ABSTRACT
While Margaret and George did not speak openly about their lost baby, others during the politically vibrant 1970s were beginning to challenge adoption’s secrecy. Many adopted people and their birth mothers had begun to discuss out loud, in public, the issue of closed files and adoptee rights, and to reform the laws that kept mothers and their sons and daughters apart—especially in New York. The highest-profile group, the Adoptees’ Liberty Movement Association, or ALMA, viewed the access to original birth certificates as a fundamental civil and human right. Founded in New York in 1971, ALMA was led by Florence Fisher, an adopted woman who helped develop a registry that both adopted people and birth parents could sign into, indicating they wanted to find their mother or child—regardless of who had signed what papers when. Several other voices gave momentum to the emerging adoption-rights movement of the late 1970s as well.
