Open Adoption Legislation May Come to Maine

A New Hampshire woman learned the name of her birth mother thanks to an Open Adoption Law that allowed her accees to her adoption records. This information helped her learn medical information that proved valuable when she started to show symptoms of the same kind of cancer her birth mother died from. The experience has inspired her to help adoption advocates in the neighboring state of Maine lobby for similar legislation.

The group is currently looking for help from other adoptees and birth parents in hopes of drafting legislation allowing adoptees born in Maine access their original birth certificates. Right now anyone whose adoption was finalized in Maine after to Aug. 8, 1953, is not allowed access their birth records.

A birth parent and adoption advocate working on the Maine open adoption legislations says adoption records began to be sealead in Maine after 1953 to protect birth mothers from the "shame" of having a child without being married and putting it up for adoption. Now that open adoption is encouraged and the stigma is gone he thinks it is time for a change.