Those born in Indiana after 1994 have had access to their birth records, but anyone born before that year has not. From 1941 to 1993, adoptees’ original birth certificates have been sealed and unavailable to be reopened. Wish TV reported recently that a bill allowing access to those records will be going to the full senate. Still, the concern and controversy is over the protection of the birth mothers. In 2011, a similar bill failed to pass.
If passed, the bill will give birth parents until the middle of 2016 to file a form prohibiting the release of their information. Those wishing to never be contacted nor have their information shared may protect their privacy. The problem arises, though, in how to notify birth parents of the need to sign the form. There is no current plan on how to contact all the birth parents between 1941 and 1993.
Senator Joe Zakas spoke with the Daily Journal regarding the bill. “I feel like we made a promise [of confidentiality] to birth mothers. You could destroy a family,” he said in opposition to the bill.
But supporters of the bill say the original law was set in place to protect adopted children from the “stigma of illegitimacy and not to protect birth parents,” according to WRAL.com. Supporters, many of them adoptees themselves, are hopeful Indiana will become the 15th state in which laws sealing adoption records are repealed.
