Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607
New Windsor, New York 12553-7845
bastards.org 614-795-6819 @BastardsUnite
bastardnation3@gmail.com
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March 16, 2021
Dear Chairman Chaney and Members of the House Judiciary,Rules and Administration Committee:
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.
SB1320 Problems
Bastard Nation and its members oppose SB1320 due to its discriminatory treatment of Idaho-born adoptees and its eccentric attempt to include the OBCs of intercountry adoptees whose records are maintained by the federal government.
- As a prospective-only bill, SB1320 affects no adopted people living today; only those not yet born or even conceived. The law would go into effect technically around the year 2040 and leave everyone born and adopted before then locked and stuffed into the same black hole and Adoption Registry file cabinet that they are now.
- The bill retains the state’s confusing, demeaning, and over-bureaucratic Voluntary Adoption Registry, which requires a match between adoptee and birthparent before the OBC and other information can be released.
- The new bill makes the Registry more confusing demeaning, and bureaucratic by including a new 30-day “cooling-off period, (like buying a gun) to give birthparents time to re-think their current submission to the Registry and to change their mind regarding contact and release of information including the OBC. It attempts to second-guess birthparents and indicates a distinct mistrust of them to make competent decisions regarding their personal relationships without state oversight.
- The bill does not say what happens when both parents are listed on an OBC. but only one registers or responds to the match.
- The bill does not indicate what happens if a registered birthparent cannot be found or does not respond when a match is made.
- The bill does not explain how the state determines if a birthparent is deceased
- SB 1320 contradicts the purpose of the Registry by allowing a birthparent to request the Department of Health to redact identifying information on the certificate before it is released to the adoptee.
Finally, there is the problem of intercountry adoptees whose OBC and other original records are not maintained in the Department of Health or any other state agency. These records are maintained by the federal government. In my over 30 years of adoptee rights advocacy, I have never seen intercountry adoption dragged into a state OBC bill, and I am genuinely puzzled why these records, which Idaho does not maintain and has no control over, are included in SB 1320.
- SB 1320 specifically states that it applies only to Idaho-born adoptees so intercountry adoptees should not even be in this bill.
- The OBC (if it exists) and related records of intercountry adoptees are filed in the country of origin and copies of those documents are held within the US immigration system. Those documents are available upon request to adoptees to whom they pertain.
- The only birth document pertaining to intercountry adoptees held by the State of Idaho is the Certificate of Foreign Birth issued by Idaho courts to adoptive parents
SB 1320 is out of step
SB 1320 appears to make adoptee access to their own state-held birth record more difficult than it already is with its convoluted logic, over-arching bureaucracy, and inconsistencies.
SB 1320 is an oddity that does not reflect current social and cultural attitudes towards adoption; the movement in the US to unseal, without condition or restriction, OBCs and other documents to adoptees who request them; and Best Practice Standards in adoption
There is no evidence in any state that OBCs were sealed to “protect” the reputation or “privacy” of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. On the contrary, records were sealed to cover coercive child acquisition practices by adoption agencies, black and gray market baby dealers, exploitative assembly line maternity homes, and other corrupt systems. Numerous historical and legal researchers and writers have shown that OBCs were never intended to be sealed in perpetuity from individual adoptees as adults. At “best” sealed OBCs were billed as a way to protect the reputations of “bastard children” (not adults) and to protect adoptive families from birthparent and stranger interference.
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” without birthparent consent or even knowledge. 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. The OBCs of persons with established relationships with biological parents as in stepparent and foster adoptions are also sealed.
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 the over 60 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.
Kansas and Alaska never sealed OBCs. Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Colorado, and New York have restored the right of full access to at least the OBC. There is a substantial chance that Massachusetts and Vermont will restore that right this year with their no-restrictions bills. The Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (Quad A) , once a major opponent of records access, now supports the right of all adoptees to obtain not only their OBC but all other records without restrictions.
OBC access is not about search and reunion. 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. Many adopted people, in fact, are not interested in “reunion” or a relationship. They only want their birth documents. Unfortunately, the mandated Idaho Registry system and SB 1320 force reunion to get that paper and continues to do so for years to come.
Conclusion
SB 1320 is extremely flawed, confusing, and contradictory. It continues to codify discrimination against Idaho-born adopted people by treating them and their birth records differently than the not adopted and their birth records. Please do not support this bill, Do the right thing and please vote no.
Yours truly,
Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
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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.
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
