Complete coverage
From when legislation passed in 2013 to today, the Dayton Daily News has kept readers informed at each step of the way as about 400,000 Ohio adoptees gained access to birth records.
Roughly 150 excited, nervous and emotional adoptees lined up in the rain outside the Ohio Department of Health’s Vital Statistics building today to ask for their birth certificates with the hope of unlocking answers about health histories, blood relatives and more.
With a state law change that took effect today, some 400,000 adoptees born in Ohio between Jan. 1, 1964, and Sept. 18, 1996, now have access to their birth records for the first time.
The scene at the Vital Statistics office had a party atmosphere — hugs, high fives and cheers erupted each time some stepped away from the records request window with a receipt in hand. News reporters swarmed the adoptees and supporters documented the event with GoPro and cell phone cameras.
“Some people are just excited. Some are terrified. A lot of people are just anxious,” said Beth Miller, of Centerville. Miller was born in Cleveland in 1967 and found her birth mother in May but she applied for her birth certificate today to learn her birth father’s name. “I’m guessing his name is not on there, but maybe there is hope,” she said.
Ohio is one of 12 states to open all birth certificates to adoptees. Birth parents were given a year to request that their names be removed, allowing them to opt out of the disclosure. Health department officials reported that 114 birth parents opted out.
The 150 adoptees who showed up early today each paid their $20 fee, got a receipt and will be mailed the records by April.
Former Springfield resident Elizabeth Brougher traveled from London, England, for the event and will return home to await the records. “I’m very thankful for my birth mother for giving me the chance and thankful to my adoptive parents but I grew up always feeling different,” she said. “I think there is more to me.”
Ohio has long had a jumbled patchwork of laws covering birth records for adoptees over the past 50 years. In 1963, Ohio closed off records and put a shroud of secrecy over adoptions. This hampered efforts by thousands of adoptees to find their birth parents to unlock medical histories, discover whether they had siblings and answer basic questions about how and why they were put up for adoption. In the mid-’90s, the law changed again, opening records for adoptees born after Sept. 18, 1996.
Candice Klepinger, 20, of Tipp City stood in line at Vital Statistics with her birth mother, Amy Hudepohl, of Charlotte, N.C.
Klepinger’s adoptive parents allowed Hudepohl to have contact with Klepinger until she turned 3. Klepinger tracked down Hudepohl three years ago, finding her in Columbus. The two women said they share a warm, close relationship now.
Hudepohl was 16 and college bound when she got pregnant. The parents of the birth father suggested adoption, but it wasn’t an easy decision, she said.
“Even up until the day we signed (the adoption paperwork), we kept going back and forth — should we keep or place,” Hudepohl said.
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