Carol Barbieri of Long Branch poses with her son, Jonathan. Carol, who was adopted, became an advocate of the “Birthright Bill” after Jonathan was diagnosed with a heart condition, prompting her to spend years trying to find family medical history. Local adoption reform advocates say they are overjoyed with the state’s landmark decision to overturn nearly 75 years of state policy and allow adoptees unfettered access to their birth records.
Announced on April 28, the compromise between Gov. Chris Christie and state legislators caps decades of attempts by local groups and state officials to overturn New Jersey’s sealed adoption records policy, which has persisted since 1940. “We just cannot believe that this compromise was reached,” said Carol Barbieri, a Long Branch resident and member of the New Jersey Coalition for Adoption Reform and Education (NJCARE) “We did not expect this.”
The agreement, which still has to be approved by the state Legislature and signed by Christie, would allow adoptees to obtain an original, long-form birth certificate beginning in 2017.
Currently, adoptees can only access basic “non-identifying information” about their birth without obtaining a court order.
Sen. Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), a primary sponsor of the bill and a long-time advocate for adoption reform, said adoptees will now have access to long-denied vital information such as family medical history and ethnicity.
“These are things that we take for granted,” he said. “After meeting with adoptees and even birth parents who were in support of this, it became apparent that adoptees were being denied certain rights.”
Barbieri, an adoptee, said she became acutely aware of the importance of genealogical information when her son was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a heart condition.
Her son’s doctor required a medical history to determine if the condition was sporadic or hereditary, pushing Barbieri into a search that would last for years and ultimately turn up more than a dozen biological relatives, at least two of whom suffered from a similar condition.
Having access to that information before a medical crisis arrives will allow parents to focus solely on the situation at hand, rather than juggling the stress and difficultly of tracking down distant family members, Barbieri said. It may also save lives.
“Our medical histories as adoptees are just as important to our birth families as theirs are to us,” she said. “There was a second cousin of mine who died from my son’s condition shortly after I came into the family. Had I been able to talk to him and share this information with him, he might be alive today.”
Tom McGee, an adoptee and NJCARE member from Oceanport, said he has developed a fulfilling relationship with his birth mother and biological family since finding them in 2000.
In the years since, he has learned that the vast majority of birth parents want to at least know that their children are safe and happy. Under current closed adoption laws, however, relinquishing parents do not even learn if their child is adopted.
Critics of open adoption laws, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Jersey Catholic Conference, have fought against NJCARE’s proposed reforms for years, citing the privacy concerns of birth parents and a potential chilling effect on future adoptions.
Christie conditionally vetoed a previous version of the bill in 2011, seeking amendments that would require adoptees to use an intermediary to seek out birth parents.
Under the new agreement, long-form birth certificates will be available without redaction for adoptions finalized after August 1, 2015. Birth parents will be able to elect their own preferred method of contact from their adopted children — either personally or via an intermediary — through the end of 2016.
As part of the compromise with Christie, the bill will also allow birth parents to have their names redacted from birth certificates for adoptions finalized before Aug. 1, 2015.
The transition period and additional safeguards will “balance the needs of adoptees seeking critical records of their identity with the expectations of birth parents in years past who may wish to remain private,” Christie said in a statement.
After nearly 23 years of outreach, letter writing, networking and legislative lobbying, the various adoptees, birth parents and adoptive families who comprise NJCARE say the concessions in the agreement are well worth its benefits.
“We have come to an agreement where neither side, I’m sure, feels totally victorious about the results,” said Pam Hasegawa, legislative leadership team member with NJCARE. “But I feel hopeful that we are going to help a great number of people.”
McGee, who hired an investigator to find his birth mother after realizing that his son was the first blood relative he had ever laid eyes on, said the legislation will open the door to countless adoptees and parents who have unanswered questions.
In his case, he found aunts, uncles and a birth mother who have since become part of his own family and helped him fill in long-standing gaps in his personal history.
“I had always had those questions,” he said. “It made me real, if that makes any sense.”
The legislation will also help address some of the stigma and shame that used to hover over adoptions, which led to the creation of closed adoption laws in the first place.
“Pregnancy out of wedlock was a big thing,” he said. “It brought shame on both families. … Now, most adoptions are open. We are recognizing more and more that it is healthy for a child to know where they came from.
“There are some bad stories out there, sure,” he added. “Some people can find a grave at the end of their search, or people who don’t care to meet them. But it’s the truth. Whatever it is, it’s your story.”