Now the day has arrived–January 15, 2020–and you can receive your OBC and related documents without restriction, without condition, without groveling.
Continue readingNew York Adoptees: The Countdown is Over– OBCs Officially Open
Category: News
The Application Process for OBCs in New York STATE is online.
The New York State Department of Health has released information as well as a FAQ for how it will handle applications for OBCs. Submissions will not be accepted until January 15, 3030, the effective date of the law. Please read this information especially the FAQ carefully .
Continue readingUpdate: New York Release of OBCs
We are ten days away from the effective date of historic legislation that allows any and all New York born adult adoptees to apply for and receive a certified copy of their own original birth certificates.
Continue readingUrgent: Help Our Nova Scotia Friends Today. Take the online survey for records access
Distribute Freely Nova Scotia is one of two Canadian provinces that still maintain a totally sealed records system. No province is totally unrestricted.. The NS Assembly will soon be considering changing its access law …
Continue readingNew York: NYARC Update on January 15, 2020 OBC access
We have been given limited information from our DOH contacts—as others may have received—that the state and city are both “diligently” working on the application forms but such forms are not yet available or fully developed. We have been advised that there will be a webinar with all applicable agencies sometime during the week of 1/6/20 to help make the process more efficient.
Continue readingWhat in the World is Wisconsin Doing?
If passed, instead of receiving their Original Birth Certificates upon request, Lucky Bastards will receive a court -generated document– a copy of their Report of Adoption.form, The form is routinely sent by the court to the Wisconsin Office of Vital Statistics after an adoption is finalized, to request the Amended Birth Certificate be issued–if the adoptive parents have requested a new certificate. It includes the names of the child, birth and adoptive parents and other OBC information.
Continue readingAdoptionLand Loses Another One: RIP Kate Cleary
Kate was an adoptee rights pioneer. She served as the president of the American Adoption Congress in the late 1980s and early ’90s when it was.one of the few rights organizations around.. In 1999 she founded the Consortium for Children in San Rafael. California. to provide support and technical assistance to both public and private child welfare agencies.to create. positive outcomes for children and their families. thrown into “the system.”
Continue readingMassachusetts: Bastard Nation Testimony in support of H1892/S1267–unrestricted access for all
Since then Maine, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Colorado, and New York, (one of the tightest sealed states in the US) have unsealed OBC s, and in some cases related records to their adoptees wthout restriction. With the overturning of sealed records laws, changed social and cultural mores, inexpensive DNA tests, social, media, and a large corps of “search angels,” the days of secret and sealed adoption are over, Massachusetts has no state interest in keeping its adoptees and their records segregated and divided by age and adoption date.
Continue readingAction Alert: Massachusetts H1892/S1267 Fill the gap. All MA adoptees deserve their OBCs
H1892 and S1267 are currently in the Joint Committee on Public Health. These companion bills are clean and probably the shortest OBC access bill in history. When enacted the gap between the haves and have nots, the worthies and the unworthies, will be closed, and the right of all Massachusetts adoptees, without restriction, to their own OBCs will be restored.
Bastard Nation has supported these bills and similar bills for years. Unfortunately, they are a low priority and are left to die at the end of each 2-year session. This discrimination has got to stop.
Continue readingBastard Nation Letter to PEI Assembly: Reject Bill No 29
Bill No. 29 clearly holds PEI’s adopted citizens to a greater set of birth record access requirements than the not-adopted who can access their record for the asking, Disclosure and contact vetoes, fines and jails cells all go against best practice adoption standards. These provisions are not only insulting to PEI’s adoptees, but are cruel and ugly. They pathologize adoptees and adoption as social institution. They make adoption and adoptees shameful and suggests to the public that we are dangerous.
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