News York: Bastard Nation Letter to the NY Department of Health Adoptee Workgroup. Support clean access. Support adoptee equality

I am writing on behalf of Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We have a substantial New York membership. and are a founding member of the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition. Representatives from two of the coalition’s organizations sit on the DOH adoptee rights workgroup–Tim Monti-Wohlpart (American Adoption Congress) and Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy (Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York). Since BN does not have a member in the wokrgroup, I am submitting our statement for the record and for discussion.

We urge you to recommend passage of S5169A aka “the Avella Bill,” sponsored by Sen.Tony Avella. This bill, held over from the last session, is currently in the Senate Health Committee. (Its companion A6521A is in the House Health Committee) If passed, the Avella bill will restore the right of all New York adoptees to access their own original birth certificates (OBC), without restriction or conditions upon request at the age of majority. It is an important bill that is being watched closely by adoptee rights and adoption reform organizations and advocates across the United States. What happens in New York can influence what happens in the rest of the country and to the approximately 7 million adoptees who live here.

The right to OBC access is the keystone of adoption reform and policy in the US today.It represents honesty and transparency in the adoption process. Access is supported not only by individual adoptees, adoptee rights activists, and reform advocates, but by adoption professionals, adoption, lawyers, child welfare advocates, and policymakers. Access, in fact, is a non-partisan issue.

OBC access is for and about adoptees. Yet, for decades in New York, adoptees have been shut out of the discourse; shunted aside as unruly children too immature to speak for ourselves. The formation of this workgroup is a positive step that can lead to the restoration OBC access for the state’s adopted class.

For more than 30 years, the New York Assembly has failed to enact modern access legislation.Although hundreds of legislators have sponsored and supported access bills, their proposals have died in committee or been amended and twisted into deformed, anti-adoptee bills that favor third parties, special interests, and the state over the civil rights of tens of thousands of New York adoptees.

As you know, last session, Rep. Weprin’s A5036A passed but was vetoed by Governor Cuomo, who mandated the formation of this workgroup to discuss and recommend changes in the current law.The Weprin bill did not address adoptee rights issues, Instead, it created a complex and expensive process that favored bureaucracy over rights and fiscal irresponsibly over outcomes. It was vetoed when over 45 state, national, and international adoption groups, plus hundreds of adoptees, first and adoptive parents and others, sent a joint letter of opposition to Governor Cuomo. Moreover, hundreds more frustrated and disenfranchised adoptees, first parents, adoptive parents, professionals, and friends throughout New York and the rest of the country deluged Governor Cuomo’s office with emails, faxes, letters, tweets, and phone calls asking him to reject the bill. The governor got the message. In his veto statement, he complained that the Weprin bill set up a “cumbersome [access] process” that created “hardship” for adoptees.

Unrestricted OBC access is not a “privacy” or “birthparent confidentiality” issue. In fact, “confidentiality,” “privacy,” and” anonymity” are not synonymous either legally or linguistically.

The Weprin bill was overly concerned with unsubstantiated promises of anonymity made to first parents. It included a mechanism by which first parents could veto issuance of the OBC; thus, creating a special right that no other person– parent or otherwise– has over another: the right to legally stop the release of a birth certificate to the person to whom it pertains. Thus, the alleged desires of a handful of comfort-zoned first parents trumped the right of the state’s tens of thousands of adoptees to own a copy of the public record of their birth– a right that up until 1935, they had enjoyed without restriction. The Adoptee Rights Coalition, Bastard Nation, and our supporters will not accept going back to that place again.

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 alledged birthparent interference. When OBCs were sealed originally, in fact, adoptees themselves were still able to receive their documents upon request.The Avella Bill, like laws passed in other “open states”, restricts OBC release to adoptees or certain legally designated parties–not the public.

Family Courts and other appropriate courts throughout the country 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)).

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. First parents, in fact, have testified repeatedly that they were promised by authorities and professionals that birth documents would be released to their relinquished children at the age of majority

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 adoption finalization, 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 and ages out of fostercare, the record is never sealed. If a child is adopted, but the adoption is overturned or disrupted, the OBC is unsealed.

Existing laws in other states have upheld an adult adoptee’s unrestricted access to an original birth certificate proactively, equitably, and without undue disruption to anyone involved in the adoption. Original birth certificates in Kansas and Alaska have always been available upon request to adult adoptees, without incident or issue. Colorado, Hawaii, Alabama, Oregon, Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire also provide adult adoptees with unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates, doing so through a simple request to the state DOH/Vital Statistics and without the need for complex systems involving searches, intermediaries, counseling, or requirements other than what all non-adopted persons are required to do: pay a nominal fee and supply government identification.

New York’s current system is clearly antiquated, illogical, and discriminatory. For over 80 year’s the state’s adoptees have endured a humiliating, costly, and rarely successful process when they request their own birth certificates. S5169A and A6821A recognize and restore the right to OBC access that all New York adoptees once enjoyed, The Avella Bill reflects a simple, inclusive, and unrestricted access framework that nine states have successfully implemented. New York needs to follow that lead.

Bastard Nation and the organization members of the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition, as well as New York adoptees will accept nothing less than full OBC access. If this workgroup releases a negative response to the enactment of clean legislation, we will oppose as we did the Weprin Bill last year. After 30 + years of wrangling over access, I am sure the Assembly is tired and wishes the issue and we would go away. We feel the same. There is only one way, however, to do that. Give us our original birth certificates, and we will fade away into the sunset.

Thank you.

Make it right. Make it equal. This is personal.

Marley Greiner

Executive Chair

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization

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.

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