Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
614-795-6819
bastards.org bastardnation3@gmail.com @BastardsUnite
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HB 1386:
Restoration of the Right of Adoptees to Obtain Their Original Birth Certificates
House Public Health Committee
March 17, 2021
Oral Testimony in Support
by
Marley E. Greiner. Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support only full unrestricted rights for all adopted persons to their original birth certificates (OBC) and related documents. We are a core partner in the Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition.
Bastard Nation and its members in Texas have worked since the late 1990s to restore the right of all Texas-born adoptees to obtain a copy of their OBC without restrictions or conditions.
We are happy, therefore, to support passage of HB 1386, an inclusive bill that restores that right to all Texas-born adoptees at age 18. The bill leaves no one behind.
Currently, Texas-born adoptees are subjected to serious discriminatory practices hindering their ability to obtain their Original Birth Certificates. Since 2005 the state has released OBCs upon request only to adoptees, who know the name(s) of the parent(s) listed on the document. These OBCs are released without the knowledge or consent of those parents.
The vast majority of everyone else is forced to navigate a cumbersome, difficult, humiliating, and insulting gauntlet of restrictions, arbitrary legal procedures, and naysayers,. and are almost always unsuccessful in their quest. The result of this discrimination is that adoptees are left to their own devices to obtain their own information through inexpensive DNA testing, social media, volunteer search angels, paid searchers. or their own sheer perseverance. I have known adoptees who have spent 30 years or more digging up information and spent over $50,000 in the process.
Practically speaking, then, the current sealed OBC system in Texas compels search and contact, often involving third parties such as relatives found in DNA databases like ancestry or 23 & Me, or through social media advertising that alerts the general public to the adoptive situation. Conversely, the simple release of an OBC to the adoptee to which it pertains creates a quiet, confidential, non-intrusive system that lets adoptees control their own information and what is done with it.
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Unrestricted OBC access is not a “privacy” or “birthparent confidentiality” issue. “Privacy” “confidentiality,” and” anonymity” are not synonymous either legally or linguistically.
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. On the contrary, records were sealed to protect the reputations of “bastard children” and to protect adoptive families from birthparent interference.
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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 the over 50 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 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” without birthparent consent or 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. Please remember that the OBCs of persons with established relationships with biological parents as in stepparent and foster adoptions are also sealed .
The influential American Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys in 2018 passed a monumental resolution in support of adoptees’ right to full access to our OBC, court, and agency records.
OBC access is not about search and reunion. 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. Those who claim a statutory right to parental anonymity through sealed records promote statutory privilege and state favoritism. HB 1386 creates equal birth certificate rights for all Texas-born adoptees. It treats the state’s adoptees as equal with the not-adopted, It reflects the simple inclusive, unrestricted right process that nine states have on the books (Kansas, Alaska, Oregon, Alabama, Colorado, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and New York.)
Please support Texas in being a leader in adoptee equality and adoption reform. Return unrestricted and unconditional OBC rights to all Texas-born adoptees. Please vote DO PASS and urge the bill be sent to the floor ASAP for passage. It’s the right thing to do!
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Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
