For decades, U.S. adoptions were steeped in secrecy — private arrangements struck between parents and caseworkers. Pre-adoption birth certificates sealed in government archives often left the origin stories of adoptees undisclosed and inaccessible.
Finding long-lost relatives through DNA testing and social media have upended that legacy. But confidentiality laws across the country have not kept pace.
This summer, following decades of advocacy, Minnesota joined a growing number of states lifting all restrictions. Since enactment of a new law July 1, thousands of adoptees born in the state have received vital records that contain the once-concealed details of their birth. As of August 30, Minnesota’s Office of Vital Records had processed all 2,349 requests it had received, according to a spokesperson.
Sheri Sheeks, a 63-year-old retiree in the Minneapolis area, was one of the first Minnesotans to seek her original birth certificate after the law took effect just over two months ago.
She said she had always puzzled over the “very bizarre” gaps in the birth certificate she’s had since childhood. No name of the hospital where she was born, no time of birth.
Five years ago she learned why: a genetic test turned up a half-sister from the second marriage of a birth father she had never known. Sheeks had been adopted, and her birth certificate was an “amended” version of the original. The parents who raised her never shared that vital information before they died.
Sheeks said she had great adoptive parents, but often wondered whether they were told to keep the adoption secret, perhaps to protect her from being teased by other kids. Yet she remained acutely aware of a “key missing piece” in her life: the name of her biological mother.
“I’d look in the mirror and say ‘Who the heck are you’?” she said.
So she faxed a request to the Minnesota Department of Health on the morning of July 1, the same day the new law went into effect. She was thrilled to see her birth certificate in the mail two days later.
Her birth mother would be 95 today, and Sheeks is hoping to confirm whether or not she is alive. In the meantime, she said she has a new sense of closure — simply seeing her mother’s name and address on a formal document.
“Now,” Sheeks added, “when I look in the mirror, I feel more grounded in who I am. I don’t have these loose threads hanging out.”
The Minnesota reform represents the latest win for a loosely knit national movement. The number of states granting adoptees unrestricted access to original birth certificates has nearly doubled since 2019, from eight to 15. It’s a quiet but momentous change for millions of American families with some connection to an adoption, including some 172,000 adoptees born in Minnesota alone, according to an estimate by the state Department of Health. Previously, the documents were only made available with a court order or affidavits of permission from biological parents, who could be unreachable or deceased.
Private adoption agencies have also remained reluctant to release their internal case files to adoptees, but some agencies have begun to reconsider longstanding practices.
Under the recently enacted bill authored by Sen. Erin Maye Quade and Rep. Steve Elkins, people over age 18 and who were adopted in Minnesota can access an original, pre-adoption birth certificate that typically includes biological parents’ names, birth location and time — with little hassle. Requests to the state are handled after applicants fill out a simple notarized form and pay a $40 fee. Wait times may be between a few days and a few weeks.
One leading national advocate for adoptees marveled at the progress.
“It’s been crazy,” said Greg Luce, the Minneapolis-based founder of the Adoption Rights Law Center. “Minnesota is my state. I live and vote in this state and advocate in it — to say that it can be done, that you can undo an incredibly complex law like Minnesota’s, it’s incredibly fulfilling to see that.”
For decades, some Catholic groups, adoptive parents and adoption agencies opposed granting adoptees unfettered access to their vital records, raising concerns about the privacy of birth mothers or pain and confusion for adoptees. In a 2017 Minnesota Star-Tribune article, a state lawmaker pointed to opposition from the anti-abortion group Citizens Concerned for Life.
“I saw some students who just wanted to know: ‘Where did I come from?’ That’s a universal question we all have. There’s grief at the bottom of this.”
— Penelope Needham, adoptee, advocate and teacher
Despite passage of Minnesota’s new law, two prominent and long-practicing Minnesota charitable nonprofits that work together on adoptions — Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota (LSS) and Children’s Home Society of Minnesota — list ongoing concerns.
“Overall, Children’s Home and LSS support adult adoptees gaining access to their original birth record,” the groups’ website states. But they also warn the new law “may be difficult for some birth parents who believed their identity would remain confidential.”
