By admin 
Lori Schultz moved to Sacramento a few years ago with a goal in mind: To convince California legislators to pass a bill that would allow adopted people to access their original birth certificates.
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Senate Bill 381 would do just that.
Currently, people adopted in California can only get the record once they are adults and if they can convince a judge that they have a “good and compelling cause” for it. Those requests are often denied. Instead, many adoptees are only able to receive an amended version of their record from the state, which does not list their birth parents.
Supporters of the bill say that type of restriction is terribly outdated. The widespread use of DNA testing has made finding long-lost relatives a greater reality. They see California’s continued withholding of their unredacted birth certificates as an affront and violation of their rights. Some have waited 70 or more years to get the document and have spent decades advocating for the law to change.
“I’m a human being like everybody else who was kept at birth,” said Schultz, who co-founded a group called California Alliance for Adoptee Rights. The organization is the lead supporter of the measure, which is currently awaiting a key vote Thursday in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Schultz, 66, grew up in the Central Valley and more than 40 years ago was able to figure out who her birth parents were using the few details the state will release about them. But she still does not have the original record documenting her birth.
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Hayward, who authored the bill, calls it a “tragedy” and “shame” that Schultz and other California adoptees can’t easily access their birth certificates. Wahab was placed into foster care as a child and later adopted. She was born in New York, which has allowed adoptees to access their original birth certificate since 2020.
“There’s so much tied to adoption and your birth certificate because it exposes so much who you were,” she said, “or who you assumed you were.”
Long history
The practice of sealing original birth certificates in California dates back in the 1930s, and the state is not alone in its secrecy around them. Adoptees in only 17 states give people the right to have their original birth certificate without restrictions, according to the Adoptee Rights Law Center. Virginia became the most recent state on that list on July 1.
“If this bill passes in California, it’s going to make a huge difference nationwide,” said Marley Greiner, co-founder and executive chair of Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization.
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That’s because it is exactly what Greiner and other adoptee advocates have waited for. Three years ago, a California assemblymember pushed a bill that would have required the state to contact the birth parents of an adopted person who requests their original birth record. If the parents denied the request, or didn’t respond, the adopted person would not be able to get the complete original document. But the measure would have allowed for the records to be released if a person’s birth parents are dead.
Adoptee groups came out strongly against the measure because there were still too many hurdles to getting the record.
SB 381 would allow for adult adoptees to receive their birth certificate after June 30, 2028, without needing a court order. Descendants of adopted people who died would be able to access the record.
The bill would also create a contact form that birth parents could fill out to say whether they would like their children to try and speak to them, which an adopted person would receive when they request their birth record.
“I think it’s an excellent bill,” Schultz said.
She reconnected with her birth mother. In a letter, her mother said she was glad Schultz was able to find her.
Deborah Myers, president of a group called Concerned United Birthparents, said she believes many other people will also welcome direct contact from their children. The organization supports parents who were separated from their children through adoptions, but it also is strongly in favor of adoptees accessing their original birth certificates.
“We’re not talking about children here anymore. We’re talking about grown adults who I think are entitled to their records and their history and to know where they came from,” Myers said. “They weren’t a part of this agreement, whatever it was at the time. They were babies.”
The group is one of many organizations in support of the bill. It has received no formal opposition.
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