COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio law now in effect lets
biological parents of adoptees decide whether to redact their names or
include contact preferences in records that will soon be made available
to certain adoptees.
Birth parents can also update medical information on forms for the adoptees.
Starting
next year, individuals adopted between January 1, 1964, and September
18, 1996, can request their adoption files and birth certificates from
the Ohio Department of Health. Records on file at the department’s
Office of Vital Statistics will become available to adoptees beginning
March 20, 2015.
The law is expected to give about 400,000 people access to records, which had been largely blocked
without a court order.
Birth
certificates before 1964 and after 1996 were already a public record.
But when the law was changed again in 1996, it was not made retroactive
to those caught between the two laws.
"We’ve got people from all
over the country waiting with bated breath for a year from now when they
can get their records," said Betsie Norris, founder and executive
director of Adoption Network Cleveland, an education and advocacy
organization.
Birth parents who placed a child for adoption
between 1964 and 1996 have a one-year period to request that their names
be redacted from the birth-certificate information that would be
released to the adult adoptee. They also have the option of choosing to
be contacted through an intermediary.
Norris told The Columbus
Dispatch that before contacting her birth mother, she had no idea of her
mother’s wishes and her mother had no way to let her know.
"Neither of us knew, until that phone call, what we were walking into," Norris said.
Janice
Matteo, a native of northeastern Ohio’s Cuyahoga County who divides her
time between Ohio and Georgia, told the Dispatch that she planned to
fill out the contact preference form and check the box that says she
would like to be "contacted directly by the adopted person or their
lineal descendant." She said she hopes that the son she gave birth to in
1988 will contact her.
The only record Matteo has of her son, who
would be nearly 26 now, is a photo taken after she gave birth. Matteo,
who originally chose closed adoption, said she doesn’t know where her
son is or whether he has tried to find her.
"I felt bad later, when I understood the law better, that I had chosen closed adoption," she
said.
Karla
Jackson-Wynn of Huber Heights in suburban Dayton was adopted at 6
months old. Jackson-Wynn, now 45, says she has tried numerous times to
locate her birth father.
"I definitely want to know who he is, not
only for curiosity, but medically I would love to know the background
of the family," Jackson-Wynn told the Dayton Daily News.
She said
she and her 21-year-old daughter have health concerns that might be
better understood and treated if she had a comprehensive family medical
history.
___
Online: Ohio Department of Health: http://1.usa.gov/1r7Vi0E
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.