Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
bastards.org 614-372-5535 @bastardsunite
April 29, 2019
RE: HB2725 Substitute Bill. Please kill it!
Dear Members of the House Public Health Committee:
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.
Bastard Nation is a founding member of the Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition. In fact, we have worked to secure equal OBC access in Texas for over 20 years. We fully supported the original HB2725, which would have restored the right of all Texas adoptees to access, upon request, their own Original Birth Certificates
The bill did not pass favorable out this committee.
We now learn that a sub bill, to amend the bill we believed to be dead, is scheduled for a hearing on Monday, April 29. We do not have the amended, language so we cannot comment on it specifically. We understand, however, that the amendment(s) will include access restrictionssuch as identity redaction, birthparent disclosure vetoes, or a mandatory third party intermediary system.
These amendments are not acceptable.
These amendments ignore genuine access and continue to gut the rights of an estimated half million Texas adoptees to their own OBCs. These numbers (the size of the population of Corpus Christi or Arlington) include newborn, older foster care, and step-parent adoptions. These supposed amendments are an insult to every Texas adoptee They perpetuate the assumption that adult adoptees are untrustworthy and even dangerous and cannot be trusted to handle ownership of their own state-generated and held birth records or even their own histories. These amendments represent Big Government supervision over adoptees’ own publicly-held legal records and their personal relationships.
In theory, Texas already recognizes the right of OBC access, but under limited circumstances.
Texas adoptees 18 years of age or over may receive a non-certified copy of their OBC
- by successfully petitioning a court of competent jurisdiction
- without a court order if they know the identities of their birthparents
We believe that this sub bill can endanger even that small “right.”
Sealed OBCs maintain false shame
There is no evidence in any state that birth records were sealed to “protect” the reputation or “privacy” of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. On the contrary, records were sealed to protect the reputations of “bastard children” and to protect adoptive families from birthparent interference. At a time when adoption was considered shameful, the sealed system was designed to maintain biological privilege and status, and let adoptive families “pass.”
Sealed records do not command privacy, secrecy or anonymity
Family Courts can and do grant the opening of OBCs and other adoption records requests without notice to or input from the birthparent(s). Moreover, courts 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. In fact, in the over 40 years of the adoptee equality battle, not one document has been submitted anywhere that promises or guarantees sealed records and an anonymity “right” to birthparents.
Identifying information about surrendering or terminated 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 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.”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.
Adoption professionals agree with us
Records access is the keystone of adoption reform in the US today. It is considered best practice by adoption and child welfare professionals.
The influential American Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, which for years opposed access, last year passed a monumental resolution in support of adoptees’ right to full access to our OBC, court, and agency records. The resolution reads in part :
THEREFORE IT IS RESOLVED, that the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys supports the inherent rights of adult adopted persons to their personal biological family information and to have access to their:
1. original birth certificates;
2. agency records which relate to them and their biological family; and
3. court records of their adoption.
IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys supports the inherent right of adult adopted persons to access and obtain these records regardless of when their adoption occurred.
Legislation needs to catch up with technological reality.
We are well into the 21st century. The information superhighway grows wider and longer each day, and adoptees and their birth and adoptive families are riding it, utilizing the Internet, social media, inexpensive and accessible DNA testing services, and a large network of volunteer “search angels” to locate their government-hidden information and histories. Thousands of successful adoption searches happen each year—many in Texas alone—making adoption secrecy virtually impossible. Those who believe that restricted OBC or no access equals adoption anonymity are greatly mistaken. The fact is, nearly all successful searches are done without the OBC and other court documents.
But…
OBC access is not about search and reunion.
OBC Access is about the right to one’s own state-held birth record. Rights are for all, not some. Clearly, Texas law discriminates against the state’s adoptees with a nearly blanket restriction with exceptions for a privileged minority.
There is no state interest in keeping original birth certificates sealed from adult adoptees to which they pertain. Nor does the state have a right or duty to mediate and oversee the personal relationships of adults.
There is no tenable reason to maintain segregated and restricted OBC access. Sub Bill SB2725 needs to be killed. Please vote NO on all amendments that continue to abrogate the right of all Texas adoptees to their OBC and let this miserable sub bill die.
Yours truly,
Marley E Greiner
Executive Chair
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
