The governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, has signed a bill that will enable adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates and discover the identities of their birth parents.
According to the New Jersey Star-Ledger, the New Jersey Adoptees’ Birthright Bill will enable adoptees 18 and older to gain vital family medical and genealogical information.
Governor Christie said the law achieves “our intended goals of protecting and respecting the interests of all of the people involved in the adoption process, while at the same time making sure that the miracle of adoption — the miracle that was experienced by my own family and is still being experienced by us today, is available to as many people in New Jersey who have an open heart and a willingness to share their home and their lives with a new member of the family.”
Christie had veteod a version of the Bill in 2011, after an unlikely coalition including New Jersey Right to Life, The American Civil Liberties Union, the New Jersey State Bar Association, and the New Jersey Catholic Conference opposed the legislation. The ACLU and the Bar association said that the bill undermined the privacy of parents who gave their children up for adoption, with NJ Right to Life and the Catholic Conference saying that this could disincentivise adotpion and lead to more abortions.
“We thank the senators and Assembly members who stood on principle and voted ‘no’ on this flawed, inequitable proposal which will disincentivize adoptions and encourage abortions,” Marie Tasy, executive director of New Jersey Right To Life, said in an e-mail.
“After August 2015, New Jersey women will be denied the option of having a private adoption,” Tasy said, adding that “contrary to the claims of a vocal special interest minority who advocated for this proposal, not all birth parents and not all adoptees want contact.”
But Christie, whose younger sister Dawn is adopted, said that a compromise struck with the bill’s sponsors struck the right balance “by preserving privacy options for birth parents by allowing them to select a preference for contact — either through direct contact, contact through a confidential intermediary, or access to medical records only with continued privacy.”
Under the compromise, the law will take effect Dec. 31, 2016, instead of six months from its signing. It gives birth parents of children who are adopted before Aug. 1, 2015, until the end of 2016 to ask that their names be removed from birth certificates. Biological parents of children adopted after Aug. 1, 2015, would not have the option of removing their names.
The requirement for a confidential intermediary to facilitate contact between birth parents and adoptees – which opponents of the bill had asked for and Christie insisted on three years ago – was revised and made an option.
Birth parents would be allowed to indicate to a state registrar their preference for contact – direct contact, contact through a confidential intermediary whom the mother may choose, or no contact. If a contact preference form is filed, the birth parents must provide a family health history.
