AUGUSTA (AP) – Even before the truth was revealed to her when she was 7, Susan Rodgers suspected she was adopted. “I always kind of knew,” the 57-year-old Bath woman said.

Her curiosity whetted, the young girl had Masses said for the biological parents she never knew. Reared by an Irish American couple, Rodgers even imagined that she was a love child of President John F. Kennedy.

It wasn’t until after she had the last of her own four children that Rodgers, then approaching 30, found the courage to confront her adoptive mother in hopes of getting the real story about her past. “I am really interested in my roots,” she said.

The trail to Rodgers’ beginnings might not have been so muddled, confusing, and dependent on someone else’s interpretation if the law had allowed her access to her original birth certificate – the one with her real parents’ names on it.

Rodgers wants to change that.

Well in advance of next year’s legislative session, an effort is under way to have Maine follow the example of neighboring New Hampshire and a half dozen other states that allow adult adoptees to have access to their original birth certificates.

“It’s really about having a piece of paper everybody who’s not adopted has – and that’s a birth certificate,” said Bobbi Beavers of South Berwick, Maine’s representative to the reform-minded American Adoption Congress who is active in Access 2006, the open birth certificate effort in the state.

Maine’s law would be similar to one that took effect Jan. 1 in New Hampshire.

It gives adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates if they were born in the Granite State, complete a request form and pay $12 research fees.

Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Kansas, Oregon and Tennessee have birth certificate laws, and several others are considering the idea, according to the American Adoption Congress.

In Vermont, adoptees 18 and older can receive access to information identifying their birth parents if adoptions were finalized as of July 1, 1986.

The legislation in Maine seeks to allow adoptees who are 18 or older who fill out request forms to get their original birth certificates, which show the name of their biological mother and, with some exceptions, fathers.

The law would allow, but not require, birth parents to express their willingness to be contacted by the child seeking the birth certificate. Parents could also indicate a preference to be contacted through a third party, or decline to be contacted.

Birth parents who don’t want to be contacted would, however, be required to complete a personal medical history that would be turned over with the birth certificate.

By learning about their biological parents’ medical histories, adoptive children can see whether they are prone to hereditary diseases such as heart problems and diabetes.

Beavers cited the case of a woman who learned of her birth mother’s breast cancer in time to take precautions against it herself.

While the Maine bill has backing in the Legislature, it is not guaranteed a free pass. The National Council for Adoption strongly opposes it as “disruptive and harmful to the institution of adoption in Maine,” said Lee Allen, a spokesman for the advocacy group.

Allen, whose group has fought off similar proposals in other states, said Maine law already provides a court remedy for adoptees who have compelling reasons, such as medical issues, to learn their birth parents’ identities.

“We’re not opposed to search and reunion, but it has to be based on mutual consent of all involved,” said Allen, adding that some birth mothers agree to adoption with a condition that their identities remain confidential.

Beavers sees the emotionally charged issue from the perspective of a birth parent. Pregnant after a rape, she gave birth in 1966 to a son. She gave up the child, who was adopted by a family in Washington state.

As the years passed, Beavers came to recognize the painful void of separation between child and parent. While working on a counseling degree in New Jersey, she sought out support groups to get her search under way.

As it turned out, her son was also looking for his birth mother.

“We both searched, and I ended up finding him,” Beavers said.

Beavers and other advocates say the Maine legislation seeks to undo an injustice done to adoptive children, who must persuade probate judges to release the names of their parents. Adoptees’ original birth certificates listing birth parents have been sealed in Maine since 1892, according to state Health and Human Services officials.

But in recent years there’s been some rethinking of the policy, whose intention was to protect the privacy of birth mothers. A 1989 survey by a Maine task force on adoptions concluded that most birth mothers want to be contacted by their adopted children.

Beavers challenged the assertion that adoptions will decline as women who are afraid of being identified opt to keep their babies. Some opponents, taking that argument a step further, say there will be more abortions.

But statistics from Oregon and other states with access indicate just the opposite, Beavers said. Rodgers believes the core issues are more profound than dueling statistics.

Rodgers said the birth certificate issued for her after her birth in Boston lists her adoptive parents, not her real ones, who turned out to be people she had known all of her life.

“Not one bit of it is true,” said Rodgers. “Know what I call it? Identity theft.”

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On the Net:

Open Birth Certificate for Maine: www.obcforme.org

American Adoption Congress: www.americanadoptioncongress.org

National Council for Adoption: www.adoptioncouncil.org

AP-ES-09-02-05 1023EDT