Letter to the Editor 10/8

To the Editor,

Thank you for publishing an article last week about my talk on the history of… To the Editor,

Thank you for publishing an article last week about my talk on the history of closed adoption records, which was sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Adoption Studies and other University groups.

I very much appreciate your highlighting this topic that is important to so many people — adoptees, their adoptive families and their birth families — and that is related to legislation pending in Pennsylvania.

As the article noted, state statutes establishing a process for adopting children began to be passed in the mid-19th century and were enacted in all the states by the 1920s.

States in the 1930s began to provide amended birth certificates for adopted children, which replaced the children’s original certificates.

By the late 1940s, in most states an adopted child could be issued an amended certificate that substituted his adoptive parents’ names for his birth parents’ names.

It was not until much later in most states — 1984 in Pennsylvania — that adult adoptees lost the right to see their original birth certificates. In recent years, as the article noted, a number of states have passed laws reestablishing that right.

Sincerely yours,

Elizabeth J. Samuels

Professor of Law

University of Baltimore School of Law