- No Recommendations yet - go add some!
- I'm concerned about Celeste Headlee's comment that "there's still a lot of moms left who don't want that information out there".
Restoring the right of adult adoptees to their OWN original birth certificates does not put any information "out there" for the general public. Only the adoptee (and the descendants of deceased adoptees) should have the right to obtain those records, just like any other citizen.
Many adoptees (including myself) are in contact with their birth families but are still denied access. Why is that?
There are some women out there who do not want contact from the son or daughter they relinquished. They have the right to make their wishes known. It's called a "No Contact" form.
The vast majority of first mothers never wanted to be anonymous from their long lost children, but many will not search because THEY signed a document promising never to interfere with their child's new family. Some have gone their graves never knowing what became of their child. Others are hesitant, fearing that their child may be angry about having been "given away" or fearing that their child did not have the promised "better life".
When the status quo harms many more people than it helps - isn't it time to change it?
- Depending on who you talk to, the criteria for being a citizen by birth is different. While all people advocating a repeal of the birthright portion of the 14th amendment would deny automatic citizenship to the children of those illegally present in the US, and most would deny it to "birth tourism" parents - what about everyone else?
Does at least one parent need to be a citizen? What about the children of those with permanent residency? Student visas? Work visas?
Since the path to citizenship takes several years, what is to be the status of all those non-citizens who are born in the US while their parents' naturalization is pending? They do not become citizens along with their parents unless they are named on the application.
And while you're at it - what about adoptees who are finding out NOW that their paperwork was never properly completed and they are at risk of deportation?
Please think these things through. The devil is in the details.
- @Erich
You're most welcome.
As you can tell, adoptee rights advocates have been working on this issue for decades and have gathered (and shared) much in the way of historical records (legislative notes, policy statements, newspaper clippings), current policies and recent statistics.
All I keep hearing from the "other side" (the adoption agencies and their lobbyists) are the same myths that we have disproved over and over again with cold hard facts and historical research.
I don't know why they oppose us. Some people have alleged that the agencies (particularly Catholic Charities) have a lot to hide and don't want the adoptee and the birth parents comparing stories.
1 - Mother was told the baby was stillborn or died in infancy.
2 - Adoptive parents were told the child was 100% white or Irish or Jewish or whatever their preference was.
3 - Adoptive parents were told other lies about the birth parents (ages, drug use, other circumstances).
4 - Birth parents were told that their child would be raised by a family of the same religion, or raised by a professional dad (doctor, lawyer, whatever) and a stay at home mom, or raised by wealthy people.
5 - Certain men (Catholic priests, in particular) are afraid that the adoptee will be able to discover the birth FATHER's name by contacting the mother.
6 - Some adoptive parents (the paying customers) are still unhappy about the prospect of adoptees connecting with their families of origin.
- @Erich -
Response to Question 2. - continued
Revising the registry system will not solve the following issues:
1. Dead people don’t register.
2. Some mothers were told their babies were stillborn or died in infancy. They will not register.
3. WHO can register? Adoptee and birth parent, certainly. What about the birth father if he is not on the birth certificate? What about siblings? What about aunts, uncles, grandparents, adult children or the spouse of a deceased adoptee?
4. How is the matching to be done? Since dates and places of birth may be changed or unknown, whoever is running this registry is going to need access to sealed adoption records to match “a” to “b”.
5. What if the adoptee wants to know the accurate details of his or her birth but has no desire to contact his/her birth family, at all or without knowing a bit more about them? They can’t register without saying they are open to contact.
6. Who is going to PAY for this national registry and who is going to run it? How will this be different than ISRR?
“Or is the medical history, ethnic past and a possible path to reunion not really the point here?”
Each adoptee has his or her own reasons for searching or not searching. My reasons may or may not be the same as most or any of my friends and they don’t have to be. You don’t need a reason to get your birth certificate, so why do you insist that adoptees need to provide you with a reason in order to get ours.
“Is it really just a need to know the name of the person who did the abandoning?...”
Not all adoptees feel they were abandoned. Some do, some don’t. It’s really irrelevant to the issue of access. Like I said – you’ve got yours, we want ours. Period. When you can’t get yours for some reason, we can talk about WHY you feel you need it.
- @Erich -
“Question 2.
What is it about this piece of paper?”
It records the actual details of my birth. You have yours, I want mine. Since you don’t have to supply a reason to Vital Records to get yours, I don’t feel obligated to give you a reason why I want mine. Maybe I want to line my cat’s litter box with it.
“The birth certificate an adoptee gets has all the same legal rights and privileges as any other birth certificate. I've yet to meet an adoptee (immigrant or domestic) who was unable to get a passport or any other documents or felt discriminated in a real legal sense because of their amended birth certificate…”
How many adoptees do you actually know? I have over 200 friends on FaceBook (many of whom I’ve met in person) who DO feel discriminated against. Some of them have been denied passports. Some of them have amended birth certificates that look so phony, or have missing information (name of hospital usually) that the adoptee has been told “go home and bring me a REAL birth certificate”. Real people, real stories.
