Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
bastards.org 614-372-5535 @BastardsUnite
Please vote DO PASS on S3419:
restoration of right of adoptees to access original birth certificates.
April 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 related documents.
Bastard Nation is a founding member of the New York adoptee Rights Coalition and have worked to secure equal OBC access in New York for any years. We fully support S3419 as written, to restore the right of all New York adoptees, without restriction or condition, to access a copy of their Original Birth Certificates upon request.
For over 80 years New York’s adoptees have endured a humiliating, frustrating, costly, and rarely successful process when they request their OBCs. The state’s access system, established when Franklin D Roosevelt was president, is clearly antiquated, illogical, and discriminatory, and keeps nearly all adoptees unable to acquire their own OBC. The law sends a message that adoption and adoptees are shameful secrets.
S3419 recognizes the absurdity of this practice and archaic social ideology. The bill is simple, inclusive, transparent. It follows the process that nine states have successfully implemented.
S 3419:
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Restores the right of all New York adoptees, 18 and over, without restriction or condition, to obtain a certified copy of the “original long form line by line, vault copy” of their OBC;
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Allows direct-line descendants or a lawful representative of the adoptee to request and obtain the OBC if the adoptee is deceased;
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Mandates release by adoption agencies of information that would have appeared on the OBC if a copy of the OBC is unavailable;
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Permits release of original OBCs on file with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene or held by registrars in Albany, Buffalo, and Yonkers
Unrestricted OBC access is not a “privacy” or “birthparent confidentiality” issue.
“Privacy” “confidentiality,” and “anonymity” are not synonymous either legally or linguistically, nor in practice has it ever been possible. S3419 does not open OBCs to the public but only to adoptees at age of majority or to legally designated individuals.
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There is no evidence in any state that records were sealed to “protect” the reputation or “privacy” of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. On the contrary, records were sealed to protect the reputations of “bastard children” and to protect adoptive families from birthparent interference. At a time when adoption was considered shameful, the sealed system was designed to maintain biological privilege and status, and let adoptive families “pass.”
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Family Courts can and do grant the opening of OBCs and other adoption records requests 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)).
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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.
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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.
Records access is the keystone of adoption reform in the US today. It is considered best practice by adoption reformers and adoption and child welfare professionals.
The influential American Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys, which for years opposed access, last year passed a monumental resolution in support of adoptees’ right to full access to our OBC, court, and agency records.
Legislation needs to catch up with technological reality
We are well into the 21st century. The information superhighway grows wider and longer each day, and adoptees and their birth and adoptive families are riding it, utilizing the Internet, social media, inexpensive and accessible DNA testing services, and a large network of volunteer “search angels” to locate their government-hidden information and histories. Thousands of successful adoption searches happen each year—many in New York alone—making adoption secrecy virtually impossible. The minuscule number of birthparents or so-called “professionals” who believe that restricted OBC or records access or no access equals adoption anonymity are greatly mistaken. The fact is, nearly all successful searches are done without the OBC and other court documents.
But…
OBC access is not about search and reunion.
Access is about the right to one’s own state-held birth record. Rights are for all, not some. Clearly, New York law discriminates against the state’s adoptees with a nearly blanket restriction.
S3419 treats the state’s adoptees as equal with the not-adopted. It stops the humiliating onerous legal (and often costly) process for adoptees simply to get their own birth certificates.
Moreover, there is no state interest in segregating adoptees and 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 its citizens.
Let New York be a leader in adoptee equality and adoption reform. Please return unrestricted and unconditional OBC access to New York adoptees. Please vote DO PASS on S3419 It’s the right thing to do!
We thank Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Rep David Weprin for supporting adoptees with S 3419 and A5494 and the (as of this writing) about 110 sponsors in both chambers.
Yours truly.
Marley E, Greiner
Executive Chair
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
