IN AN AGE when more and more of the seven million adoptees in the United States are seeking the right to unseal records and obtain their original birth certificates, in all but eight states it is frustrating or impossible.
Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming Our Families—and America, said in The Huffington Post on January 12, 2011: “Every additional day, month and year that original birth certificates remain sealed, some more adoptees and birth parents who want or need to find each other will give up instead, and some more will die, without ever filling the hole in
their hearts.”
Because Great Britain changed its laws and unsealed adoption records in 1975, the story of Patrick Ferraro’s search for his birth mother is as unexpected as it is poignant. His journey crossed three countries and spanned 40 years. It is a tale about love, family and a series of providential encounters with complete strangers who helped him.
