Thankfully, I finally know mine. No thanks to Virginia, Arizona and California. If Tennessee had not been rocked by a baby stealing and selling scandal (Georgia Tann, the baby thief, of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society at Memphis), I would not have been able to get my mom’s adoption file and see a photo of my maternal grandmother.
I have DNA and the matching sites at Ancestry and 23 and Me to thank for my success. It really shouldn’t be so hard to know one’s hereditary origins.
I personally think the main impediment is bureaucratic laziness. However, there is also the strange argument that giving adoptees the same right to know where they come from that most everyone else on the planet has would somehow increase the number of abortions. Therefore, the closed and sealed records advocates (mostly adoptive parents who fear competition from the original parents) have enlisted the pro-Life contingent to help their cause.
The facts don’t support them. Case in point is the state of Oregon who was one of the first closed record states to open them back up (Alaska and Kansas always had open records). The rate of abortions actually decreased 25% after the state of Oregon passed its historic adoption law that restored to adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates.
Know this – just because you have taken a stand on abortion, does not automatically give you an understanding of everything you need to know about the issues related to adoption.
Missing Mom 