Wisconsin’s SB521/AB579 Will be Amended with Restrictions

January 29, 2020

We listened to this radio interview last week, with little surprise.  Over the last few weeks, FB posts indicated that some Wisconsin adoptees were not only unhappy with workaround companion bills SB521/AB579 that would release the Report of Adoption court form with birthparent names included but keep OBCs sealed to protect birthparent identity. Are you confused?  We are. (Remember the current bill does not contain restrictions).

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Advocates Ask for Wisconsin Bill to Die

January 26, 2020

Five state and national adoptee rights organizations have requested that Wisconsin legislators set aside two bills that were recently heard in Senate and Assembly committees. The bills, analyzed here, seek release of a court adoption form, deliberately ignoring the issue of releasing an adopted person’s own original birth certificate.

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New York: NYARC Update on January 15, 2020 OBC access

December 28, 2019

We have been given limited information from our DOH contacts—as others may have received—that the state and city are both “diligently” working on the application forms but such forms are not yet available or fully developed. We have been advised that there will be a webinar with all applicable agencies sometime during the week of 1/6/20 to help make the process more efficient.

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What in the World is Wisconsin Doing?

December 21, 2019

If passed, instead of receiving their Original Birth Certificates upon request, Lucky Bastards will receive a court -generated document– a copy of their Report of Adoption.form, The form is routinely sent by the court to the Wisconsin Office of Vital Statistics after an adoption is finalized, to request the Amended Birth Certificate be issued–if the adoptive parents have requested a new certificate. It includes the names of the child, birth and adoptive parents and other OBC information.

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Massachusetts: Bastard Nation Testimony in support of H1892/S1267–unrestricted access for all

December 11, 2019
Logo of Bastard Nation. Sperms swm around a cicle with the words Bastard Nation inside the circle

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.

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