Overview

The timeline of major events in the Open Adoption Movement include:

▶       1953:  Jean Paton, who was adopted in 1908, establishes Orphan Voyage, the first adoption support and search network.  With this organization and the release of her 1954 book, The Adopted Break Silence, Paton advocates for the needs and rights of adoptees to have access to information about their history.  She argues that sealed records treat adoptees like children in need of lifelong protection, rather than as adults who should be free to make their own decisions about search and reunion.  Paton envisions a voluntary adoption registry through which birth relatives could find each other and be reunited, a concept that becomes reality in the 1970s with the proliferation of mutual consent registries.

▶       1971:  Florence Fisher – an adult adoptee who was reunited with her birthmother after a 20-year search founds the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA).  ALMA’s mission was “to abolish the existing practice of sealed records” and advocate for “opening of records to any adopted person over eighteen who wants, for any reason, to see them.”

▶       1976:  Lee Campbell, a birth mother, founds Concerned United Birthparents, whose mission “is to provide support for all family members separated by adoption; to provide resources to help prevent unnecessary family separations; to educate the public about the life-long impact on all who are touched by adoption; and to advocate for fair and ethical adoption laws, policies, and practices.”  From its inception, the organization has assisted members of the adoption triad in searching for family members separated by adoption.

▶       1976:  The phenomenon of “search” and the frequency of adopted people asking questions about their origins convinces Catholic Social Services of Green Bay, Wisconsin, to rethink their approach to adoption.  The agency starts offering open adoption.

▶       1976:  “Open Adoption,” an article written by Annette Baran, Reuben Pannor, and Arthur D. Sorosky, was published in the March 1976 edition of Social Work magazine; the article concluded that modern-day adoption practice is totally “out of phase with current needs.”

▶       1978:  Publication of The Adoption Triangle, by Arthur Sarosky, Annette Baran and Reuben Pannor.  The book examines the impact of sealed records on birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees and advocates for adoption reform.  The authors dispute the long-held notion birth parents and adopted persons are disinterested in each other.

▶       1982:  “Beyond the Shadow of Secrecy,” the first national conference to focus exclusively on issues of open adoption, is held in Traverse City, Michigan.

▶       1983:  Dear Birthmother, a book written by Kathleen Silber and Phyllis Speedlin, was published. The book challenged four basic myths about adoption:  (1) that birth parents don’t care about their children; (2) that secrecy is needed in every phase of adoption to protect all triad members; (3) that birth parents forget about the child they relinquished; and (4) that adopted persons who search for their birth parents are maladjusted and/or disloyal.

▶       1984:  The Minnesota-Texas Adoption Research Project (MTARP) was initiated by Rev. Goerdel at Lutheran Social Services in Texas when he invited Hal Grotevant and Ruth McRoy to evaluate their adoption practices.  This has now become the first longitudinal study of the outcomes of open adoption.

▶       1989:  James Gritter’s book, Adoption Without Fear, was published; this was the first book to describe the open adoption experience from the perspective of adoptive parents.

▶       1996:  The advocacy group Bastard Nation is established.  Its mission statement states that “Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee's historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree.”

▶       1999:  Beginning in Texas in 1999, “Baby Moses laws” or infant Safe Haven laws were enacted as an incentive for mothers in crisis to safely relinquish their babies to designated locations where the babies are protected and provided with medical care until a permanent home is found. These laws were intended to address infant abandonment and endangerment in response to a reported increase in the abandonment of infants in unsafe locations, such as public restrooms or trash receptacles.  Safe haven laws generally allow the parent, or an agent of the parent, to remain anonymous and to be shielded from criminal liability and prosecution for child endangerment, abandonment, or neglect in exchange for surrendering the baby to a safe haven. https://cwig-prod-prod-drupal-s3fs-us-east-1.s3.amazonaws.com/public/documents/safehaven.pdf

▶       2005:  The Adoptee Rights Coalition (ARC) is founded this year.  The adoptee-led, all-volunteer grassroots organization educates and informs legislators, the adoption community and the public about issues of vital interest to adult adoptees including: policies and practices rooted in truth and transparency rather than shame and secrecy, the importance of approaching relinquishment and adoption as a lifelong process rather than a one-time event and the basic human right to know one's origins and lineal heritage through direct unfettered access to one's original birth certificate and certain other records pertaining to the adoption.

https://www.adopteerightscoalition.com/about

▶       2009: As of February 2009, 24 U.S. states allowed legally enforceable and binding agreements concerning visitation, exchange of information, or other interaction regarding the child to be included in the adoption finalization. The laws of the different states vary significantly, and enforceability sometimes depend upon variables such as whether the adoption is a relative adoption (Alabama),¹⁰ an adoption through the state’s Department of Children’s Services (Florida),11 or the age of the child (Indiana).

▶       2013:  The Adoptee Rights Coalition rallied around the issue of access to birth certificates. Only a handful of states allowed unrestricted access to original birth certificates. But the recent phenomenon of adoptees searching for, and sometimes finding, their birthparents via Facebook highlighted the need for action.  In May, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a new law giving some, but not all, adoptees access to their original birth certificates.  State legislatures in Pennsylvania and Ohio were slated to vote on similar bills later that year after numerous failed attempts by adoption reform groups in both states to pass such legislation.

https://newrepublic.com/article/114505/anti-adoption-movement-next-reproductive-justice-frontier

▶       2019:  A coalition of New York and national adoptee rights activists successfully worked to overturn a restrictive 83-year-old law, allowing adult adopted people born in New York, as well as their descendants, to have the right to request and obtain their own original birth certificates.