Adoptees cite a range of reasons for seeking their original birth certificates. Like Sheeks, some want answers to gnawing questions, their parents’ names and medical history, the ability to complete a family tree, or to learn more about the circumstances of their birth. Others hope to reunite, or to meet extended family members.
Others are driven less by an interest in personal details or a hoped-for reunion than by their belief that they have a right to these records like any other American citizen — that these personal records belong to them, and that accessing them is a matter of equal rights.
Penelope Needham spent three decades helping lead the Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform — a group that includes adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoption professionals — and pressing lawmakers to change state policy that dates back to 1939.
“We shouldn’t be discriminated against because we were adopted as children,” said Needham, a former school teacher, 75. “It should be ours upon request.”
Needham, who was adopted as an infant, said having her own children as well as her elementary, middle and high school students motivated her to trek repeatedly to St. Paul to testify before lawmakers about the need for reform. She and other advocates have long sought to overturn legislation that previously only provided the “amended’’ birth certificates to adoptees, with no details about their births such as birth weight, location, time, parents’ addresses and occupations.
After a costly and lengthy process with her adoption agency, she had reunited with some family members decades ago and gained her mother’s consent for the state to release her own birth certificate. She knew the importance of family origin, and as a result, she later organized adoptee support groups for her students. Each school year, whenever she stood before a class of new students, she said she could sometimes guess who had been adopted.
“When you’re adopted, you can be really good at adapting to other things, too. There’s a flexibility you can learn,” she added. “But I saw some students who just wanted to know: ‘Where did I come from?’ That’s a universal question we all have. There’s grief at the bottom of this.”
In recent years, both Republican and Democratic-controlled legislatures nationwide have approved birth certificate bills that eliminate all restrictions on adoptees’ access. Advocates in Minnesota say even though they have also had bipartisan support, Democratic control of both statehouses and the governors’ office since 2022 eased passage of its law.
Needham and Luce said passage of a similar hard-fought reform law in New York in 2019 also helped. Since taking effect four years ago, nearly 37,000 people who had been adopted in the state have received original birth certificates, according to data provided to The Imprint by the vital records agencies for New York State and New York City.
Since then, in addition to New York and Minnesota, Connecticut, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Vermont, and South Dakota have made similar reforms, often with strong bipartisan support.
“Now when I look in the mirror, I feel more grounded in who I am. I don’t have these loose threads hanging out.”
— Adoptee Sheri Sheeks
Republican Rep. Marty Overweg, an adoptive father in the South Dakota Legislature, testified at a 2023 hearing in support of a bill signed by the Republican Gov. Kristi Noem a month later.
“When my son went to get his, he ran into more roadblocks than you can even imagine,” Overweg said. “And then, throwing $2,000 fees at them just to find out where they came from — who they originally were — that’s not fair.”
Overweg testified that said fears about the emotional fragility of adoptees uncovering painful family history tend to be overblown.
“Most of the time when they go back and look, it’s a good thing,” he said. “It’s not a scary thing.”
Advocates for adoptees and birth parents have argued that the availability of DNA testing, online genealogical archives and public social media accounts have rendered any assurances of birth mothers’ secrecy all but obsolete. In her examination of dozens of adoption case files from the mid-20th century, the legal scholar Elizabeth Samuels found little evidence that mothers who placed children for adoption were even given explicit offers of lifelong secrecy.
Professional services are also widely available to assist with nationwide searches. In the 1980s, Needham paid hundreds of dollars for the agency’s staff to help find her birth mother — a process that required intensive questioning and a letter expressing her intentions. The contact information later trickled out “in little pieces,” she said.
“They wouldn’t allow contact — only through the social worker. And then it was only by mail, and then it was a phone call,” she said. “But nobody gave identifying information. It was very controlled. I think they wanted to evaluate if you were ‘competent’ for a reunion.”
Only after the eventual reunion did Needham obtain her mother’s sign-off for her birth certificate.
She said she will never forget finally meeting her biological sisters when she was 39. They had similar musical skills. They were teachers, just like her. And when the siblings sat down together, there were other traits they shared. They took off their shoes and socks and compared toes, happily noting remarkable similarities.
