AUGUSTA -- Tears came to her eyes when Lee-Ann Bragdon held up photos of her father, grandmother and great-grandmother.

Bragdon, a retired dance instructor from Windsor, and her 17-year-old daughter, Bianca Badershall, talked Monday at the Statehouse to introduce a new law that allows adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates.

Starting Jan. 2, 2009, adults who were adopted in the state of Maine will have access to their original birth certificates at the state Office of Vital Records.

Maine has joined seven other states that adopted access-to-birth-certificate laws, including New Hampshire.

The 44-year-old Bragdon, an adoptee, recently found her birth father, Daniel Price, an air traffic controller in San Diego, Calif.

Bragdon said she came to the news conference to support Original Birth Certificates for Maine, a grassroots group that succeeded in getting legislators to pass the law.

She pointed to a copied, black-and-white photograph of her grandmother holding her dad as a toddler.

"See," she said nodding at her daughter in the chair next to her. "She and my dad look almost alike. When I first tried to find him, it was for medical information. My daughter was diagnosed with a pervasive developmental disorder, which is a form of autism, but when he found out about me he said it felt like the day I was born. There was an instant bond between us."

Now he calls her every Sunday and once or twice during the week and is coming to Maine in February to meet Bradgon and her family, she said.

Sen. Paula Benoit, an adoptee, co-sponsored the legislation, which Gov. John Baldacci signed June 25.

Benoit said the law restores rights that were taken away in 1953 when Maine passed a law requiring adoptees to obtain court orders in order to get access to their original birth certificates.

New Hampshire's law and Maine's new one allow biological parents to state that they do not wish to be contacted by a birth child, but there are no guarantees their wishes will be honored.

Daniel Walker, of Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau & Pachios in Augusta, advocated on behalf of the National Council for Adoption against the proposal.

He said it is the duty of the Legislature to consider the rights of all who are affected by adoption, not just those who are adopted. He said the new law would wear away at the right of birth parents to keep the adoption confidential.

Catherine Robishaw, co-founder of Original Birth Certificates for Maine, said the council believes birth parents need to have the privacy they were promised by the adoption agencies.

"That's just not in the new law at all," Robishaw said. "It wasn't even in the old law. When the law was changed in 1953, it did seal birth certificates but also said a judge could open the file. So it was always out there that the names could be known if a judge decided to open it.

"There was never any legal promise. This is something the agencies said to the birth parents."

She said 40 people have already requested copies of their original birth certificates.

Benoit said her deep appreciation for the love and devotion given to her by her adoptive parents stifled her from pursuing the identity of her birth parents, whom she said she never wanted to feel betrayed.

But to get a better understanding of what adoptees in the past had gone through, she petitioned the court and went before the judge to explain why she needed to know the names of her birth parents.

The judge refused her request, saying her need "was not compelling enough," according to Benoit.

"The birth parents have their original identity, the adoptive parents have their original identity and now adoptees born in Maine will finally have their original identity," Benoit said of the new law.

The birth of a child from a teen mother used to be shrouded in secrecy and shame, she said. Young mothers were sent away to have their babies and adoptive parents told not to tell the children who their parents were. She said birth parents have to overcome their guilt for surrendering a child.

"There is no shame to surrendering a child when it's done with the best interest of the child," she said.

Roberta Beavers said she had to give up her baby at a young age, and was a mother whose first-born son was conceived in rape and lost to adoption in 1966.

After a long search, she found her son in 1995. She said it was the best spiritually healing journey of her life.

"It gave me great joy to provide my son, Mark, with the gift of his origin; his half siblings; his World War ll, Pearl Harbor-survivor-veteran great uncle; his maternal aunts and cousins plus the maternal half of his biological medical history," Beavers said. "His three wonderful children now have three sets of grandparents to love and spoil them."

The announcement on Monday kicking off the start of the new access law fits right in with a celebration today for November's National Adoption Awareness Month.

The event, sponsored by the Maine Department of Health & Human Services and A Family for ME, is at 10 a.m. to noon in the Statehouse Hall of Flags for foster and adoptive families.

A Family for ME is a statewide recruitment initiative for foster and adoptive families.

Mechele Cooper -- 623-3811, Ext. 408

mcooper@centralmaine.com