Ten Reasons ADULT Adoptees Should Have
Access To Their Original Texas Birth Certificates

  1. This Is A Basic Right Enjoyed By All Other Citizens. ADULT adoptees should have the same birthright as every other Texas citizen – the right to access their original birth certificate.

  1. ADULT Adoptees Want the TRUTH about Their Identities. The original birth certificate of anyone whose adoption is finalized in Texas is sealed and a new “birth” document is issued regardless of an adoptee’s age at adoption, prior knowledge of the biological family, or any other circumstance.

  1. Giving Adult Adoptees access to their records could reduce the abortion rate. Both Alaska and Kansas give adult adoptees their original birth certificates. During the 1990s, Alaska has had over twice the per capita rate of adoptions as Texas, and Kansas’ per capita adoption rate has been 55% higher than Texas. The U.S., with mostly sealed records, has about 335 abortions per 1,000 live births. Kansas gives adoptees their original birth certificates at age 18 and reports an abortion rate of 165 per 1,000 live births in 1992. Texas seals adoption records and its abortion rate was 284 in 1992. Tennessee, Oregon, Alabama, Delaware, and New Hampshire all have given adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates.

  1. Sealed records were implemented in Texas to protect the privacy of the adoption placement, not to protect the “privacy” of the parental relinquishment. This is clear from a study of the history of adoption court record and birth certificate legislation. For example, since 1973, the court records of the parental termination of parental rights are not automatically sealed from even the general public. Adoption court records are.

  1. The Texas Mutual Consent Registry is inadequate. State funding does not allow for any meaningful advertising. If a birth parent is dead, incapacitated, doesn’t know that the registry exists or was shamed into believing she does not deserve knowing how her relinquished child fared, she will not register. That does not mean she does not want contact.

  1. Access to birth certificates for adult adoptees would discourage illegal and shoddy adoption practices in this state. One of the reasons that Tennessee passed their recent access to records law is the abuses of the notorious Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Texas has had its own share of unethical adoption practices under the sealed adoption records system.

  1. Quality adoption practice supports giving adoptees access to birth records. The Child Welfare League of America, which publishes standards of practice for social workers dealing with children, recognizes the need of adoptees to have birth information.

  1. Adoptees Are Bound By Contracts Made by Others. In adoption, an adoptee is expected to adhere for a lifetime to a verbal or implied, (never written), adoption contract to which they were not a participant.

  1. Relinquishing Mothers Did Not Request Lifetime Confidentiality from Their Children. Adoption relinquishment documents and letters provided by Texas birth mothers clearly show no lifetime “confidentiality” was ever promised to relinquishing mothers.

  1. “There is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage...” The following quote from Alex Haley sums up the need for a Texas law restoring the basic civil right to ADULT adoptees:

“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage,
to know who we are, and where we have come from.
Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning;
no matter what our attainments in life,
there is the most disquieting loneliness.”

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Compiled from various sources by
TxCARE/Texas Coalition for Adoption Resources and Education
4920 Vega Court W.
Fort Worth, TX 76021
E-mail - txcare@txcare.org
Website - http://www.txcare.org

Return to 2005 TxCARE Legislation Index