Reader comments
Birth parents to remain anonymous

Wow.....I don't think that this is something that the LDS Church or the State should be able to decide. Where are we living anyway.....Cuba?

I quote "could be one more reason to have an abortion and not go through the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption" is so far off the mark.

The fact that adoptees may want to know about their birth parents is not a reason that the number of adoptions decrease and the number of abortions will not increase. I am the child of an adoptee and have several of them in my family. Some of the adoptees have wanted to know about their birth parents and others have not.

The state should make it so much easier for adoptees who want to know versus the narrow-mindedness of limiting it. In so many other states around the US, the option to learn more about the birthparents is the way that most birth parents, adoptees and their adopted parents have been leaning toward.

Does Rep. Ronda Rudd Menlove know of how some adoptee and some birth parents feel about this. With a quote like that, I don't think so.

I am a birth mother. Reuniting with my son was the best experience of my life.

Abortion and adoption are 2 different things and I, for one, never for one moment considered abortion.

I am truly sick and tired of others speaking for me.

One other point - what about genetic problems?

My son almost died from not knowing his.
He is so thankful for the exchange of this vital information that the agency refused to pass on.

You can make it harder to find people - but you will end up giving your offspring terrible health issues which need to be resolved.

No one deserves to die from lack of that knowledge.

The health and well being of all adoptees must come first, even ahead of supposed birth parent privacy -including my own. To expect otherwise would be selfish on my part and my son deserves his info.

After all, the second most popular hobby in the US is genealogy. Why should my son be discriminated in this way? It is most unfair on him.

Our wonderful reunion is 4 years old now - it's brilliant.

The reason why adoptions are sealed is to protect the agencies themselves. They don't seek to protect natural parents nor anyone else for that matter. Just look at the fathers fighting for the right to raise their own children. There has been five in the last year. All the agencies involved are LDS. These agencies treat the mothers as breeders. They want to cover all of that up.

I think the kindest and fairest thing would be to have a registry that birth parents and adoptees could register with so that those who were willing to be located could be--and those who didn't could remain uninvolved.
There are a lot of emotional reasons both for and against finding birth parents and our family has had issues with many of them. I've seen finding birth parents turn out beautifully and also terribly. Let people choose.

I am adopted, my mother died when I was four, but I never knew my father. I do have an original birth certificate with his name. I have always wanted to know my genetic background and where my ancestors came from. I am close to middle age and I think that my biological parent could probably deal with it. A registry would be a great idea. I also lost contact with my half brother when I was around ten. He was adopted by another family and it would be nice to meet him again.

I am a reunited adoptee. I was adopted at birth and raised by older parents. I had everything I needed including love and nurturing. What I didn't have was knowledge - my basic where did I come from answers, my cultural background, my health history and so on. All this was out there somewhere yet not available to me. I was reunited eight days prior to turning 41. I have since been in contact with both sides of the family, both having other children, my half-siblings and not all who had known about me. I was accepted by most family members with open arms. I have gained a few nephews and nieces. I love them all. In my adoptive family I was an only child. In 2003 I was adopted back by my birth mother. One of my nieces is adopted and is the sweetest girl in town. Reconnecting with ones biological family is not a shame, it is a right of all adoptees. The basic civil right to know who we are, where we came from and what might lie ahead in our future.

It is rediculous to perpetuate adoptees as citizens with lesser rights. It is also rediculous to speak for "birth"mothers (what deplorable language) as a whole and "protect" so many for a very few. This is a decision which should never have to be made. Everyone should have a right to their identity, and relationships and their bounderies should be left to the parties involved.
Adoption practices as they stand are immoral, unjust and quite frankly just plain hurtful. Utah leads the way in this billion doller baby business' long list of human rights violations.