New Jersey is going through the struggle of debating and deciding whether to give adoptees rights to their birth information, or to continue to let things lie as they are. The New Jersey State Senate passed an adoptees’ rights bill in in March. Now it’s up to the House. It’s a tough one. I happen to favor allowing the adoptees access to their birth information and let the chips fall where they may. We live in high-tech world today, where that information can even save lives. There are more valid reasons today to obtain that information, as opposed to 50 years ago when doing so may have been for purely genealogical purposes. Now don’t get me wrong - genealogy and heritage are a darned good reasons, but we’ve come beyond even that today.

However, if adoptees’ rights are give to the children of parents who desperately do not want contact, then the whole issue can get very sticky. Just a few days ago I blogged about a family that had a very difficult time when the birth son showed up.

The following teaser is from an article by Rutgers University faculty member Linda Stamato, published in the April 11, 2009 edition of NJ.com. The illustration is page one of the adoption order for my mother and uncle. To this day, I cannot get a copy of her “real” 1911 birth certificate from the State of Colorado. The adoption order was found in the papers of an aunt, at her death. The original from which this copy was made disappeared when my Uncle Merle decided to disappear himself.

A clash of rights can create a no-man’s land for advocates. The battle raging over the “rights” of adoptees to their identities, medical Virginia & Merle Feller Adoption Orderinformation and, potentially, access to their birth parent(s) and the “rights” of birth parents to remain anonymous is a wrenching illustration.

Eight states have resolved the issue in favor of allowing access; New Jersey and nine other states are weighing whether to do the same. Legislation to give adult adoptees access to their original birth records has been around New Jersey for 29 years in one form or another, the latest iteration having passed the NJ State Senate by a vote of 31 to 7 in March. If the Assembly doesn’t act on it before the end of January the measure dies.

As it is now, a court order is required to open sealed adoption records in New Jersey and in forty-two other states. As one would expect, there are reasons to shield information but those generally offered–that adoptions will be less likely; abortions will increase; people will be harassed–have not been borne out in states that have opened birth records to adoptees. In most cases, adoptees and their birth mothers — and birth fathers — welcome contact. (See blog, “Seeking true identities” and commentary at New Jersey voices).

Read the full article entitled: “A battle for rights: Adoptees, birth parents and the law.”