There are those out there who claim that HB 419 will violate the assumed confidentiality of biological parents. I submit that these people do not know what they are talking about. There is no stigma attached to it. There is stigma, however, attached to adoption as it is practiced today in this state which segregates the adoptee and creates a separate legal system by which he or she is subjected. Closed records say in effect that the adoptee is a second class citizen and that she or he does not deserve the simple right of identity.
Closed records degrade all members of the adoption triad.
But no one belongs to anyone else. Presently in Ohio, birth certificates are altered, records sealed. The State, in effect, creates and upholds a system of untruths. With the flick of a pen identities are destroyed and new ones created. Adoption, as it is practiced today in Ohio, is a closed system, a secret 'system which breeds personal and familial dysfunctionality.