She told the room of strangers she got pregnant from a rape in 1966 and put her baby boy up for adoption.

When she looked for him a decade ago, she didn’t want to steal him back, just have a good relationship. Now, she has one.

Roberta Beavers thought it was important lawmakers hear from birth mothers. It was testimony like hers that led New Hampshire to vote to open its adoption records on Jan. 1.

Beavers is Maine’s representative to the American Adoption Congress, and she had never shared those details in public before this spring.

Five states allow adopted adults access to birth certificates: Oregon, Alaska, Alabama, Kansas and, now, the Granite State.

Adoption records in Maine have been sealed since 1953, according to spokesman Michael Norton at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Adoptees can petition to open them in probate court – where sometimes medical information is left intact but names removed – or sign up on the Maine Adoption Reunion Registry.

If both parent and child, or child and sibling, express a desire to meet, the state makes the introductions.

Since 1978, 1,784 people have put their names on the Maine registry; it’s unclear how many contacts have been made.

Paul Schibbelhute, vice-president of the American Adoption Congress, said New Hampshire’s effort was designed after an Oregon ballot measure that opened records in 1998. Birth mothers there sued, eventually losing in court. Records became available in 2000.

Oregon has about 50,000 to 60,000 adopted adults; 8,000 have applied for birth certificates, he said.

He anticipates that level of response in New Hampshire.

As in Oregon, birth mothers in New Hampshire can fill out a form to indicate how they would like to be contacted, or, if they don’t want to be contacted at all, Schibbelhute said.

Eighty-one mothers in Oregon have said they don’t want to hear from the children they placed for adoption.

Schibbelhute and others are trying to get the word out to women who gave birth in New Hampshire and to children adopted there, hoping to head off unwelcome surprises.

The effort to open New Hampshire’s records started three years ago, he said. The process there was relatively swift. People in New York have been trying do to the same for 10 years, New Jersey for more than 20.

Beavers was part of the New Jersey effort before moving to Maine four years ago.

She found her son in Washington state, where she had given birth, through an intermediary – an agency allowed to access records and drop confidentiality only if both parties agree. When they connected in 1995, it turned out he had been looking for Beavers, now of South Berwick, for a year.

The arguments against the law change in New Hampshire included concern for women who hadn’t told their families and children born from rape.

“I let them know that didn’t mean I didn’t want to know who my son was,” Beavers said. She told her husband before they married, and their kids when they got older.

Maine will be watching how New Hampshire’s new system works, Norton said. The state isn’t necessarily for or against what its neighbor is doing, he added.

“These are areas that are real sensitive, you really want to build consensus,” he said. “It’s people and it’s their lives and there isn’t one perfect answer.”

Maine had 820 adoptions in 2003, about one-third of those from the foster care program and the rest through nine licensed private adoption agencies.

The state is in the midst of changing bureau policy in foster care cases to encourage open adoptions from the very start of the process.

Right now, informally, case workers are trying to get commitments from adoptive parents that children will be able to maintain contact with siblings or other relatives throughout their lives.

“I think there’s real consensus that it is in the best interest of the children to have information about their heritage, background,” said Virginia Marriner, adoption program manager for DHHS.

A group of state and private attorneys, adoption officials and relatives have been working on that policy change for two years, she said.

Adoption in Maine

• 820 children were adopted in Maine last year, 287 through foster care system

• The U.S. Census counted 7,137 adopted children living in Maine households in 2000

• Birth records for adopted children have been sealed in Maine since 1953

• On Jan. 1, New Hampshire will join four other states in opening its records. More information: www.sos.nh.gov/vitalrecords