Tuesday February 26, 2008
Citizen Finch, the former state senator who reluctantly gave up his General Assembly seat for the city he loves, was back in the Capitol this morning, in another attempt to force the state to open up birth certificates for adopted children when they turn 21.
The Bridgeport mayor, whose bill died in the House last spring and was vetoed in 2006 by Gov. Jodi Rell, hopes maybe this year it’ll pass, so adoptive children could at least use the records for medical purposes, if not to reconnect with the mothers who gave them up.
Finch, who was adopted, said that this year, the House remains a major obstacle.
“We came up with an idea that would allow adopted adults like myself to put a request in, when they turn 21, to parents who had previously said ‘don’t contact me,’” Finch said in an interview. “A lot of times, as your birth parents get older, they want to reunify, they think of it differently, the shame is gone, the fear is gone and they open up.”
.Finch believes birth parents should never be able to deny what happened and should be required to meet their birth children at least once and to continually update children on medical history.
“When you have a kid that’s the least you could do,” Finch said. “We arrest dead-beat dads all the time for running away without paying child support.”.
Finch took time out from abandoning his campaign promise of lowering property taxes to present testimony to his former colleagues in the General Assembly. Or maybe it was from rescheduling the host behind his next fund-raiser, after he was shamed into abandoning Sal DiNardo’s planned party for him so soon after the real estate mogul received a $400,000 break on overdue property taxes.
Sen. Ed Meyer, D-Guilford, said the proposal this year would not contain the issues that Rell vetoed.
“The change we made was we’re going to give enough notice to women who become pregnant and are considering adoption versus abortion. That’s why this bill is not being made effective until October 2009,” Meyer said in an interview.
“That’s what the governor wanted,” Meyer said. “She wanted women to know the policy in Connecticut was changing and they could make up their mind whether to adopt.”