"It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed." Most adoptees in America would agree with Johann Friedrich Von Schiller’s statement. The practice of sealing adoption records is in actuality the practice of keeping people’s lives a secret. Sealing adoption records was originally to provide protection to the parties involved in a time when there was a stigma attached to infertility, illegitimacy, and pregnancy outside of wedlock. Keeping adoption records a secret was a great way to save adoptive parents from uninvited curiosity and intrusion into their lives (Oregon Adoptive Rights). However, the world as we know it has just crossed the threshold of the twenty-first century and there is no longer a need to keep adoptions a secret. Today’s society is grateful to see a child adopted into a happy home. In 1992, 127, 441 children were adopted in the United States alone (Child Welfare League of America). Evens faced with these facts forty-five of the fifty United States require adoption records to be sealed. The only exceptions to the rule are Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Oregon, and Tennessee. Opening adoption record does not mean that they are open to public scrutiny. Open adoption records only means that the triad members (adoptees, adoptive parents, and biological parents) will be able to access information such as birth names, medical background information, place and time of birth, and religious affiliation. I feel that adoption records should be made open records for adoptees ages eighteen and over because of the need to know of medical background problems, to ascertain the names of biological family members, and to avoid the psychological repercussions of not knowing one’s heritage.

In a world that is virtually overrun with disease, the knowledge of one’s medical background is very important. The hundreds of thousands of Americans who were adopted during the McCarthy Era are finding it virtually impossible to access their medical histories through the adoption agencies that handled their adoptions. During this time period it was not uncommon for adoption records to be falsified to show the names of the adoptive parents as the child’s biological parents (Bastard Nation "Open Records"). In order for an adoptee to gain access to their original birth certificate they must have a court order, which is normally only given in order to provide emergency medical information (Clemetson). Many diseases that are rampant today, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, have been found to be genetically linked. The medical records that were kept on the adoptees’ biological parents are sealed. In order for these records to be accessed, the adoptee must petition a court and show adequate need (Bastard Nation "Adoption Disclosure Laws"). A thirst for knowledge is not an adequate need. Although some information can be given to an adoptee without a court petition, it is normally only such information as the parents’ approximate age, height, and suspected nationality (McCullough). This is information that is essentially useless in the quest for medical knowledge. Marie McCullough, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer whose article is printed on the Bastard Nation website, found a Pennsylvania resident who has had important medical information kept from her. When Deb Schwarz tried to find out her parents’ medical histories she was only given inconsequential facts: "’Both your parents,’ the agency divulged, ‘were in their mid-20s and were considered American’" (McCullough). Though the agency employee had the names of Schwarz’s parents, Pennsylvania law prohibits adoptees from knowing their biological parents’ names. Schwarz, however, hired a private investigator who located her mother dying of breast cancer in a nursing home. Schwarz learned that the genetically linked disease is so prevalent on her biological mother’s side of the family that Schwarz has decided to be tested for the gene (McCullough). This is the sort of information that is being kept from adoptees all over the United States. Information that can be life giving or life taking is locked in a vault away from prying eyes.

To some adoptees, the pursuit of happiness manifests itself in the pursuit of family. Adoptees deserve the right to ascertain the names of biological family members, and unsealing adoption records would make such a thing possible. Every person deserves the chance to have family, a definition of identity, and a reason for existing. Adoptees can be lucky enough to have two families, a loving, caring family who helped to shape them into the person they have become, and a biological family who gave them life and thus the chance to be the person they have become. Unsealing adoption records could give adoptees the chance to forge loving bonds with their biological family, and if not love, then at least friendship. Even though a biological parent gave their child up for adoption, that does not necessarily mean that they want to refrain from contact with that child forever. Andrew Purvis, a noted reporter for Time reported on a touching reunion between well known folk singer Joni Mitchell and her daughter who was put up for adoption in 1964. Mitchell said in the interview that she never stopped wondering about the little girl she gave up. Kilauren Gibb, Mitchell’s daughter, filed an application with a public agency to find her birth mother. Five long years later (with some checking of her own) Gibb contacted Mitchell with the new that she could be possibly be her mother. Mitchell responded excitedly to the knowledge. Gibb now has a son of her own, and her son will have the chance that Gibb never did; he will get to have Mitchell as an integral part of his family (Purvis). Though Gibb did eventually find her birth mother, the search does not always go so well. Unsealing adoption records would make it much easier for adoptees to find their families; it make it much easier for adoptees to find peace and finally have the questions they have asked since the beginning of their quests.

