Illinois
Sealed: 1946
Access Status: Restricted
- convoluted tiered access
- generally, adoptees at least 21 years of age and born before January 1, 1946, have unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates.
- Adoptees born on or after January 1, 1946, subject to a “Denial of Information Exchange” (redaction.) See law and access link below for details
Through a special arrangement with the Adoptee Rights Law Center, Bastard Nation is linking our individual state pages to ARLC state access law links and summaries. In addition. our state pages include information specific to Bastard Nation actions and activities in each state.ead about current OBC access.
Read about current OBC access legislation with links to current and past years bills at our”Keep Informed” legislative pages (middle sidebar.)
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2024 Legislation: SB2977 (Safe Haven DNA test, etc )
2022 Legislation: HB 4227; HB4699 (Safe Haven)
2021 Legislation: HB3753 (Safe Haven Baby Boxes)
- Illinois access law and summary
- Illinois General Assembly
- Notes on Illinois Access Law
- History of Sealed Records in Illinois
- Adoptee Rights Law Center Illinois OBC Access Flowchart
From the 1980s. Ann Landers supported sealed Illinois records
Illinois Resources
Illinois Open
- Bastard Granny Annie (Anita Field)
- Rights of Adoptees (Mary Fuller)
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1997: Birth of a Bastard Conference, Chicago
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LINKS
- 2020 Legislation: SB3306 (baby box)
2019
Bastard Nation Testimony on HJR24–Adoptee Citizenship, February 19, 2019
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- The Daily Bastardette (Marley Greiner, Exe Chair,BN–extensive commentary on Illinois bills and laws–go to search engine)
- Illinois Adoption Reform Coalition urges rejection of HB4623, Daily Bastardette, April 3, 2008
Featured: Read what Illinois Representative Sara 
Feigenholz, sponsor of the restricted bill that became law, says about Batard Nation and adoptees
Sara Tells Us What She Really Thinks About Us. Daily Bastardette, April 20, 2010:
…Would you consider giving Representative Feigenholtz the key to your (delusional) Eutopian world where all ungrateful bastards think it’s easy to pass a bill that makes everyone happy AND CAN ACTUALLY PASS ? Pass a law? what a concept !!
Updated February 18, 2024
I was born in Missouri but adopted at the age of 10 in Illinois. Always knowing who my parents were a sealed record is even more ridiculous They never filed a amended birth certificate so the inability to access those records is denying me any form of legal identification due to the Real ID Law.
I am very motivated to work on changing the laws in Illinois.
Looking for my father’s brother born to Edna Coyne Parbs (mother) father Bernard Reilly both from Gilman Il