Tag: Adoptee Rights and Adoptee Equality

News

New York: Update on OBC Access and Orders–NEW YORK STATE

August 5, 2020

The Pre-Adoption Birth Certificate Unit at the NYS Bureau of Vital records has been up and running for several weeks. Currently, they are experiencing significant delays in processing orders for Pre-Adoption Birth Certificates. At the direction of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Executive Order 202, pertaining to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, offices are currently operating with reduced staff and resources. Due to the research needed to locate and fulfill an order, their limited staff is still working to process the remaining orders. Depending on volume of forthcoming inquiries received from the public, they are currently processing 200-300 orders per week. They have continued to process applications in the order in which they were received. We all appreciate everyone’s patience as the Bureau of Vital Records works to fulfill the high volume of requests for Pre-Adoption Birth Certificates.

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Framed in Bigotry and Discrimination: A look at Trump’s Executive Order: Strengthening the Child Welfare System for America’s Children.

July 15, 2020

The emphasis in the Executive Order is not some abstract improvement, but the creation of a robust evangelical-coded “faith-based” equalization in child welfare. The EO promises to increase much-needed child welfare improvement not through government initiative, but through taxpayer-funded tax-exempt so-called “faith-based” partnerships with private religious child welfare organizations and corporations including churches, para-churches, and ministries. Moreover, the EO promises “faith-based “foster and adoption recruitment.” This suggests nonsensically that the lack of “faith-based partnerships” keeps children stuck in state foster care when they could be transferred to the Christian adoption market if that market were more open and availab

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Announcements, Featured

Put Yourself in History! Times Change–Except for Bastards:  Bastard Nation’s Sealed Records State-by State Timeline

April 24, 2020

Use our timeline for amusement and education.  Imagine the fun you’ll have telling your state legislators that your records were sealed before Pearl Harbor was bombed; Babe Ruth retired and Jackie Robinson broke the color line; school segregation was illegal; Social Security and the CIA existed; Watergate, Elizabeth was Queen;  Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were assassinated….and before most of those lawmakers were born.

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Legislation, News

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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Legislation, News

Action Alert: Massachusetts H1892/S1267 Fill the gap. All MA adoptees deserve their OBCs

December 3, 2019

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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Action Alert, Legislation, News

Action Alert URGENT! Prince Edward Island Bill 29. Contains veto and criminalizes contact. Vote No!

November 22, 2019

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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News

Bastard Nation Statement: Cuomo Signs Historic Adoptee Rights Bill. Leaves No One Behind!

November 15, 2019

Bastard Nation, the Adoptee Rights Organization is delighted that New York governor Andrew Cuomo today signed S3419. This historic bill restores the right, of Original Birth Certificate (OBC) access to all the state’s adoptees without restriction or condition– a right once held by all New York adoptees. It passed both Houses in June, and although we were confident that Gov. Cuomo would sign the bill, it was a long, nail-biting wait.

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