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Unseal Adoption Records Now
For some Covid-19 victims it’s already too late
In 1970 when I surrendered my newborn son, he was part of a bumper crop of 175,000 babies, handed over to strangers with adoption agencies acting as the middlemen.
Adoption is often a murky operation. In closed record adoptions murkiness intensifies into total blackout when the original birth certificate is sealed and a new birth certificate is generated, concocting a fiction to replace reality. As was the norm during the period that later came to be known as the Baby Scoop Era, my son was placed with strangers who claimed him as their own. His new birth certificate was inscribed with their names, while I disappeared without a trace.
Once upon a time most adoptions records were open to everyone, though the transactions themselves were usually arranged privately. Children were often adopted by relatives or family friends, and in those days adoptees could request their birth certificates to find out the names of their natural parents, if they didn’t already know them. Laws that sealed adoption records went into effect in most states in the 1940s and ’50s, and when records were first sealed, it was done to persuade people to mind their own business, leaving the records open only to the parties involved. Eventually, as adoption became more and more profitable and as the…
