I am adopted, and I believe that all adoption clinics should provide registries for adopted children. Adoption clinics throughout the United States have decided to keep their records completely closed to adoptees, leaving them no way of contacting their biological parents. Such a ruling is unfair to those who have been adopted. After all, we have the right to know the details of those who brought us into existence.

I was adopted through the Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, Texas, a home where young mothers can have a child in an educational environment and decide for themselves whether they wish to care for the child after its birth.

Gladney has been party to several court trials in the process of deciding whether children given up to adoption should be allowed to retrieve information on their biological parents. Recently, it chose to keep all records classified.

If it had ended there, I would have been quite upset. I want more information on my biological mother.

It’s not that I don’t like my adoptive parents. But there are days when I just want to look like someone I know, days when I want to be able to say, “”I have her hands.””

Fortunately for me and many others, Gladney has opened a registry that adoptees may join upon turning 18 years old. If either biological parent decides to join as well, then counseling and a meeting between the two parties can ensue. This way, no one is forced upon the other.

The majority of adoption agencies have no such registry and no such means for adopted people to take any step toward satisfying the deep curiosity inside.

There are excellent programs and agencies for birth mothers and families wishing to adopt nowadays. There are counseling services for birth mothers, along with fitness centers and hospital aid for the birth. There are financial programs to help pay for incurred bills.

For adoptive families, there is counseling, information sessions, contracts and visits to the agency. However, neither the birth mother nor the adoptive family is typically allowed to see the other in person.

All these services call into question the rights of the child around whom all of this is done. In most cases, there are no rights. After all, what child would be guaranteed certain rights to detailed family information under normal circumstances?

In my experience, the only information truly necessary for adoptees, up to a point, is the family medical history. But then, around the age of 10, a child can be given the homework assignment of tracing the family tree. I remember telling my teacher that I couldn’t do the assignment because I was adopted and did not know my past. Having to face the teasing of the other kids at school because I did not look anything like my parents — I am the only blonde in a family of brown hair — was difficult enough.

I know that the ways of dealing with adoption are different for everyone. My brother is also adopted, and he couldn’t care less about finding his birth parents. I, however, want to know. It is a deep mental and psychological issue, not one that can be eased simply by knowing that the aunt of my birth mother had asthma when she was a child.

I still wonder where I would be had it not been for the Gladney registry. Putting my name on that list filled so much of the empty feeling in my chest. I am grateful to the center for providing adopted people with a vital step in dealing with the difficulties that come with not knowing one’s biological parents.

However, this is but one adoption agency. There are millions of children who need some extra help coping with feelings of abandonment, which are quite natural, and other emotions.

All agencies should follow Gladney’s example and provide a registry for those who have been adopted and wish to know more.