This is a very long article and I have only included relevant information.SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN
January 1, 2008
New year ushers in new laws
By DAN RING
dring@repub.com
BOSTON - With the start of the new year, Yolanda Ostolaza, of Springfield, is set to receive a pay raise.....
Other new laws include one that unseals adoption records for certain people, but keeps them closed for others.
According to the new law, adopted people who were born on or before July 17, 1974 may obtain their birth certificates and adoptive parents can get a birth certificate for a child born after Jan. 1, 2008.
Birth records for adopted people were sealed in Massachusetts on July 17, 1974.
The law excludes adopted people born between July 18, 1974 and yesterday , barring them from seeing their birth certificates. The law keeps intact for that 34-year period the privacy provisions of the 1974 law.
Vicki S. Peterson, executive director of Wide Horizons For Children, an adoption agency with an office in Pittsfield, said the law is an improvement but it's wrong to close records to people born during the 34-year gap.
These days, only a very small number of birth mothers or adoptive families want their privacy protected, she said. "I don't like that gap at all," Peterson said.
The new law does set up a voluntary registry to help connect adoptees born in that 34-year gap with their birth parents.
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