WASHINGTON STATE

Washington State House Democrats

HOUSE DEMOCRATS

Orwall on meeting her birth family: “I’d never been in a room where I Iooked like anyone else.”

Rep. Tina Orwall, an adoptee herself, knows what it’s like to miss important pieces of one’s own life puzzle.  Not knowing if you’re at risk of hypertension or diabetes could make it harder for you and your medical team to look for specific signs, so finding out if these or other conditions run in your family is truly valuable information .

But there are other reasons people are curious about who they are and where they came from. Rep. Tina Orwall believes adoptees should have the opportunity to fill-in the blanks in their life history, so she worked on legislation to address this issue for a couple of years until it finally passed in 2013.

After setting up and implementing the system over the past year, DOH is now ready to get things rolling on July 1st.

Rep. Tina Orwall was in this week’s The Impact talking about the new law, you can watch it on TVW’s website here.