Rep. Gina Calanni’s efforts have been noticed and HB2725 is part of a larger story about adoptee rights and original birth certificates. The story in Mother Jones, which is here and also covers efforts in New York and Florida, features two TXARC partners as well as other advocates working on this issue. Shawna Hodgson, a TXARC spokesperson and co-founder of Texas-based Equality4Adoptees, is mentioned in the story:
Shawna Hodgson, co-founder of the Houston-based Equality4Adoptees organization, has worked with adoptees throughout the country to bring an open-access measure to the Texas legislature and says that despite overwhelming support, similar bills filed in 2015 and 2017 were eventually killed by Campbell, a close political ally of Senate president Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
Gregory Luce from the Adoptee Rights Law Center, another core TXARC partner, also spoke about national and legal efforts and pointed out that a core problem for those opposing legislation is that “no promise of anonymity could legally have been made because there was never a guarantee the child would actually be adopted. In those cases, the adoptee would always have access to their records . . .”
The full story is online here.
The Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition is a coalition of Texas and national organizations working to secure the right of all Texas adult adoptees to obtain their own original birth certificates, without discriminatory restrictions.