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Open Records for Adult Adoptees

1. Open records will increase abortions.
   
   There have never been any statistics to back up this statement. On the contrary, statistics have shown just the opposite. In states like Alaska and Kansas, which have open records, the abortion rate either stayed the same or went down.
   
   

   The abortion rates in both Alaska and Kansas, states which grant adult adoptees unconditional access to their original birth certificates, were lower than the national average as a whole - 14.6 and 18.9 abortions, respectively for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, compared to the national rate of 22.9

   
   
   (source: Alan Guttmacher Institute http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/journals/3026398.html)
   
   
2. Birthmothers were given confidentiality and this promise should be honored.
   
   This is exactly what it was - a promise. Not a legal, binding statement written into a surrender. As far as I know, no one has produced a surrender statement that states that the birthmother is guaranteed confidentiality. Most of them stated that she would not try to contact the child, but this is a much different issue. A lot of times, the issue of confidentiality was a condition that was imposed on the birthmother by the agency, and not a negotiable item.
   
   State laws have begun to strike down this supposed issue of 'confidentiality'.
   
   

   We fail to see how the fact that individuals working for private organizations offered opinions about what they believed the law provided could somehow transform them into agents of the state for purposes of creating binding state contractual obligations. Even if such representations were made by persons who were agents of the state, agents may not bind the state to any arrangement that contravenes the statutes."
   
   "Although adoption is an option that generally is available to women faced with the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy, we conclude that it is not a fundamental right. Because a birth mother has no fundamental right to have her child adopted, she also can have no correlative fundamental right to have her child adopted under circumstances that guarantee that her identity will not be revealed to the child.

   
   
   Jane Does 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, Appellants, v. THE STATE OF OREGON; JOHN A. KITZHABER, Governor of Oregon, and EDWARD JOHNSON, State Registrar of the Center for Health Statistics in Oregon, Respondents, and HELEN HILL, CURTIS ENDICOTT, SUSAN UPDYKE; and THE OREGON ADOPTIVE RIGHTS ASSOCIATION, IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF OREGON. Filed December 29, 1999.Are we going to hold a 15-16-17 year old girl to a promise of confidentiality?

© 2001 Tim Roberts