After 85 years, adopted Minnesotans regain access to their birth records

Mary Jo Lindeberg knows all about her mother.

She knows she grew up in Montana, and that she was 5-foot-7 with dark brown eyes when she came to Minnesota, pregnant and alone. She worked at the Young-Quinlan Building on Nicollet Avenue in a department store for several months before being fired when her baby bump started to show.

The father, whoever he was, had another family. Older children. When her mother wrote to him, he didn’t respond.

Now 82, Lindeberg lives in Minnetonka, a mother to three and grandmother to three more. She knows her mother delivered her in St. Paul on New Year’s Eve 1941, and that she nursed her for six weeks before she called in a social worker and put her up for adoption.

She knows all this thanks to information she received from Catholic Charities in the 1990s. What Lindeberg doesn’t know is her mother’s name.

Since 1939, Minnesota law has restricted adopted people from accessing their original birth records. That law changes on July 1. Lindeberg will sit with a notary public, verify her identity, send in a request and finally learn who her mother is.

Every nonadoptive birth record in the state is public, digitized and discoverable not only for parents and children but also for anyone curious enough to search.

But in 1939, the records for adopted children went dark with what was described at the time as an “act relating to vital statistics.” It stated that when a child was adopted in Minnesota, the original birth record would go under seal and the state registrar would replace it with a “new certificate of birth,” with the adoptive parents recorded as official parents.

It was four sentences, tucked inside 1,072 pages of new laws.

Penelope Needham has worked for the Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform since the early 1990s. When she started, her legislative experience consisted of the high school student council. She figured changing the law would be easy.

How would she describe the last three decades?

“Pushing a rock up a hill,” Needham said.

“It’s a piece of paper everyone else has,” she added. “It’s a human rights issue, too. A civil rights issue. You have your paper, I should have my paper.”

Minnesota is the 15th state to pass this type of legislation. Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., continue to keep birth records restricted, while 19 states reside somewhere in the middle, often with convoluted legislation over what records an adopted person can obtain, and how.

Minnesota got close to changing its law in 2008, but former Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed a bill passed by the House and Senate. What changed? The advances of DNA tests and ancestry websites, and a younger wave of politicians newly engaging in the decades-long fight.

Greg Luce is a Minnesota-based attorney who founded the Adoptee Rights Law Center and fights to unseal birth records across the United States. If the birth mother’s right to privacy was the main argument for keeping the records private, Luce said, proponents argued that DNA tests largely erased that privacy.

“Going through DNA to try and find out who gave up a child for adoption in the ‘60s, then the whole family learns,” Luce said. “As opposed to getting your birth record and doing with it what you want — maybe nothing, or discreetly contacting that person.”

Any Minnesotan who didn’t know the law is changing this year became aware in June, when a flyer was sent out to the state’s approximately 2 million households.

It was a thin postcard, not unlike a birth announcement, alerting everyone in neon green font and capital letters that adopted people could access their original birth records on July 1.

Several organizations working on adoption in Minnesota saw a spike in curiosity and a need for clarity.

Carly Kidd is the post-adoption supervisor and pregnancy counselor at Children’s Home Society and Lutheran Social Services in St. Paul. She works with what she refers to as “the adoption constellation,” from adoptees to birth mothers to adoptive parents.

“We understand how and why this is really important to many adoptees,” Kidd said. “At the same time there are also going to be really big concerns that come up, in particular with birth parents.”

She said parents who placed children up for adoption decades ago were told at the time that “their information would be confidential forever.”

While confidentiality is no longer forever, it will remain a governmental process with specific guidelines.

The only document becoming available is the original birth record, not adoption records or court records. Once an adopted person is 18, they can request the document through the Minnesota Department of Health for a fee of $40. The spouse, children, grandchildren or legal representative of a deceased adopted person can also make the request. Birth parents have always had access to the record. Adoptive parents do not.

The birth parent will still have the right to fill out a form that includes three contact options: I would like to be contacted; I would prefer to be contacted only through an intermediary; and I prefer not to be contacted at this time. But they cannot restrict an adopted child from obtaining their records.

When she was a little girl, Lindeberg heard the family stories. She was told her mother died during childbirth and her father, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, had enlisted to fight in World War II. Without a birth parent to raise her, she was put up for adoption.

None of that was true. But the story built inside of Lindeberg. Years later she had her first child, an arduous birth, and she spent 38 hours in labor wondering if she was about to die.

When she came home from the hospital, she told her adoptive mother that she wondered if history was repeating itself.

“She just blanched,” Lindeberg recalled. “She never said anything.”

Lindeberg said she holds no resentment toward her adoptive parents over that hidden history. She loves the life they gave her.

As she spoke, her husband, Chuck Lindeberg, sat across the table. They’ve been married for nearly 60 years. Chuck knows every inch of his wife’s story and search.

Still, there was a telling moment. Mary Jo was explaining how her birth mother had developed an abscess in her breast, and that it led her to stop nursing at six weeks.

Chuck looked at his wife with surprise. “I never knew that,” he said.

Everyone interviewed for this story was either adopted, adopted a child of their own or put a child up for adoption. Their stories are intimate, even among close friends or loved ones.

Luce said that his brother, also adopted, has no interest in finding out who his birth parents are, not through DNA tests or law changes or open records. Luce estimates that only 30% of adopted people seek out the information.

This law change won’t force adoptees to look at their original birth records. It won’t force birth parents to accept contact. But the dynamic between privacy and the right to information will shift.

For Lindeberg, it’s a chance to know a little bit more about who her birth mother was.

“I wonder and I hope she went back home and met somebody who loved her,” Lindeberg said. “And she had a big family of her own.”