Category: Action Alert

Not only were adoptees and their rights trivialized, but their hope of equal treatment under law, due process, and right to “personal records” (words from the bill) were played with. HB345 is no only bad politics, but cruel politics. Due to HB 345, real people, with real faces, real names, real families, real records, and real hopes were hung out to dry apparently to get “something passed” at the end of the session that legislators didn’t even care enough about to discuss in public. The outcome of HB345 suggests that the purpose of records access is personal reunion rather than political rights.  The result will be the increased use of “outing” mechanisms such as social media and online DNA tests,  which often involve public exposure of the names and other private information of adoptee and birthparents, rather than the quiet release of a state-held document to adoptees.