Below is the letter Bastard Nation sent to the Florida House Health & Human Services Committee asking it to vote Do Not Pass on HB597. The original bill, which was also opposed by BN. was amended and in the end, made the bill a re-write of current law. Unfortunately, today, the Committee voted out the do-nothing, waste-of-time bill. Video of hearing.
Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
bastards.org 614-372-5535 @BastardsUnite
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.
We are writing today to ask you to vote NO on HB597 scheduled to be heard before the House Health and Human Services Committee on March 21, 2019.
This bill is an updated version of a bill heard last week before the House Health Quality Subcommittee. Much of the objectionable bureaucratic language was amended out of the original leaving the meaningless shell you now have before you.
We believe that HB597 is not needed and does nothing to change current Florida law or to promote the restoration of the right of all Florida adoptees to access their Original Birth Certificates. It does little more than re-write Section 63.,162 of the Florida Code already in place. We are in fact, puzzled about the intent of the bill, which seems to be the removal of a supposed “requirement” for adoptive parent consent for OBC release
Proponents of HB597 argue that current Florida law requires adoptive parent permission for the release of an OBC to their adult child, but this is not true under Florida law. Adoptive parents names do not appear on an OBC so consent is not needed. Release is contingent only upon the consent of birthparents whose names appear on the OBC.
Despite there being no law requiring adoptive parents name to be printed on an OBC released to an adoptee, currently the Bureau of Vital Statistics, for reasons we cannot ascertain, actually does just this, by an administrative decision or rule.
Passage of HB597 will suggest that adoptive parents consent has been legally required in the past when it has not.
A change in administrative policy is the simple fix to this confusing situation rather than a time-consuming legislative solution
Word-shuffling and time-wasting legislative debate on minutiae does not serve adoptee rights and adoption reform. What does serve both is the restoration of the right of all adoptees upon request and without restriction, to their own state-held birth records—the keystone of adoption reform in the US today.
Please go back to the real issue
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.
Currently nine states, including your neighbor Alabama, trust adoptees with their own state-held documents and information. Florida should do the same..
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. HB597 simply confuses the issue and continues adoptee discrimination.
Do the right thing. Vote NO on HB597. It does nothing.
Yours truly,
Marley Greiner
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
