When Judi Cox was 18, she began searching for her biological mother. Two weeks later she discovered her mother had already died. 

Cox, 41, was born in Gulfport. Her mother was 15 and her father didn’t know he had a child. He would discover his daughter’s existence only when, as an adult, she took an ancestry test and matched with his niece. 

It was this opaque family history, its details coming to light through a convergence of tragedy and happenstance, that led Cox to seek stronger legal protections for adopted people in Mississippi. Ensuring adopted people have access to their birth certificates has been a central pillar of her advocacy on behalf of adoptees. But legislative proposals to advance such protections have died for years, including this year.  

Cox said the failure is an example of discrimination against adopted people in Mississippi — where adoption has been championed as a reprieve for mothers forced into giving birth as a result of the state’s abortion ban. 

“A lot of people think it’s about search and reunion, and it’s not. It’s about having equal rights. I mean, everybody else has their birth certificate,” Cox said. “Why should we be denied ours?”

Mississippi lawmakers who have pushed unsuccessfully for legislation to guarantee adoptees access to their birth certificate have said, in private emails to Cox and interviews with Mississippi Today, that opposition comes from judges.

 “There are a few judges that oppose the bill from what I’ve heard,” wrote Republican Sen. Angela Hill in a 2023 email. 

Hill was recounting opposition to a bill that died during the 2023 legislative session, but a similar measure in 2025 met the same fate. In an interview this month, Hill said she believed the political opposition to the legislation could be bound up with personal interest.

“Somebody in a high place doesn’t want an adoption unsealed,” Hill said. “I don’t know who we’re protecting from somebody finding their birth parents,” Hill said. “But it leads you to believe some people have a very strong interest in keeping adoption records sealed. Unless it’s personal, I don’t understand it.”

In another 2023 email to Cox reviewed by Mississippi Today, Republican Rep. Lee Yancey wrote that some were concerned the bill “might be a deterrent to adoption if their identities were disclosed.”

The 2023 legislative session was the first time a proposal to guarantee adoptees access to their birth certificates was introduced under the state’s new legal landscape surrounding abortion.

In 2018, Mississippi enacted a law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks. The state’s only abortion clinic challenged the law, and that became the case that the U.S. Supreme Court used in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, its landmark 1973 ruling that established a nationwide right to abortion.

Roe v. Wade had rested in part on a woman’s right to privacy, a legal framework Mississippi’s Solicitor General successfully undermined in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Before that ruling, anti-abortion advocates had feared allowing adoptees to obtain their birth certificates could push women toward abortion rather than adoption.

Abortion would look like a better option for parents who feared future contact or disclosure of their identities, the argument went. With legal access to abortion a thing of the past in Mississippi, Cox said she sees a contradiction.

“Mississippi does not recognize privacy in that matter, as far as abortions and all that. So if you don’t acknowledge it in an abortion setting, how can you do it in an adoption setting?” Cox said. “You can’t pick and choose whether you’re going to protect my privacy.”

Opponents to legislation easing access to birth certificates for adoptees have also argued that such proposals would unfairly override previous affidavits filed by birth parents requesting privacy.

The 2025 bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Billy Calvert, would direct the state Bureau of Vital Records to issue adoptees aged 21 and older a copy of their original birth certificate.

The bill would also have required the Bureau to prepare a form parents could use to indicate their preferences regarding contact from an adoptee. That provision, along with existing laws that guard against stalking, would give adoptees access to their birth certificate while protecting parents who don’t wish to be contacted, Cox said.

In 2021, Cox tried to get a copy of her birth certificate. She asked Lauderdale County Chancery Judge Charlie Smith, who is now retired, to unseal her adoption records. The Judge refused because Cox had already learned the identity of her biological parents, emails show.

“With the information that you already have, Judge Smith sees no reason to grant the request to open the sealed adoption records at this time,” wrote Tawanna Wright, administrator for the 12th District Chancery Court in Meridian. “If you would like to formally file a motion and request a hearing, you are certainly welcome to do so.”

In her case and others, judges often rely on a subjective definition of what constitutes a “good cause” for unsealing records, Cox said. Going through the current legal process for unsealing records can be costly, and adoptees can’t always control when and how they learn the identity of their biological parents, Cox added.

After Cox’s biological mother died, her biological uncle was going through her things and came across the phone number for Cox’s adoptive parents. He called them.

“My adoptive mom then called to tell me the news — just hours after learning I was expecting my first child,” Cox said.

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