We are ten days away from the effective date of historic legislation that allows any and all New York born adult adoptees to apply for and receive a certified copy of their own original birth certificates.
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Distribute Freely Nova Scotia is one of two Canadian provinces that still maintain a totally sealed records system. No province is totally unrestricted.. The NS Assembly will soon be considering changing its access law …
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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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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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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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H1892 and S1267 are currently in the Joint Committee on Public Health. These companion bills are clean and probably the shortest OBC access bill in history. When enacted the gap between the haves and have nots, the worthies and the unworthies, will be closed, and the right of all Massachusetts adoptees, without restriction, to their own OBCs will be restored.
Bastard Nation has supported these bills and similar bills for years. Unfortunately, they are a low priority and are left to die at the end of each 2-year session. This discrimination has got to stop.
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Bill No. 29 clearly holds PEI’s adopted citizens to a greater set of birth record access requirements than the not-adopted who can access their record for the asking, Disclosure and contact vetoes, fines and jails cells all go against best practice adoption standards. These provisions are not only insulting to PEI’s adoptees, but are cruel and ugly. They pathologize adoptees and adoption as social institution. They make adoption and adoptees shameful and suggests to the public that we are dangerous.
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In the name of “adoption reform, the Prince Edward Assembly is attempting to sneak a bill through that will continue to abrogate the right of the province’s adoptees to access their Original Birth Certificate, without restriction or conditions. A final vote can take place as early as this coming Tuesday, November 26.
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New York Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Rep .David Weprin sent this letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo requesting his immediate signing of S5494/HB3419.
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We’ve been assured by top officials in New York that there is zero confusion between S3419, our adoptee rights bill, and another bill related to termination of parental rights.
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Bastard Nation is a proud partner organization in the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition, along with the Adoptee Rights Law Center and the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York. Plus strategic partner Reclaim the Records
Bastard Nation is a proud partner in the Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition, along with Equality for Adoption, Gladney Adoptees for Rights and Equality, and the Adoptee Rights Law Center. Plus strategic partner Reclaim the Records