In 1941, Indiana enacted a law that sealed all original birth certificates and adopted records from public access. This restriction also applied even to adopted children, which means without written approval from the State Board of Health, it was nearly impossible for adopted children to find out who their parents were. The law, however, was modified in 1993 to allow current adoptive children access to their original records, but no provisions were made for the children whose adoptions took place prior to 1994. The records are still unobtainable.
Kroskie, 47, found her family by using online genealogy sites like ancestry.com. She sent vials of her saliva in for testing and within six weeks learned that her DNA matched others using the site as well. It wasn’t perfect, but Kroskie said it was a start.
“We all did it willingly,” Kroskie said. “I found out one of my cousins was actually my sister.”
Eventually, she found her mother and learned she had attended IU and lived nearby in Jamestown, Indiana, Kroskie’s entire life she said, throwing her hands up in frustration.
“She was in the phone book the entire time,” Kroskie said. “But there was no way for me to know that.”
In 1988, she took 10 months to search for her father and learned that he had been mistakenly listed as her uncle on ancestry.com.
“I have found my mom and dad,” Kroskie said. “This is for everyone else.”
Kroskie’s struggle inspired legislation that will hit the floor of the House in January, when Indiana’s legislative session resumes. She formed a nonprofit, Hoosiers for Equal Access Records and began working with two other women and adoption attorney Donald Francis to draft a bill that would extend record access for those seeking records from 1941 onward. The Indiana Senate approved the bill in the summer, but when it made it to the floor of the House, progress stalled.
Melissa Shelton, one of the three women who work with Kroskie, said questions from the governor put a stop to the bill.
“The governor’s office stepped in with questions, statements,” Shelton said. “They said things about protecting the privacy of the birth mother.”
Shelton said the privacy of the birth mother was historically not a concern: the privacy that was originally in question was that of the adopted children.
“It used to be you were stamped ‘illegitimate’ or ‘bastard’ on the birth certificate,” Shelton said. “If your records were sealed, no one would be able to see that.”
Kroskie’s original birth certificate bears witness to that kind of classification: an “x” fills a box next to the word “illegitimate.”
“We’re not stigmatized anymore,” said Shelton. “Today if something like that happened, we would be like ‘what?’”
The Governor’s Interim Study on Courts and the Judiciary, a committee that listened to testimonies from Indiana HEAR, voted in favor of supporting the legislation that would extend access to birth records for those still caught in the gap between 1941 and 1994.
