Adoption: The Case for Open Records
Jeffrey L. Donaldson
A
citizen of the United States
There are various exchanges of correspondence regarding open records legislation. On a constitutional law level, the Equal Protection clause should be examined. The 14th Amendment, Section 1, provides that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Persons who were not adopted have the right to a birth certificate issued by the state in which they were born that contains accurate information concerning the place, date and time of birth as well as information concerning the biological father and mother. Persons who were not adopted also have the ability to obtain biological family medical information that may be vital to their health, such as information concerning the thousands of inherited diseases such as glaucoma and breast cancer.
Persons who were adopted do not have such rights and abilities. I submit that sealed records laws violate the constitutional rights of adopted persons by abridging their privileges vis-à-vis other citizens and by denying to them the equal protection of the laws. Open records laws would afford adoptees equal protection.
I have a modest proposal that respects concerns over the right to privacy of individuals. Seal all birth certificates for adoptees and non-adoptees alike and no longer make that information available to anyone. At the same time, require that biological family medical information be maintained by the medical community and not disclosed to any patient for any reason. Each citizen will then be assumed to have a clean medical slate, and inherited medical conditions will be treated as they appear. No preventative treatment or early detection testing will be allowed. This will protect the privacy of all citizens of the United States and at the same time will honor the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution. If this proposal bothers you because you will no longer have access to medical information that could save your life, then I submit that the converse be adopted - all citizens of the United States should be entitled to their true and accurate birth information upon reaching the age of majority.
I am not a member of the adoption triad. If my mother had told me she wanted no further contact with me when I reached the age of majority, I would have had to respect that position. Adult adoptees are expected to respect the same position if requested to do so by their birth parents. To deny them the right to act responsibly when faced with that request by denying them all information about their biological parents is to forever infantilize them. We treated African-American slaves as children for centuries, referring to adult men as "boys." Let us cease treating adult adoptees as children - as slaves to a society that long ago stopped calling them "bastards."
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