Published: Sun, Apr. 22, 2007 12:00AM

Modified Sun, Apr. 22, 2007 03:44AM

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In a statement, the nonprofit National Council for Adoption opposed the North Carolina legislation because it requires the birth parent to opt out of being contacted. The organization said the law should presume the birth parent's desire for privacy and allow those who don't object to being contacted to sign a registry.

Sen. Tony Rand, an influential Democrat from Fayetteville and the party's leader in the Senate, has wanted to keep the records closed. He said he would study the issue again and could favor more openness if it applied only to future adoptions.

It's unsettling, he said, to think of violating the expectations of privacy for birth mothers who gave up a child for adoption at what was certainly a difficult moment.

"I am concerned about parents who may not want to be revisited or be contacted," Rand said. "You have situations where nobody in the family had known about this going on when it did, and then it's being brought up again."

Asked what he would say to people like Vaughan who want to seek out medical information, Rand paused for a while.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what we do."

Trend toward openness

North Carolina and New Jersey rank as the states with the least openness in the area of adoption and access to information, according to The White Oak Foundation, an Illinois nonprofit group that tracks adoption laws nationally.

Many states sponsor registries that ease an exchange of information or help birth parents and adoptees make contact. North Carolina doesn't.

Amid major advances in medicine and genetics research, more states are making changes toward openness.

Seven states, including Tennessee and Alabama, allow adoptees to obtain their true birth certificate. At least a half dozen others are considering changes.

In Tennessee, the issue was fought to the state Supreme Court, which ruled that a birth mother's privacy does not outweigh the right of an adoptee to obtain the information.

Robert Tuke is a lawyer in Nashville, Tenn., who was on a state adoption commission there and litigated the case on behalf of adoptees. He said in an interview that at first he assumed that more openness could be problematic.

But he said the commission's research showed no increase in abortions and few, if any, unwanted contacts with birth mothers. Birth mothers can "veto" any contact from an adoptee by signing a form.

Oregon's experience

Oregon opened birth certificates to adoptees after voters approved a statewide measure in 1998. The vote produced a long, turbulent court fight, but courts upheld the change toward openness. About 8,200 adoptees have obtained their certificate since.

In five years, about 500 Oregon birth parents filled in forms spelling out their contact preferences. Of those, about 80 birth parents said they wanted no contact at all, according to the Oregon Department of Human Services.

In North Carolina, the proposals would set up a way for birth mothers to request contact or say they do not want it.

The bills would allow birth parents to file a form, and could indicate they want contact only through an intermediary.

The bill would allow for a birth parent to provide medical history whether or not a reunion is wanted.

Rep. Margaret Dickson, a Fayetteville Democrat, is a main sponsor of the changes. She said Internet searches and other tools are making it harder to keep information about birth parents from adoptees, anyway.

Dickson said she cannot understand a law that prevents an adult from having access to his or her own birth information.

"We are just not in the same culture and society that we were when this was put in," she said. "We're vastly more open now. Change is difficult. But you have to ask: Whose rights trump whose?"