INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Adoptees born between 1941 and 1994 would be able to access their birth records under a bill passed by the Indiana Senate.
The bill approved on a 43-5 vote Thursday would reverse a 1994 measure that sealed adoption information that didn’t have a disclosure consent form. Under the new bill, those records would be made available beginning in 2018 unless the biological parents file another non-disclosure form with the Indiana State Department of Health.
The bill also gives biological parents additional contact preference options in new cases.
Opponents of the bill say the birth mothers in adoption cases should have a right to their privacy, but bill author and Republican Sen. Brent Steele of Bedford says the measure will help more people than it will harm.