Open Adoption Records Do Not Decrease Adoption Rates or Increase Abortion Rates

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Why are adoption records sealed? What would happen if adoption records were opened? In the last 160 years, adoptions in the United States transitioned from informal placements to sealed-record contracts. When Massachusetts enacted the first adoption law in 1851 there was no legal precedent and as adoption law developed, states began sealing adoption birth records. Later in the 1960s and 70s, birth control pills, legalized abortion, and single parent families reduced unplanned pregnancies, increased single parent households, and made illegitimate an obsolete label. As baby-boom adoptees matured, they called for open birth records and were met lawmaker and social worker fears of lower adoption rates, higher abortion rates, and loss of anonymity. Despite these fears and reservations, research shows that open records may not cause privacy loss, decrease adoptions, or increase abortions.

Although the codes and laws of ancient civilizations include adoption, the Massachusetts Adoption of Children Act of 1851 is held as the first modern adoption law. Joan Hollinger (1993) in her book Adoption Law and Practice asserts that American adoption law was unprecedented and "purely a creature of the statutes which have been enacted in this country since the mid-nineteenth century.” Early adoption law “was usually employed to provide male heirs to childless couples, to maintain family lines and estates” “and any benefits to the adoptee were secondary.“ (Hollinger 1993) Nor was there precedent in English common law which did not mention adoption and only in 1926 did England enact its first adoption law. (Sokoloff 1993) English custom accommodated orphan and indigent children by giving them to craftsmen as apprentices or families as in...

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...Interests of Birth Parents and Adult Adoptees. Willian and Mary Journal of Women and the Law, 11, 461-480.

Hollinger, J. (1991). Adoption Law and Practice. New York: Mathew Bender & Co. Inc.

Johnston, W. R. (2012, March 11). Abortion statistics and other data. Johnston's Archive. Retrieved February 18, 2012, from http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/

Kuhns, J. (1994). The Sealed Adoption Records Controversy: Breaking Down the WaIls of Secrecy. Golden Gate University Law Review, 24(1), 259-297.

March, K. (1995). Perception of Adoption as Social Stigma: Motivation for Search and Reunion. Journal of Marraige and the Family, 57(3), 653-660.

Samuels, E. (2001). The Strange History of Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth Records. Adoption Quarterly, 5(2), 63-74.

Sokoloff, B. (1993). The Anecedents of American Adoption. The Future of Children, 3(1), 17-25.

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