Unsealing adoption records will aid adoptees in avoiding the psychological repercussions of now knowing one’s heritage. Judge Wade S. Weatherford, Jr. of the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of South Carolina had an amazing insight into the issues concerning an adoptee’s right to petition to gain access to adoption records:

The law must be consonant with life. It cannot and should not ignore broad historical currents of history. Mankind is possessed of no greater urge than to try to understand the age-old question: "Who am I?" "Why am I?" Even now the sands and ashes of continents are being sifted to find where we made our first step as man. Religions of mankind often include ancestor worship in one way or another. For many the future is blind without a sight of the past. Those emotions and anxieties that generate our thirst to know the past are not superficial and whimsical. They are real and they are "good cause" under the law of man and God. (Hartung)

Triad members are inherently affected by persistent social beliefs that adopted children are somehow inferior to other children (Weger, 67). Unsealing adoption records would allow adoptees to prove that they are every bit as good, as normal, as other people, even if only to themselves. The stigma attached to an adopted child still remains because of the secrecy which surrounds their very existence. Where did they come from? What are their parents like? Why didn’t their parents want to keep them? The simple act of giving adoptees their adoption records dispels the air of abnormality that surrounds triad members. It is not being requested that the general public know the details behind triad members’ pasts, only that adoptees be given the basic right to know their pasts. By doing so, adoptees can feel secure in themselves, their very existence, their past, present, and future.

Not everyone is in agreement about the good that can be done by unsealing adoption records. The opposition feels that by giving adoptees the basic right of knowing their pasts, we are in turn denying birth mothers the basic rights of privacy. Once such instance of this is Doe v. Sundquist and the Right to Privacy case which took place in Tennessee (Grimm). In this lawsuit, the plaintiffs said unsealing adoption records denies them of the rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Judge Nixon of the U.S. District Court sided with the defendants, stating that the unsealing of adoption records did not directly impinge on the rights of birth parents. The decision was appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Judge Nixon’s decision. The plaintiffs plan to appeal again though they are running out of options. Some states have come up with an answer to the privacy question, but their solutions are not really solving the problem. Birth parents will be given the right to ask not to be contacted by their children, ever. However, triad members are not happy with this option.

Birth parents say that there will be no legal recourse for any adoptees who chose to contact their parents, and adoptees say that part of the reason for unsealing adoption records was to provide the means to find their birth parents (Bastard Nation "The Basic Bastard"). Opponents to unsealing adoption records have also tried to pass a "Uniform Adoption Act" in several states (Bastard Nation "Open Records"). This would essentially make adoption records sealed for ninety-nine years and in some instances criminalize searching for one’s biological relatives. This is not a reasonable alternative to unsealing adoption records.

A "Uniform Adoption Act" would do more harm than good to all triad members involved. Instead of making it possible for adoptees to get the information they are looking for, they will become criminals for seeking answers. At some point the rights of adoptees and the rights of biological families needs to meet.

Unsealing adoption records gives adoptees an opportunity to learn about their pasts. Unsealed records for adoptees over the age of eighteen will allow them the knowledge of their medical background, the ability to locate biological relatives, and the knowledge of their heritage. Adoptees will have the opportunities for knowledge that all other human beings have. Though opponents to unsealing adoption records may believe that there is some basis for their arguments, in reality it is still the adoptees that suffer. Opponents are placing the rights of biological parents over the rights of the adoptees. America has placed an unnecessary stigma on the word "adoption" and unsealing adoption records is the best place to start eradicating the stigma surrounding an extremely helpful institution. Until a middle ground is reached, there will be no compromise and no real solution. For now, the best thing that can be done is for adoption records to be unsealed so at least adoptees will have a chance to be given facts about their pasts.