Rhode Island Makes Adoption Records Available to Adoptees

From a Rhode Island TV station:

Adopted Rhode Islanders 25 years of age and older, can now get copies of their original birth certificates.

The law was passed last September, but Monday was the first day adoptees were allowed to find out the truth about the start of their lives.

Eyewitness News caught up with one man who has been searching for the names of his birth parents for years.

"I am 50 years old and this is completing a puzzle, a picture of who I am and where I am from," says Gary Osbrey.

Osbrey was overcome with emotion after a 15 year search for his biological mother's name finally came to an end.

All of it was made possible when the state of Rhode Island passed legislation allowing adult adoptees over 25 to obtain their original birth certificates.

"Any door that opens, I will walk through that door and deal with whatever is there," Osbrey says.

Osbrey tells Eyewitness News the next few weeks will likely bring some challenges, but to have a name and an answer about his biological history, makes it the happiest day of his life.

I commented on this legislation when it was first working its way through the R.I. legislature, where originally it was proposed that an adoptee shouldn't have access until age 40:

O.M.G. Like I said in the title to my previous post, Adoptee = Perpetual Childhood. At 18, you can fight and die for your country. You can marry without anyone's permission. You can vote. You can send in your money and ask for a copy of your original birth certificate . . . unless you're adopted. Then, you're too young, you're too immature, you can't do things in an "appropriate and meaningful way." You're just an angsty kid getting back at your adoptive parents -- up until you're 40. Maybe then we can trust you to have left childhood behind. Until then, you'r just the world's oldest child.

Lowering the age to 25 was an improvement, but still ridiculous.