original birth certificates

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) ended decades of secrecy around adoptions in New York on Thursday, signing a landmark reform bill to allow adult adoptees unrestricted access to their original birth certificates.

The New York State legislature passed a raft of historic child welfare bills this year. All of them aimed to strengthen birth family ties: one bill would open access to original birth certificates for adoptees; another increases the standard of evidence in child neglect cases, and decreases the consequences of such investigations for parents; four other bills boost support for relatives and family friends who care for someone else’s child.

Cindy Sippin solved a very old puzzle recently. She’d set out to build her family tree using a DNA genealogy service, as many adoptees like her do, and had traced 47 “twigs,” her word for ancestral sequences going back to her great-great-grandparents.