If You're Adopted, What Can The State Tell You About Your Birth?
My parents told me early that I was adopted, but that was all they knew. Indiana, like most states, practiced closed adoption, meaning birth families and adoptive families were allowed no identifying information about each other. Secrecy was considered best for all concerned. In recent decades, open adoption has been replacing this practice, but rules governing past adoptions change slowly, and I was barred from seeing my birth records. Everything I just told you about my biological parents was unknown to me growing up; they were such a blank that I could not even imagine what they might be l...