I am writing to you concerning SB470, I am humbly asking you to kill this bill. I will outline my reasoning below
As written this bill violates human decency, currently the state of West Virginia does NOT govern any other class of adults interpersonal relationships. So why start now! Adopted people are the only class of people who face this issue, why are we being punished. We never asked to be adopted, interestingly enough West Virginia has long had a provision in its law that allows an adopted person, upon reaching 18 years of age, to file a “dissent” to the adoption in the circuit court that granted the adoption. If the adoptee files the dissent within one year of turning 18, the “adoption shall be vacated.”
This God awful bill gives new rights to people who previously had none, I am referring to birth parents. Once a child is relinquished the birth parent has no say. At no time was any birth parent legally promised anonymity, so why offer it now.
Currently there are 13 states that offer unfettered access to Original Birth Certificates (OBC), they offer clear right to request and obtain an OBC at the same cost as a standard birth certificate. This does not pertain to agency records just an OBC, they are:
Alaska – never sealed
Alabama
Colorado
Connecticut
Kansas – Never sealed
Louisiana
Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
New York ( I worked on this one with a great group of people )
Oregon
Rhode Island
Vermont (effective July 2023)
As amended this bill will redact information as a default, which means if the biological parent is deceased the adoptee will get redacted information. When we look at a state issuing an OBC it is actually more discrete than submitting paperwork for some random employee to contact a birth parent for their consent. It is more discrete than an adoptee spitting into a tube and submitting to Ancestry or 23 and me, where someone like myself, a search angel is going to contact every relative under the sun.
Again I humbly request that you KILL SB470, stop punishing a group of people who didn’t have the option of not being adopted.
