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Adoption, the law and the growing demand for open adoption records. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.

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WOMAN: Okay. But you think she was from Arizona? You think that's her hometown.

CHRIS JAMISON, Adoptee: I think that's where she's from. Yeah.

WOMAN: Well, good.

LEE HOCHBERG: Chris Jamison walked into this meeting of the Oregon Adoptive Rights Association with only the sketchiest of details about his mother. He had an old address, a name that might have been her maiden name. He'd heard she might have had auburn hair.

CHRIS JAMISON: I know that she's, well, according to my biological father, she is very pretty.

LEE HOCHBERG: Jamison was adopted 36 years ago. Like many adoptees, he didn't know where his birth mother was or who she was. State laws in Oregon and most other states seal adoption records from adoptees unless they have a court order.

CHRIS JAMISON: To know that people know who your birth parents are and they won't tell you, I think it's ridiculous.

LEE HOCHBERG: States began sealing adoption records around 1930. They sought to protect birth parents and adoptees from the stigma of illegitimate birth and protect adoptive parents from unwanted interference. As social attitudes changed, pressure mounted to open records. A 1979 Act of Congress would have done that, but it was shelved during the Reagan administration. Today, records are open in only two states, Kansas and Alaska. And an estimated one million adoptees and birth parents are using private eyes, support groups, and classified ads to look for each other.

CHRIS JAMISON: People who have been denied this are like fish gasping for air.

LEE HOCHBERG: Psychologist Betty Jean Lifton, herself an adoptee, says keeping records shut is demeaning and alienating to adopted people.

BETTY JEAN LIFTON, Open Records Advocate: Then they get to be an adult and they think, how am I going to age? Everybody else has their family around them like a hall of mirrors that they can look at, and the adoptee is in a void.

LEE HOCHBERG: This summer the Tennessee legislature opened that state's adoption records, but the law is being challenged in federal court, where critics argue it violates the privacy rights of birth parents. The National Council for Adoption's Bill Pierce says Tennessee is breaking an implied promise it gave to birth parents that their history would be kept secret.

BILL PIERCE, Open Records Opponent: Tens of thousands of people, not just in Tennessee but all over the country, made important life decisions based on the fact that there was an expectation of privacy and confidentiality.

LEE HOCHBERG: Lifton, who's written two books on the issue, says it's cynical to suggest birth mothers got any promise of privacy.

BETTY JEAN LIFTON: They had no choice. They were told. This is the system. You give up your child, and you disappear, and you never come back. No one said to her, we're giving you confidentiality. Most birth mothers who want to know what happened. Wouldn't you want to know what happened to your child?

LEE HOCHBERG: Lifton tells audiences that six states conducting studies, including Tennessee, have found 95 percent of birth mothers want to reunite with their children. The critics say those who don't want to be found deserve anonymity.

DARLENE WILSON, Searcher: (on phone): I'm trying to find someone that I've kind of lost track of.

LEE HOCHBERG: Finding parents without access to official records is an expensive and often daunting task.

DARLENE WILSON: (on phone) Well, I think she graduated about 1957.

LEE HOCHBERG: Not wanting to spend a thousand dollars on a private investigator, Chris Jamison turned, instead, to Darlene Wilson of the Oregon Adoptive Rights Group. She voluntarily uses her computer to conduct searchers.

DARLENE WILSON: (on phone) Yeah. Was she in California for a while? Oh, really? Okay.

DARLENE WILSON: Some searches are almost impossible because there's so little information available. It makes me angry because it just isn't fair for them.

LEE HOCHBERG: Some birth mothers who've struggled with the memory of pregnancy, giving up their child, observe the Open Records movement with alarm.

SHERI TRUJILLO, Birth Mother: Your rights stop there at my face. Okay. Anything past that's my rights.

LEE HOCHBERG: Sheri Trujillo gave birth to a boy 13 years ago, after a date rape. Two years later she gave the child up for adoption.

SHERI TRUJILLO: Dishes, cello, and if it's not done, then you're busted.

LEE HOCHBERG: Today she and her husband have three children of their own. The pain of her earlier pregnancy and separation from that child is not something she wants to revisit.

SHERI TRUJILLO: Not every person wants to be found. Not every person wants to remember how that situation came to be. It was a horribly, horribly painful experience. It was worse--it was worse than if he had died. And, and even sitting here talking 13 years later, I still have those feelings. Granted, it may not be fair to him that I don't want to be found, but it has to be accepted. It has to be.

LEE HOCHBERG: Trujillo says backers of open records are being inconsiderate of birth parents.

