Yipes...having all the states make it difficult to obtain birth records is really going to make our job harder, no question, and more expensive too. And it probably won't put much of a dent in the fraudulent identities problem, either. Hollering at the lawmakers is probably not going to do much good. Perhaps our energy would be well spent brainstorming some possible alternative solutions for them that will still allow us access to records. Remember, to their way of thinking, closing the birth records is the easiest thing to do, so whatever we propose as an alternative should also be pretty easy. Any ideas? It would seem to me that perhaps legal things like acquiring a drivers license and such should require a certified copy of a birth certificate, then make getting certified birth records a little harder to get, while still keeping public, uncertified records readily available. Any other thoughts on that? Tonja Hetrick dhetrick@netvigator.com -- Join the most exciting community of women on the web! iVillage.com's FREE membership gets you private email, your own home page, special discounts and sweepstakes, and dozens of problem-solving tools. http://www.ivillage.com/frame/join_email.html