Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
P.O. Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
bastards.org 614-795-6819 @BastardsUnite
TO: Honorable Members of the California General Assembly Health Committee
FROM: Marley Greiner, Executive Chair
RE: AB1302 Original Birth Certificates for Adult Adoptees,- LETTER OF OPPOSITION
DATE: April 18, 2023
Bastard Nation (BN): the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support only full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons to their original birth certificates (OBC) and related documents.
We have worked for the restoration of the right of California-born adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates without restriction or condition since the late 1990s and are a long-time partner with CalOpen Partners.
We adamantly oppose AB1302. The original version of this bill made obtaining Original Birth Certificates more difficult than it is now. Amendment 1 makes it even harder than the non-amended bill.
Please kill this bill now before it gets any worse!
AB1302 is adopteephobic
AB1302 is clearly adopteephobic, discriminatory, and frankly bigoted– and it clearly was written with no adoptee input. It has no support from any adoptee rights, adoption reform, or child welfare organization in the country. If this bill were about any other marginalized group and written without any input from them–African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, women, queers, trans, Jews, Muslims, disabled, it would never see the light of day.
AB 1302 Confuses Privacy, Confidentially, and Anonymity
Privacy,” “confidentiality,” and “anonymity” are not synonymous either legally or linguistically. “Anonymity” is a myth perpetuated by special interests that for decades have profited off economic distress and society-induced shame and family crisis. In many cases, adoption is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
AB1302 creates a false “privacy” standard
Identifying information about surrendering parents often appears in court documents given to adoptive parents who can at any point give that information to the adopted person. (In some states, including California, adoptive parents, at the time of the adoption order, can petition the court to keep the record open.) The names of surrendering parents are published in legal ads. Courts can open “sealed records” for “good cause” without birthparent consent or even knowledge. Critically, the OBC is sealed at the time of adoption finalization, not surrender. If a child is not adopted, the record is never sealed. If a child is adopted, but the adoption is overturned or disrupted, the OBC is unsealed. The OBCs of persons with established relationships with biological parents as in step-parent and foster adoptions are also sealed. Today, inexpensive and accessible DNA testing services, have made the traditional “privacy” argument obsolete.
There is no evidence in any state that records were sealed to “protect” the reputation or “privacy” of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. In the over 60 years of the adoptee rights struggle, not one single document has been presented anywhere that shows that birthparents were promised or guaranteed anonymity by the state or anyone else. If they were made on the sly, they were made by individuals who had no legal authority to do so.
On the contrary, records were sealed to cover coercive child acquisition practices by adoption agencies, black and gray market baby dealers, exploitative assembly-line maternity homes, and other corrupt systems. Numerous historical and legal researchers and writers have shown that OBCs were never intended to be sealed in perpetuity from individual adoptees as adults. At “best” sealed OBCs were billed as a way to protect the reputations of “bastard children” (not adults) and to protect adoptive families from birthparent and stranger interference. These documents were first sealed from the public, then the parties to the adoption, and eventually from adopted people themselves. What was once an outlier practice has now been normalized through a mix of myth and “tradition” and treated like ”the way it’s always been.”
Courts , however, have ruled that adoption anonymity does not exist. (Doe v. Sundquist, et. al., 943 F. Supp. 886, 893-94 (M.D. Tenn. 1996) and Does v. State of Oregon, 164 Or. App. 543, 993 P.2d 833, 834 (1999). Laws change constantly, and the state, lawyers, social workers, and others were never in a position to promise anonymity in adoption.
AB1302 Creates a new expensive intrusive bureaucracy
AB1302, in line with this confusion, creates the requirement that the state contact the birthparent(s) listed on the OBC through a Registered/Certified signature-required letter, to inform them that their adult offspring has requested a copy of their own OBC. The birthparent (1) must then file a “disclosure preference form (DPF), included with the letter, with two choices: 1) disclose personal identifying information on the original certificate of birth; or 2) redact personal identifying information on the original certificate of birth. The bill also retains a complicated expensive court procedure for adoptees to obtain their own birth documents If the parent cannot be located or does not return the DPF. the document will not be released.
How does the State sending a Registered/Certified signature-required letter to a biological parent (and a reminder 150 days later) asking their consent to release their offspring’s OBC protect these parents’ “privacy? “ That’s the state meddling with personal matters and the privacy of the parent. Moreover, no other parent has the right to deny their adult child access to a public record pertaining to themselves, so why should birthparents be granted a special right especially since they signed away their parental rights decades ago? And, again, let’s not forget that if a child is never adopted, the adoption is overturned or disrupted, the OBC remains open and available. That certainly doesn’t protect the privacy of their parents.
Why is creating a massive expensive bureaucracy to handle OBC requests, as proposed, a good idea? I believe that California has the highest number of adoptees in the country—something like 20% are born in the state. Obviously, not everyone will apply for an OBC, but in hard figures that’s 1 million people whose petitions courts would have to process. Could courts even handle a sudden influx of 20,00 in any kind of timely and proper manner? How about 100,000? OBCs should be available to adoptees in the same manner that the Not Adopted get theirs. A simple request, a nominal fee to the Department of Health—not an entire court bureaucracy.
AB1302 is not about reproductive rights or justice
The idea that adoption is about reproductive health or rights is false, and it is alarming to see that the April 14 analysis of this bill claims otherwise, especially in light of California’s generally progressive views towards reproductive rights and justice. There is no correlation between adoption and abortion rates. Those who terminate their pregnancies don’t do it out of fear of original birth certificates being issued decades later. As an adoptee rights activist colleague wrote after reading the AB 1302 analysis: “Adoptees are PEOPLE, NOT reproductive choices. “
AB1302 is antiquated and opposed to best practice standards
AB1302 bill would not have flown 50 years ago much less today. It goes against current adoption culture, best practice standards, and the success of the adoptee rights and justice movement/OBC access. 14 states already unseal OBCs with no restrictions or conditions for the adoptees to which they belong. The latest to unseal is conservative South Dakota It is inconceivable to me that California lawmakers, in 2023, would move to the wrong side of history.
AB1302 has no purpose
I really have no idea why AB1302 has been brought forward. The bill impacts the lives of millions of Californians and their families, yet their input neither appears in the bill nor was requested The cost of the bill could run into the millions yet no fiscal note is attached. The bureaucracy is untenable.
AB1302 is an embarrassment to the State of California. It is a reactionary adopteephobic bill that serves no purpose other than to continue to stigmatize, infantilize and marginalize the state’s adopted class.
Please vote DO NOT PASS
Thank you
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
I watched the hearing live. They would have passed a ‘clean’ bill if it were in front of them. The Assemblymembers were genuinely shocked that adoptees can’t access their OBCs.
Diane Dixon said and I am somewhat paraphrasing, “I see no reason why we should deny adoptees whose parents have passed their OBC. We will pass this and hopefully, another bill will be brought up and we will pass that too.”
If the ERA is passed, it can be applied as law…
Are you aware of H.R. 253 The Family Prevention Services Act passed by Congress in 2018?