Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
bastards.org 614-795-6819
TO: Members of the Idaho Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee
FROM: Marley Greiner, Executive Chair
RE: HB544 – Original Birth Certificates for Idaho-born adoptees Letter of Opposition
DATE: March 10, 2024
Bastard Nation: 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 absolutely oppose the passage of HB544.
This bill continues to abrogate the civil rights of Idaho-born adoptees and to degrade their legal status as adoptees by requiring most to be at least 40 years of age just to ask for their own original birth record. Adoptees must then follow other archaic and infantalizing requirements already in place for the adopted person to actually obtain the document.
In my 40 years of adoptee rights activism, this has got to be one of the worst, if not the worst OBC bill I have ever seen. The current law, one of the most stringent in the US, which holds OBCs and adoptee histories hostage, is better than HB544.
While other states acknowledge the right of adopted people to obtain their OBC at the age of 18 (a couple require 21) and have passed laws to guarantee that right, Idaho lawmakers have determined that their adopted class is too immature and hasn’t achieved enough life experience to receive the state-generated record of their own birth until the age of 40. To make it worse, bill sponsor, Rep Julianne Young, explained in the House, that that age was picked at random! At random!
In Idaho today, people as young as 16 are considered mature enough and to have achieved enough life experience to be emancipated. At 18 they are considered mature and experienced enough to marry, obtain loans and credit, sign leases, donate organs, vote in elections, own an AR-15, and even adopt a child on their own. At the age of 21 they can be elected to the Idaho legislature. Let’s not forgot all those under-40 grandparents.
Yet, according to HB544, adopted people are not adults until the age of 40.
Why?
HB455 needs to die in your committee. This bill is an insult to all Idaho-born adopted people, and adopted people everywhere. It is ugly, adopteephobic, makes no sense, and opposes best practices in adoption. HB455 continues to erase Idaho adoptees from the legal landscape and their own personal information.
Vote DO NOT PASS. It’s the right thing to do.
