Although some critics predict traumatic encounters if adoptees find their birth parents, vital-records officials say that has not been the case in Kansas and Alaska, the only two states that have kept their records open to adult adoptees in recent decades. In those two states, parents relinquish children with the knowledge that those records will be open. There aren't any big lawsuits going on. People aren't throwing themselves off bridges. You just have to stay calm about things.
People just get worried about the unknown.
Dunton and other Measure 58 supporters try to frame the issue not as about the search but as a civil right. Tracey Peck, the Tennessee adoptee who saw her files, said she did not plan to look for her mother because she had heard in 1991 that her mother did not want to meet her. Peck said she had come to terms with those wishes. Who she is and where she is from. I started this process to have my questions answered.