SHERI TRUJILLO: It's selfish on their part. If my child came to the door, the records were opened and he could find me and just come knocking on my door. Can you imagine what that would do to a marriage and to siblings, to find out that there was somebody else out there?

LEE HOCHBERG: Critics like Pierce suggest opening records could reduce the number of domestic adoptions. He cites a study from the government's General Accounting Office that finds 10 percent of those who adopt internationally do so to avoid dealing with birth parents. Opening records, Pierce says, would force more interaction with birth parents and drive more of those seeking to adopt overseas.

BILL PIERCE: If you take a look at the people today who are adopting children from other countries and you ask them why they are going to other countries to adopt when we've got kids that need families here, they're saying it's because I don't want somebody showing up on my doorstep.

LEE HOCHBERG: And some conservatives say, opening records will lead to more abortions. Evangelist Pat Robertson and his followers are fighting the new Tennessee law. They say women will chose abortion rather than risk later contact with the child they put up for adoption.

SPOKESMAN: And we're making sure that the right to adopt is still a legitimate option in Tennessee.

PAT ROBERTSON: That's the most important option of all, frankly, not abortion but adoption, and Jay, congratulations.

LEE HOCHBERG: Statistics, though, suggest open records don't lead to fewer adoptions or to more abortions. Alaska and Kansas with open records have higher rates of adoption than the nation at large. And the Gutmacher Institute finds five countries with open records; all have lower abortion rates than the U.S.

DARLENE WILSON: Do you know where she works? Oh, okay. Is she a nurse?

LEE HOCHBERG: For all the challenges, open records advocates say the payoff of a reunion is great enough that they'll keep the political pressure on in the five states with proposed open records legislation.

DARLENE WILSON: Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Well--

CHRIS JAMISON: Wow. Okay. Tell me what you know.

DARLENE WILSON: Here's her phone number.

LEE HOCHBERG: Jamison's search yielded an unusually quick possible match. Lucky to know the Arizona high school Jamison's birth mother had attended and lucky a class reunion was being planned, Wilson got from the reunion committee a current phone number for a woman with the right first name. Not much to go on, but Jamison tried and got a surprise.

CHRIS JAMISON: (on phone) Well, my name is Chris Jamison. And I was born on January 23, 1960 in Los Angeles. And I just wonder if--does that date mean anything to you at all?

WOMAN: (on phone) Yes, it does. I remember. I know who you are.

CHRIS JAMISON: Wow!

WOMAN: (on other end of phone) You're in Portland, Oregon?

CHRIS JAMISON: Yeah. I am. I'm just really excited right now, so you'll have to forgive me, but--

WOMAN: (on other end of phone) That's okay. I have thought about this.

CHRIS JAMISON: Have you?

WOMAN: (on other end of phone) Yes. Well, you watch those programs.

LEE HOCHBERG: Jamison and his mother made arrangements to meet each other in Arizona.

CHRIS JAMISON: (on phone) I just really look forward to visiting with you.

WOMAN: (on other end of phone) Oh, I hope so.

CHRIS JAMISON: Okay. Talk to you soon.

WOMAN: (on other end of phone) Talk to you later.

CHRIS JAMISON: Okay. Bye-bye.

WOMAN: (on other end of phone) Bye-bye.

CHRIS JAMISON: Whew! That is just nuts, man.

DARLENE WILSON: Did she hesitate at all?

CHRIS JAMISON: No. I just feel like I'm like five years old or something like that because she just sounded like, like my mom, you know, just totally nice, and her voice was really sweet, and I was like, wow, I don't know what to do.

LEE HOCHBERG: Mindful of the joys and problems caused by reunions, Oregon adoption officials are seeking a middle ground that promotes reunions and protects privacy. Program manager Kelly Shannon says 700 people have put their names in a state adoption registry in case someone's searching for them. And for a fee of $500 the state will conduct a search of its own.

KELLY SHANNON, Oregon Adoptions Manager: It's time. It's time to start dealing with difficult issues like this. You can't argue about their right to have information they don't have.

LEE HOCHBERG: But Oregon's Adoptive Rights Association says a registry and state searches are no substitute for open records. President Bill Bossert says even with Oregon's system, if a person doesn't want to be found there's little adoptees can do.

BILL BOSSERT, Oregon Adoptive Rights Association: If the person says, no, I really don't want to, then that system shuts down and you cannot make contact and you still have nothing anyway.

CHRIS JAMISON: I recognized her from the plane. I, you know, I could--I knew who she was. Her smile, the way her teeth are, exactly the same. I was just like, oh, man, this is too weird.

LEE HOCHBERG: A court ruling is expected within weeks on the stalled Tennessee law. Adoption experts say if the Tennessee records stay open, it will send a strong message to other states that may consider opening theirs.

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