Adults who were adopted want records to be opened

Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2003 | 9:19 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- After hearing pleas from people who were adopted as children, state lawmakers will again consider giving adults access to their adoption records.

A 1953 law closed adoption and birth records to adoptees in Nevada. A bill in the Legislature this year that would have open the records to adults who were adopted died in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It would not have opened the records to birth parents, adoptive parents or minor children -- only to adults who were adopted.

That bill should have been passed, the daughter of the late Sen. Howard Cannon and several other adoptees told a legislative study committee Tuesday.

Nancy Cannon Downey urged the Legislative Committee on Children, Youth and Families to again study whether adults should have the right to see their birth and adoption papers.

Downey said Cannon, D-Nev., adopted her in 1952 and her brother in 1954 but the adoptions were kept secret for political and other reasons. After Cannon died she was going through his papers and learned she was adopted.

Through an Internet search, she was able to find her birth mother in Las Vegas and they have been united.

Downey, a college instructor, said that through her birth records she learned that she may be susceptible to osteoporosis and that she was of Italian and German descent.

Those who don't have information from their birth records, she said, are in a "state of limbo."

She said Nevadans deserve this "democratic right and human dignity." She added, "Nevadans have a right to their own information."

Downey also read a statement from Jean Uhrich of the Nevada Adoption Rights Organization that said there has been a seven-year effort to gain these rights in Nevada.

Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, chairman of the committee, and other members of the committee said they tended to agree with those statements. Rawson will appoint a subcommittee to study the whole issue of adoptions, including giving adults access to their birth and adoption records.

Rawson said it is a "complex issue" and there are "contravening rights" when the biological parents or the adoptive parents or a judge intended for the records to remain secret.

Rawson told Downey and the other advocates of open records that lawmakers "won't take (the issue) lightly."

Downey said a national survey in November 2003 conducted by FindLaw showed 84 percent favored giving children full access to their adoption records when they become adults. Richard Rinker, a member of a group called Nevada Open, told the committee there was "only one issue -- the best interest of the child."

"We are asking for our truth," Rinker said. "My birth records should be accessible to me."

The State Health Division said there were 835 adoptions in 2001 and 746 in 2000.

Rinker, who was born in Nevada and lives in Los Angeles, said an adoptee can attempt to gain access to adoption and birth records through the court system but "that is not really a viable option." He said he has tried that without luck.