Tomorrow is the big day in Utah! (February 4, 2025)
The House floor will vote on HB 129, a bill to restore the right of all Utah-born adoptees to obtain their Original Birth Certificates and other material without restrictions of conditions. Yes, you read that right: UTAH! The bill passed the House Judiciary Commitee 9-1-1.
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Currently There is no specific law that provides North Dakota-born adoptees from receiving their OBCs. Court orders pertaining to state and private adoptions are available, but only through a complex, confusing, and exacting procedure involving adoption agencies and birthparents who must give consent for release of identity. A court order can be granted “only if the petitioner demonstrates that disclosure will not result in any substantial harm to the individual about whom identifying information is sought.” How that absurd requirement is proven is not explained.
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These legal procedures in the current law are archaic, humiliating, time-consuming, infantilizing, in the extreme, and rarely successful. They can also be expensive. The current law promotes the pernicious idea that adopted people are dangerous—so dangerous– that they cannot be trusted with their own birth certificates and personal information about themselves less they harm others. The Not Adopted, of course, are not mandated to withstand bureaucratic scrutiny to receive their birth certificates.
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Bastard Nation is a proud partner organization in the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition, along with the Adoptee Rights Law Center and the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York. Plus strategic partner Reclaim the Records
Bastard Nation is a proud partner in the Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition, along with Equality for Adoption, Gladney Adoptees for Rights and Equality, and the Adoptee Rights Law Center. Plus strategic partner Reclaim the Records