The Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition continues to advocate for passage of HB2725 as it is currently written and as reported favorably from the Public Health committee, without discriminatory amendments. Our work is difficult because of amendments that have already been drafted and presented to legislative staff and legislators. We will not throw up our hands and accept a legislative outcome that may include inequality. Discriminatory amendments are intentional and planned, and our focus is, has, and will always be equality for all Texas adult adopted people.
Continue readingTag: Legislation
Bastard Nation Letter to Texas House. HB 2725 – Restore right of Original Birth Certificates to Adoptees—Please Vote Do Pass AS WRITTEN
HB2725, an inclusive bill. It restores the right of all Texas-born adoptees (and other qualified and designated family if the adoptee is deceased), at age 18, to obtain non-certified copies of their own original birth certificates upon request. It also contains a genuine contact preference form (CPF) that allows birthparents to voluntarily submit a statement of preference regarding contact, but does not veto the release of the OBC or permit redaction or other clerical changes or alterations to the OBC
Continue readingBastard Nation Press Release, April 30, 2019: Bastard Nation supports the restoration of adoptee civil rights in New York with A5494/S3419
For over 80 years New York’s adoptees have endured a humiliating, frustrating, costly, and rarely successful process when they request their Original Birth Certificates (OBC). 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.A5494/S3419 recognizes the absurdity of this practice and archaic social ideology It restores the right of OBC access without restriction that all New York adoptees once enjoyed, The bill is simple, inclusive, transparent. It follows the process that nine states have successfully implemented.
Continue readingBastard Nation Letter: Texas: HB2725 Substitute Bill. Please kill it!–Restricted Original Birth Certificate access for adoptees
These amendments ignore genuine access and continue to gut the rights of an estimated half million Texas adoptees to their own OBCs. These numbers (the size of the population of Corpus Christi or Arlington) include newborn, older foster care, and step-parent adoptions. These supposed amendments are an insult to every Texas adoptee They perpetuate the assumption that adult adoptees are untrustworthy and even dangerous and cannot be trusted to handle ownership of their own state-generated and held birth records or even their own histories. These amendments represent Big Government supervision over adoptees’ own publicly-held legal records and their personal relationships.
Continue readingAction Alert: Texas HB2725. Contact Public Health Committee Members: No to Inequality
Contact committee members today to request that they do not consider the substitute bill and to reject discriminatory amendments.
Continue readingAction Alert: Iowa SF621. Say No to Redactions! Kill the bill. Urgent!
The bill has been transmitted to the House, where it faces skeptical Republican leadership and may not even be brought up for consideration. We need to let the Iowa House of Representatives know that this bill does not work and should not be brought up for debate. We particularly need to get that point across to House Republican leadership.
Continue readingTexas: HB2725 clean access bill introduced! Help us win Texas!
Last week Texas Representative Gina Calanni introduced HB2725, a bill to restore the right of OBC access to all Texas adoptees with no restrictions or conditions. Bastard Nation, as an indidvidual organization, and as a founding member of the Texas Coalition for Adoptee Rights supports this bill whole-heartedly.
Continue readingBastard Nation Position Papers
These papers cover related issues more in depth and can be printed out for use in local public education or legislative campaigns.
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