Illustration by Texas Monthly; Birth certificate:
Calysta Images/Getty; Scale: Tetra Images/Getty
Shawna Hodgson was adopted as an infant in the seventies and, she says, “raised in a great family” in Houston. But despite her happy childhood, she always had an underlying need to know more about her birth family. When Hodgson became an adult, she decided to request a copy of her original birth certificate
, something she had always assumed she was entitled to receive, from the Texas Department of State Health Services’ vital statistics office. Her request was immediately denied.
“I didn’t know that my original birth certificate was sealed. I just kind of assumed they would hand that information over to me when I was [of age],” says Hodgson. “So imagine my surprise when I marched in there like, ‘I’m ready for my file,’ and they were like, ‘No, no, no. You don’t have the right to that.’”