Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
614-795-6819
bastards.org bastardnation3@gmail.com @BastardsUnite
May 31, 2021
RE: Please sign HB 6105: restore right of all CT adoptees to original birth certificates
Dear Governor Lamont:
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.
Please sign HB 6105, an inclusive bill that restores the right of Original Birth Certificate access without restrictions or conditions to those adopted before October 1, 1983. Currently only those born after that date can obtain their OBCs.
The passage in 2015 of Public Act 14-133 which restored the right of OBC access to Connecticut adopted persons whose adoptions were finalized before October 1, 1983, shows that the legislature understands the justice in restoring the right of adopted persons to obtain their own birth certificates. Unfortunately, 30,000 of the state’s adoptees were left behind in that limited law—their records remaining sealed and available only through a court order. HB 6105 finishes the job making all Connecticut adoptees subject to the same right of access and due process.
Unrestricted OBC access is not a “privacy” or “birthparent confidentiality” issue. “Privacy” “confidentiality,” and” anonymity” are not synonymous either legally or linguistically.
Family Courts can and do grant the opening of OBCs and other adoption records request 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 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.
There is no tenable reason to maintain segregated and restricted OBC access. Support Connecticut in being a leader in adoptee equality and adoption reform. Please return unrestricted and unconditional OBC access to all Connecticut adoptees. Please sign HB 6105. It’s the right thing to do!
Your truly,
Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
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.
