A bill that opens up records to allow adopted children to find out the name of their birth mother was approved by the Legislature and is on its way to becoming law.
Championed by Sen. Paula Benoit, R-Sagadahoc, who is adopted, the bill opens up records that have been closed in Maine since 1953.
“It took me until I was 52,” Benoit said of starting the search for her birth mother. But then Benoit was told by a judge she couldn’t see her birth certificate. “I have no idea because the records are closed. I had a great upbringing. I was blessed with great parents,” Benoit said, but she, like others who are adopted, wants to know her background and family history.
Benoit signed onto a bill initially sponsored by Rep. David Farrington, D-Gorham, whose wife is adopted.
While the Judiciary Committee was divided on whether the bill should pass, it had bipartisan support in the both the House and Senate after emotional debates. Those against the bill questioned what it would do to women, some who have believed for 40 or 50 years that their identities would be kept private.
Sen. Lisa Marrache, D-Kennebec, a physician, said all the discussion around the bill was about the rights of the adopted child.
“What about protecting the mother?” she asked, particularly those of a certain generation, when having children out of wedlock was stigmatized by many religions and in society.
“They carried this child and gave it up with the assumption it would held confidential,” Marrache said. “We’re just making them the victim again.” Marrache said she has a patient who lives in fear she will be found out, since she never told her husband she had a child outside of marriage.
Farrington said the law never fully protected the birth mother’s identity, but just closed birth certificate to adoptees. There were other ways, he said, a child could track their birth mother, but the birth certificates themselves have been closed since 1953.
“That’s a holdover from an era when it was a source of shame or stigma. It was an attempt to shroud it in secrecy,” he said. “We know so much more today.”
The bill allows a birth parent to include, with the original birth certificate, a form saying whether she wishes to be contacted by her child. That form does not prevent contact under the law, but simply allows an adopted child to know their birth parent’s wishes.
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