Bastard Nation Testimony on Florida HB597–Vote NO

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization

bastards.org 614-372-5535 @BastardsUnite

HB597—Limited Original Birth Certificate Access/Reunion Registry Bill

House Health Quality Subcommittee

March 12, 2019

Submitted Testimony in Opposition

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 access for all adopted persons to their original birth certificates (OBC) and related documents.

While we appreciate Rep. Stark’s effort to help adoptees, we ask that you vote NO on this bill. Below is a short review of H597 followed by a brief analysis and comments of why it is awful

HB597 mandates that adoptees or their descendants:

• “connect” (whatever that means) with at least one birthparent before an application for an OBC can be released; in effect, a forced reunion is required, whether the adoptee wants it or not

• register with the inefficient state-run Florida Adoption Reunion Registry (FARR) before the OBC request can be made

• attach written proof to the OBC application that a “connection” with a birthparent was made through FARR

But here’s the kicker

Adoptees or descendants who qualify after dragging themselves through a series of bureaucratic and demeaning hoops will not even receive a copy of their OBC. Instead, they will get an abbreviated summary of the OBC that consists of the full names and ages of the birthparents, the date when the child was born, the county where the child, was born and the full name given to the child at birth.

At least the state won’t require the adult adoptee to have adoptive parent consent to apply for the summary!

HB597 is an awful bill

HB597 does nothing to restore the right of Original Birth certificate access—a right that all Florida adoptees enjoyed until 1977–without restriction. The bill, in fact, is one of the worse bills we have seen in more than 20 years of lobbying for the restoration of access rights throughout the US. And that’s saying something. No amount of amended language can save it.

HB597 creates a paternalistic forced reunion system in order for an adoptee to receive a patronizing summary of their own OBC. To make this more absurd, the bill forces this unwanted or unnecessary “search and reunion” scheme to be moderated by the inefficient bureaucratic Florida Adoption Reunion Registry whose chief charge is government moderation of relationships among adult adoptees and their families.

The core problem though is that H597 posits birth record access as an individual personal desire or cute curiosity rather than a civil right and political issue. H597 conflates “reunion” with rights. Through the FARR mandate, and even a reunion requirement outside of FARR, it holds Florida adoptees and their families hostage to archaic laws and customs. The bill treats adult adoptees like children, promotes continued shame in adoption, and maintains the iron lock of the state on our birth records and personal autonomy. None of this is related to adoptee civil rights and is an insult to every Florida adoptee. It is about Big Government.

HB597 Points of absurdity

• maintains the system that privileges the not-adopted over the adopted

• wrongly assumes the purpose of OBC access is reunion

• denies that OBC access is a right by limiting access to a small specific class of adoptees

• divides Florida adoptees into a special small cohort who possess certain information about their histories and the substantial group that does not; thus privileging the few over the many

• forces those adopted out of the fostercare system to “reunite” with parents who may have lost custody due to abuse or neglect

• requires adoptees who have “connected” to their birthparents (no definition of what that actually means) by any means to re-connect through FARR. This includes those in stepparent adoptions and those in open adoptions who may have a lifetime relationship with birthparents.

• ignores the inability of adoptees to “”connect” with deceased birthparents

Adoption is nothing to be ashamed of and Florida law should agree.

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 to them promote statutory privilege and state favoritism,

Currently nine states, including your neighbor Alabama, trust adoptees with their own state-held documents and information. Florida should do the same. Half-measures, or in the case of H597 tenth-measures, are not acceptable. Registry bills such as this and other proposals that limit access to adoptee state-held documents need to be taken off the table permanently. The only decent legislation to cure this gross discrimination against tens of thousands of Florida adoptees is a simple bill that releases, without restriction, OBCs to all the state’s adoptees upon request.

Do the right thing. Vote NO on H597.