness.

David Ansardi is a research microbiologist, co-founder of a startup microbiology company in Birmingham, and part-time Research Assistant Professor of Microbiology atthe University of Alabama at Birmingham. A reunited adoptee, David is Vice-President and co-founder of AWARE. David lives in Alabama with his wife anfd two daughters.

Sandra Pears-Wilson is an Alabama-born adult adoptee and President of AWARE - Alabamians Working for Adoption Reform and Education.

(This feature appeared in the Summer 2000 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)