California adoptees deserve access to their own birth certificates | Opinion
For decades, California law has required adult adoptees to petition the courts and show “good and compelling cause” to access their own original birth certificates. This requirement, unique to adoptees, treats them differently than non-adopted adults and creates a legal inequality without a clear justification.
Now, California is at a crossroads: This week, Senate Bill 381, authored by Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Fremont, which would grant adult adoptees unrestricted access to their original birth certificates, will be heard by the Senate Health and Judiciary Committees. This legislation represents real progress toward equality and identity rights for adult adoptees.
SB 381 also brings to light longstanding concerns and objections that deserve careful, fact-based consideration.
Similar efforts, like Assembly Bill 1302 in 2023 and Senate Bill 1274 in 2024, failed not for lack of advocacy but because of persistent concerns from some stakeholders. Opponents often describe open access as a threat to birth parent privacy or family stability, but those are arguments rooted in assumptions from a bygone era of closed adoption practices.
With the advent of Ancestry DNA and 23andMe, guaranteed birth parent privacy no longer exists. Issuing an original birth certificate to adoptees no longer violates birth parent privacy. This argument conflates privacy with state-imposed secrecy. In reality, the document is not made public or distributed widely; only the adoptee (the person whose birth it records) can request and receive their own record.
Birth parents already have legal rights and can choose not to be contacted; that preference is about relationship choice, not about erasing factual identity.
Another myth is that opening records would destabilize adoption or increase abortion rates. But decades of experience in states with open access show no such effects. As of 2025, at least 16 states now allow adult adoptees unrestricted access to original birth certificates. Oregon, for example, passed a ballot measure in 1998 allowing adoptees to obtain their unaltered birth certificates; despite early legal challenges, access has not led to social harm.
Critics sometimes frame this issue as if adoptees primarily seek open records to “disrupt families.” But surveys and advocate testimony consistently show that most adoptees seek their original birth certificates for their own identity, medical history and peace of mind — not to intrude on birth parents’ lives.
There is also concern that opening records could lead to unwanted contact. Knowing one’s biological origins does not compel reconnection, it simply corrects a longstanding disparity in the law. Most adoptees who reach out to birth relatives do so thoughtfully and voluntarily, and other legal channels already manage contact preferences without sealing vital records.
Many of these objections reflect outdated beliefs about adoption secrecy that prevailed in the mid-20th century, when sealing records was seen as a way to protect families. Those beliefs have been disproven by lived experience, a modern understanding of identity and the widespread use of DNA testing that often reveals genetic relationships regardless of legal documentation.
SB 381 is not about diminishing privacy or undoing adoption, it is about restoring dignity, equality and truth to the law. Legislators should listen to both sides of the debate respectfully, but also recognize that protecting adoptees’ access to their own life stories is a matter of basic fairness and civil right.
California can get this right. Let’s replace outdated myths with facts and align our laws with 21st Century values of dignity and identity for all.
Jennifer Wallig is the author of “Finding Max” and a resident of Concord.
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 6:00 AM with the headline "California adoptees deserve access to their own birth certificates | Opinion."