An Open Letter To My Fellow Texans  In Support of Texas House Bill 1887 

Creating a Legal Right for Texas-Born Adoptees to Our Original Birth Certificates 

Since 1957, the birth certificates of children adopted in the State of Texas have been  replaced with an Amended Birth Certificate reflecting the names of the adoptive parents, and the  originals sealed. Adopted adults do not legally have access to this information without a court  order, or filing a request with the State that includes the correct information contained in their  original documents—information that, because adoption records are sealed by Texas courts as  well, most adoptees do not have. Legislators passed this law in 1957 because they felt “present  law does not adequately prohibit unauthorized disclosures of illegitimacy, legitimation, paternity  determination, and adoption.”, explicitly, that being adopted, or born to unmarried parents, was  so shameful, so socially damaging, that the government had to protect its adopted citizens from  the scorn of their neighbors. Times have changed, society has evolved, and this reasoning from  1957 has become an offensive relic of the past. Today, this statute only serves to prevent adult  adoptees from learning information that every other person on earth knows from the day they  were born: the identities of our biological parents. House Bill 1887 will fix this fundamental  injustice. 

Being an adoptee, and living without the knowledge of our history and origins, is a  distressing thing. People have an innate need to know our histories and origins, and without that  being an adoptee means feeling a sense of being disconnected from the world and the people  around us, a sense of having not really come from anywhere—not knowing the stories of our  families of origin, not being able to look back and say “These are the people who conceived me,  those are the people who conceived them, they, in turn, were brought into this world by this  group of people…”; instead, we abruptly appear out of thin air. Yesterday we weren’t here and  today we were, that’s all. This disconnect from the world makes our original birth certificates  hugely significant to us: after being adrift in the world our entire lives, we finally have an  anchor. And it makes it painful and incredibly frustrating to be told that this is something that  we don’t deserve; that people who don’t know us, who we will never meet, have decided that we,  the only person in the world that old piece of paper matters to, should not be allowed to have  it…because people with no interest or stake in it at all say so. 

Legally, this is a civil rights issue. The 1957 revision to Texas law that sealed adoptee  birth certificates in doing so created a separate and unequal class of people under the law: Texas born adoptees. By action of state law, the legislature took rights away from us, the right to  request our vital statistics information with the same ease and availability as every native-born  Texan that was raised by their natal families. This second-class status goes beyond the State’s  denial to provide us with our demographic information, it also prevents adoptees from having  vital access to biological and familial medical data critical to receiving medical care throughout  our lives. In this, and a number of other ways, we are legally not even “separate but equal”,  Texas adoptees are less-than. And this has been well established in State and Federal law to be  unacceptable. 

Medically, this is a critical issue that prevents adoptees from receiving appropriate  healthcare. Some of the first questions a doctor asks a new patient, and that come up frequently  every time a person seeks medical care, are for that person’s family medical history. Genetic  predispositions are an important factor in preventative medicine, diagnostic medicine, and the  proper medical management of patients. Screenings and early detection are often the difference 

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between life and death for patients, and the basis of these is what significant factors are present  in the patient’s biological family. Adoptees do not have this lifesaving information, and the  sealing of our original birth certificates keeps us from using the most direct and straightforward  avenue of seeking it out. The 1957 revision of Texas law that sealed adoptee birth certificates  results in a de-facto denial of patient care by the State of Texas, and causes very real physical  harm to Texas adoptees. 

In recent past legislative sessions, opponents to similar bills have raised the bad-faith  argument that allowing Texas adoptees to acquire copies of their original birth certificates would  raise privacy issues with biological parents. Not only is this incorrect on its face, the opposite is  true. The advent of cheap and commonly available commercial DNA testing has long since  rendered the concept of anonymity of biological parents completely moot. Instead, what  commonly happens is that an adoptee will take a test, and get match results with a variety of  different relatives, and then begin contacting people to track down the biological parent. This,  by necessity, eliminates any possibility of the adoptee and biological parent talking privately  with each other about what each wants and how, or if, they want to go forward from there. And  even if the biological parent has taken a test themselves, there is no possibility of the two  retaining their privacy: as soon as the adoptee’s results are in the database, every genetic relative  in the system is notified that they have “a new match”, as will every genetic relative who takes a  test in the future. Unlike a direct and private contact between the two, as would be possible if  the adoptee had the information listed on their birth certificate, commercial DNA testing  instantly makes this private conversation between the two a “family event”…and, depending on  their individual family situations, can result in outcomes neither the adoptee, nor the biological  parent, actually want. It removes the ability for them to make a private choice how they want to  proceed in their lives, and instead can subject them to outside pressures and influences in one of  the most personal and emotional decisions that they will ever have to make. The ability provided  by an adoptee having access to their original birth certificate, and seeking individual contact, is  far more respectful, and emotionally healthy, for everyone involved. 

House Bill 1887, and the establishment of a legal right for adoptees to acquire a copy of  their original birth certificates, is not only the morally, ethically, and legally correct thing to do,  it will also not have adverse effects on the population at-large. This is not a political issue: it  affects Texans of every walk of life, and it has had bipartisan support in prior legislative  sessions. This bill does not affect adoptive parents’ right to raise their children as they deem  appropriate: the rights established by HB 1887 are only available to Texans who are eighteen  years or older—legal adults who conduct their lives independently of their parents. This bill will  not come at a financial cost to Texans: it requires no new infrastructure or funding, and  documents supplied to adoptees are done so at the adoptee’s expense, exactly as when any other  Texan requests their vital statistics records. And this bill will benefit all Texans in the long run:  by allowing adoptees to seek timely and appropriate medical care, and genetically based  preventative healthcare, it will benefit all Texans financially through reduced healthcare,  insurance, and social benefits costs. 

I ask for your help in establishing a legal right for Texas-born adoptees to acquire their  original birth certificates. Please take a moment to contact your legislators and let them know  that you support House Bill 1887. This isn’t a political issue, it’s about correcting an injustice 

that has been going on for over sixty years. It’s the right thing to do, and doing so will benefit  not only Texas-born adoptees, but every citizen of our State. I appreciate your time, and hope  that myself and the over 600,000 other Texas-born adoptees can count on your help. 

Respectfully, 

Nick J. Kostetsky 

Texas-Born Adoptee,  

Lifelong Texan, 

Dallas, Texas.

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