Texas HB 683 Seeks to Expand Baby Moses Abandonment Age to 1-year. Why we oppose

HB 683 posits that anonymously and legally abandoning into the Baby Moses system, an older child up to the age of 1 year–a child with an established identity, family, personal relationships, social and medical history, and ties to the community is necessary, much less ethical. While family counseling, respite care, temporary foster care, and even adoption can be solutions to parental child-rearing problems, anonymously dumping a child of any age—especially an older child–should never be seen and urged as a solution, particularly by the state.

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Bastard Nation Testimony in Support of Texas HB 1386, March 17, 2021

March 18, 2021

Currently, Texas-born adoptees are subjected to serious discriminatory practices hindering their ability to obtain their Original Birth Certificates. Since 2005 the state has released OBCs upon request only to adoptees, who know the name(s) of the parent(s) listed on the document. These OBCs are released without the knowledge or consent of those parents.

The vast majority of everyone else is forced to navigate a cumbersome, difficult, humiliating, and insulting gauntlet of restrictions, arbitrary legal procedures, and naysayers,. and are almost always unsuccessful in their quest. The result of this discrimination is that adoptees are left to their own devices to obtain their own information through inexpensive DNA testing, social media, volunteer search angels, paid searchers. or their own sheer perseverance. I have known adoptees who have spent 30 years or more digging up information and spent over $50,000 in the process

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Texas: TXARC Statement and Action Alert on HB2725

May 8, 2019
Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition Logo

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.

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Bastard Nation Letter to Texas House. HB 2725 – Restore right of Original Birth Certificates to Adoptees—Please Vote Do Pass AS WRITTEN

May 7, 2019

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

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