Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 4607 New Windsor, New York 12553-7045
Submitted Testimony on H1892/S1267
DO PASS
Joint Committee on Public Health
Submitted by Marley E. Greiner, Executive Chair
December 10, 2019
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 other state-held records.
We support the passage of companion bills H1892 and S 1267 as written, and urge it be voted out of the Joint Committee on Public Health.
Current Massachusetts law allows adoptees to access their original birth certificates without condition at age 18 if they were adopted on or before July 17, 1974, or on or after January 1, 2008.
Fifteen years ago Bastard Nation was involved closely in the SB 959 campaign That bill would have restored the right of all Massachusetts-born adopted adults to unrestricted access their own original birth certificates upon request. I personally came to Beacon Hill for a few days, walked the halls, and testified on behalf of that bill before the Joint Committee on Children and Families.
Talking to legislators and their aides I was assured that it would pass out of the committee as a clean bill. “It’s a no brainer” was a phrase I heard repeatedly. Judging from my discussions and the reaction of committee members during the hearing, I left Boston confident that that bill had a good chance of passing not only out of the committee but in the legislature. Massachusetts would join the list of states that returned its adoptees to equal legal status.
Yet after months of bickering, debate and delay—little of which was made public or explained to adoptee rights activists– a compromise bill was passed that split Massachusetts adoptees into two classes The Haves: born on or before July 17, 1974, and on or after January 1, 2008, would share equal rights with the state’s not-adopted through unrestricted access to their original birth certificates. The Have Nots born between those dates could not. Illogically, simply through an accident of date-of-birth and adoption the Have Nots found themselves and their publicly held birth certificates tossed into a black hole along with their right to equal treatment and due process.
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.
The State of Massachusetts has the opportunity now to right a grave wrong done to its adopted population over a decade ago. It has a chance to “level the playing field” and make the rights of all the state’s adopted citizens—not just some– equal to the not-adopted and equal within their own adoptive status.
Do the right thing! Support. H1892/S1267. Vote DO PASS on these companion bills–with no restrictive and conditional amendments added.
Thank you.
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
