Report urges open access to records for adult adoptees

Report urges access to birth certificates, adoption court files

Few issues are more heatedly debated in child-welfare circles than
whether adopted citizens should have access to their original birth
certificates and other legal documents.

In most states,
including Illinois, adoptees are legally prohibited from obtaining
those records, based on the belief that such practices best serve both
the birth parents who relinquished their children and their new
families.

   But a report
scheduled to be released Monday by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute
challenges those assumptions, suggesting that all adult adoptees should
have unfettered access to their court files and that barring them from
such personal information raises significant civil rights concerns.

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