Should Adopted Children Have Access to Their Birth Records?

            Adoption is the statutory process of terminating a parent's legal rights and duties for biological children and substituting rights to adoptive parent or parents. Responsibilities and rights are transferred to the adoptive parents. In the past twenty years states have been implementing a Confidential Intermediary system also called the CI system. This system allows adoptees access to identifying information regarding their birth family, this system makes contact with the birth parents to obtain a waiver to release information, if not found or parents do not agree to have information disclosed then the file will be locked back up.
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             Accessing birth parents information may be of 3 different types; Non-Identifying, Identifying and Medical information. Non-Identifying information may include appearance, religion, race, education and occupation, the agency that arranged adoption and facts and circumstances relating to cause of adoption. Identifying information includes birth parents and other family member's current names and addresses. Medical and psychological information, birth parents can give this information to the registry any time after adoption, this information can inform an adoptee of any risk of diseases.
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             State Laws vary whether an adoptee should have access to their birth parents information. Recent court decisions favor that an adoptee may have access to biological family record pertaining to adoption. The adult adoptee would have to get court order showing good cause before information would be made available. Certain states mandate the state registry to make available a contact preference form to birth parents regarding contact by an adult adoptee. Some states allow adopted children to gain access to medical records of biological parents where an adoption registry is implemented; the registry contains the family medical history.
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