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Adoptees and birth parents can find more about the change in law and download forms at the Ohio Department of Health’s Office of Vital Statistics website: http://www.odh.ohio.gov/vs
Next month, the Dayton Daily News and WHIO-TV will introduce you to adoptees impacted by the law change and others who spent years working to unseal the birth records for 400,000 adopted Ohioans. Read our special report in the newspaper on Sunday, March 8, and then tune in that morning to WHIO Reports.
In less than a month, adoptees born in Ohio between Jan. 1, 1964, and Sept. 18, 1996, will gain access to their birth records for the first time without petitioning a court. A state law signed in 2013 will go into effect March 20, giving about 400,000 adoptees documents that may shed light on their biological backgrounds and provide them with potentially life-saving medical histories.
“It’s a strange thing to go through life and never look like anybody in your family,” said Beth Miller of Centerville, who was adopted in 1967. “When you go to the doctor they ask you about your history … to know what category they should put me into according to risk. I have no information like that,” said Miller, who was born in Cleveland at a hospital for unwed mothers.
Birth parents during the 32-year period have until March 19 to have their names redacted from the records, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s Office of Vital Statistics. As of Wednesday, 74 birth parents had requested their names be removed from the records, said Rena Boler, adoption manager for the Office of Vital Statistics.
The required forms for adoptees requesting records and for birth parents choosing to have names removed from birth records are available online at the Ohio Department of Health’s Office of Vital Statistics website: http://www.odh.ohio.gov/. Boler cautions adoptees that forms received by the office before March 20 will be returned. The cost for adoptees to receive birth records is $20.
According to Boler, a birth parent who wants to redact his or her name must still complete a social and medical history that could later be seen by an adoptee. Birth parents may also complete a contact preference form indicating whether they wish to be contacted by a biological child who subsequently requests the records. The birth parent forms must be signed and notarized along with two forms of identification and returned by mail or in person to the Ohio Department of Health in Columbus. Only the biological parents may complete the form.
Miller said the state is moving beyond a time when secrecy was thought to be the best course for not only adopted children but also the adoptive and birth parents.
“The people who worked on the adoption side placing the children were given instructions to prevent those kinds of reunions and be a barrier,” she said. “You can’t ask a baby what they want. And now babies are 47 years old. When I think about all the misdirection I had in life during that time, it’s very easy to be angry and bitter and resentful. In a month, things will change forever.”
Miller did find her birth mother last year with the help of Adoption Network Cleveland. The two haven’t met, but communicate online. She hopes to identify her birth father through the records and plans to be in Columbus March 19-20 at an event sponsored by the network to celebrate with other adoptees. The Office of Vital Statistics also plans an event on the day the records are opened.
“I had been carrying this thirst with me my entire life and that had been quenched to an extent,” Miller said. “That feeling of knowing who you are, even if it was a name and a face that you can connect to. I want that for other people.”
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