California AB1302: 2nd Bastard Nation Letter of Opposition

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization

PO Box 4607

New Windsor, New York 1255+3-7845

614-795-6819

bastards.org bastards3@gmail.com @BastardsUnite

TO: Honorable Members of the House Judiciary Committee

FROM Marley Greiner Executive Chair

RE: AB1302 Original Birth Certificates. For Adoptees

Position: OPPOSE

Date: March 16, 2023

Bastard Nation (BN): 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 have worked for the restoration of the right of California-born adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates without restriction or condition since lrhw ate 1990s and are a long-time partners with CalOpen Partners.

This is a follow-up letter to our position paper of March 14, 2023 that we submitted in opposition, a copy of which should be included in the AB1302 packet for the Judiciary Committee meeting on March 21. Our letter was submitted before Amendment 1 was posted on the bill’s website—a horrible horrible amendment that guts all pretense of support for OBC access for California’s tens of thousands of adopted persons. The original AB1302 made obtaining Original Birth Certificates more difficult than it is now. Amendment 1 makes it even harder than the non-amended bill.

We ask you again to reject AB1302 and kill this bill now before it gets any worse.

A bill this Draconian would not have flown 50 years ago much less today. It goes against current adoption culture, best practice standards. and the success of the adoptee rights and justice movement/OBC access. 13 states already unseal OBCs with no restrictions or conditions. The South Dakota legislature recently passed a bill (waiting for Governor’s signature); Georgia is on the cusp of opening records; and there’s a good chance that Texas and Minnesota will unseal records this year. It is inconceivable to me that California lawmakers, in 2023, would move to the wrong side of history.

How does the State sending a Registered/Certified signature-required letter to a biological parent (and a reminder 150 days later) asking their consent to release their offspring’s OBC protect these parents’ “privacy? “ That’s the state meddling with personal matters and the privacy of the parent. Moreover, no other parent has the right to deny their adult child access to a public record pertaining to themselves, so why should birthparents be granted a special right especially since they signed away their parental rights decades ago? And let’s not forget that if a child is never adopted, the adoption is overturned or disrupted, the OBC remains open and available. That certainly doesn’t protect the privacy of their parents.

In 60 years of the adoptee rights struggle, not one single document has been presented anywhere that shows that birthparents were promised or guaranteed anonymity by the state or anyone else. If they were made on they sly, they were made by individuals who had no legal authority to do so.

Why is creating a massive expensive bureaucracy to handle OBC requests, as proposed, a good idea? I believe that California has the highest number of adoptees in the country—something like 20%. are born in the state. Obviously, not everyone will apply for an OBC, but in hard figure that’s 1 million people whose petitions courts would have to process. Could courts even handle a sudden influx of 20,000? in any kind of timely and proper manner? How about 100,000? OBCs should be available to adoptees in the same manner that the Not Adopted get theirs. A simple request, a nominal fee—not an entire court bureaucracy.

In 2002 I was in Sacramento for the hearing of AB1349, a clean non-restrictive OBC bill. We held a demonstration, a press conference and about 75—maybe even 100—attended the hearing. We believed—perhaps naively—that the bill had a good chance of passing Two hours later we knew it didn’t. The bill had been torn apart. Our rights still held in abeyance. At our request, the sponsor withdrew the bill. Advocates wept openly.

In 2009 another bill with restrictions reared its ugly head and we killed it.

I really have no idea what the purpose of this bill is or why it has been brought forward, but it is clearly adopteephobic, discriminatory, and frankly bigoted– and it clearly was written with no adoptee input. It has no support from any adoptee rights, adoption reform, or child welfare organization in the country. If this bill were about any other marginalized group and written without any input from them–African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, women, queers, trans, Jews, Muslims, disabled, it would never see the light of day.

January 2002, California State House: Some of the people in this picture are still working to secure equal rights for California adoptees. Some are dead. I don’t how much longer we will be around, but we have replacements. The movement is not going away and will not give up on California. But…another 20 years is too long to wait.

There is not much more to say.

Please drop this bill. California can do much better than this. Vote DO NOT Pass. Thank you.

____________

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 adopter’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.