Recently, New Jersey agreed to allow adults who were adopted as children request their original birth certificate. This, of course, would reveal their exact place, time, and date of birth – as well as the names of their biological parents.
This legislation was signed into effect two years ago but implementation was delayed to allow biological parents time to request to have their names redacted if they prefer not to be found. Out of the 170,000 adoptive situations, only 166 have asked to have their information hidden permanently.
People make adoption plans for a million different reasons. They’re often young and frightened. For years, they were told ‘closed adoption’ was best for everyone. Without a doubt, some of those biological parents have had second thoughts – if not about their plan, at least in how they walked it out – and would love to reconnect if their birth child wished to.
Sadly, the New Jersey Right to Life organization and the New Jersey Catholic Conference opposed the bill, insisting it would make abortion a more likely option. This might be true, except that closed adoption is a rare case these days, and in 2016, if a biological parent really never wanted to be found, they could have that information redacted at the time of birth.
Everyone deserves an opportunity to know their story if they wish. The New Jersey law reflects the law as it has been in Kansas for some time and has recently been implemented in Missouri. We appreciate some parents’ insistence on full and permanent privacy, and we’re glad there is a mechanism for that if they choose to request it, but we also feel that knowledge of one’s own story is so important that the state can no longer hide it from thousands of adults who are simply asking “Who am I?”
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