7 Down

Seven down, 43 to go. Illinois has become the 7th state to grant adoptees access to their origiinal birth certificates. The first adoptee to receive his certificate is 73 years old- little chance that he will find a parent alive, but at 73 he is finally holding the truth in his hand.

I have a copy of my falsified birth certificate, which includes my adoptive parents' names and little else. When I was in my 20's, I had a fantasy that perhaps if I went m to the vital statistics office and requested a copy of my birth certificate, perhaps the great bureaucratic machine would produce the original. It didn't. I received another copy of The Lie. I've never felt such intense indignation, and humiliation, in my life.

Lobbying for open access to birth records is an essential aspect of adoption advocacy. But I always urge searchers not to get hung up on utilizing bureaucracy (as in petitioning the courts, hospitals, etc.) in their searches. Once you have some info to go on, I highly recommend hiring a private investigator. Investigators have knowledge of, and sometimes access to, records that the rest of us don't. Hiring an investigator speeds the search and that can make a difference in finding relatives while they're still alive.

The institution that made my search possible was the adoption agency itself. I don't know if this is universal, but my agency provided me (for a fee) a "non-identifying biography" of my parents. My parents were identified by first names, and the document was peppered with bits of information that were extremely helpful in the search. I can't help but to think that the agency, or someone in it, wanted to help me find my parents. I followed up by asking if I was entitled to have copies of any medical records they had for me. I received those for free. Unbelievably, they had my mother's full name on them, but they were poor copies from microfishe so they were hard to read, and we later found that her last name was spelled incorrectly. Nonetheless, we had a great start.

The wheels of law and bureacracy are slow. (Actually, I think they're square.) Let's advocate while also urging seekers to be proactive. It's our job to assure them that it's perfectly legal to want to know who you are.