One of these friends has been stuck in Mexico for weeks because US Passport Services will not issue her a replacement passport. Why? Because she’s an adoptee and her Michigan amended birth certificate isn’t good enough. Now there are worse places to be stuck than Cabo, but you get the picture.
Post 9-11 passport rules state that ANY birth certificate filed more than one year after the date of birth is INVALID for passport application purposes. That includes MOST amended birth certificates, including mine. I’m lucky that I got my passport in 1996. I would have a hard time getting one now.
“If the system were reformed so that every adopted child in America was provided with (1) a FULL medical history and (2) a THOROUGH breakdown of their ethnic past and (3) we revised the entire registry forum as a federally mandated/regulated state run system would that be ok? Could we all get along and play nice nice then?”
Medical histories taken at the time of relinquishment (1953 in my case) are useless. I was told that my great grandfather died of TB in the 1920s and that “everybody else was healthy”. Is that the kind of FULL medical history you envision? What is an adoptee (and the adoptee's children) supposed to do with an outdated, minimal medical history?
Thorough breakdown of ethnic past? My husband has a family tree going back to 1700s Virginia. How “thorough” is thorough enough? What do you plan to do with those cases where the “ethnic information” recorded is limited to “Mother: 23, Catholic”?
Proposing changes going forward is really sweet – but what about the six million of us who are already here? What about our family members who are trying to find us? Don’t we count?
- @Erich -
"Question 1.
How do you propose to protect the parents who wish not to be known... Regardless of how SMALL the percentage of these people is."
They are not "protected" now. Many adoptees KNOW the full or partial names of their parents. Others can piece together enough information from non-ID even without a name.
How would YOU protect those who do not want to be found? Would you make it illegal for adoptees to use Ancestry.com or any one of the “people search” engines out there? Would you make it illegal for adoptees to use certain sections of public libraries?
"This question is not about the adoptee, it is about the other half of the equation."
The “other half of the equation” is NOT the birth parents, who are overwhelmingly in support of adoptees having access to records. The “other half of the equation” consists of some, not all, adoption agencies who are rewriting legislative intent by claiming that “birth parent privacy” was the original reason for sealed records when historical documents show conclusively that records were sealed to protect the ADOPTIVE family.
Ask yourself these questions: Why else would the records seal upon ADOPTION, not upon relinquishment? Why do records seal in STEPPARENT adoptions? Why do some states allow the ADOPTIVE parents to choose whether the file is sealed or not?
"How can we, as a society, be better then the past and make things right for adoptees who long for an identity while protecting the rights of the few who also deserve that degree of respect as well."
By following the lead of the six states with unrestricted access and allowing those parents who do NOT wish to be contacted to have their wishes known. Sealed records do not prevent adoptees from finding their parents nor prevent those parents from finding their relinquished sons and daughters. In most states there is currently no way for a parent to make his or her wishes known. Where should government draw the line if MOST people are helped but a FEW might be inconvenienced?
Let’s be realistic here. Nothing is absolute. Trying to "protect" parents-in-hiding down to the last man or woman is a futile endeavor. And what exactly do you think these few people need to be protected from anyway? We’re not talking assault, kidnapping, rape and murder here. We’re talking about, what, embarrassment?
Of course, you’ve said NOTHING about those adoptees who have DIED from lack of an up-to-date family medical history. I even know of a case where a member of the biological family died from something the ADOPTEE had. But since the adoptee was not allowed to know who gave birth to them, that information was not passed on.
- Reading through all the comments about the Aug 2 broadcast, I was struck by how much contemporaneous information is available about the REAL reason records were sealed back in the 1930s and 1940s. It was to protect the ADOPTIVE family, not the biological family. I really wish people would stop perpetuating the myth that it was all about protecting the birth parents. It was not. Please read the legislative history.
At the time these laws were passed, all birth records were public record. Anyone could see a copy of anyone else's birth certificate. Adoptees' birth records were originally sealed from the general public's prying eyes, not from the parties to the adoption.
To give you a flavor of how the powers-that-be rewrite history to change the reasons for the original law, I give you this story from New York:
Peter Carucci, Director of the New York State Adoption Information Registry has told more than one adoptee that the reason they can't get a copy of their original birth certificates, even with permission of ALL their parents, is because the adoptee would then be able to commit identity fraud by having two birth certificates. Does anyone really BELIEVE that?
New York's sealed records law dates from 1935 when Governor Lehman adopted two children from Georgia Tann (aka The Baby Thief). There's your reason for sealed records.
- @Erich from Brooklyn
I see that you have some concerns about the tiny percentage of birth parents who do not wish to be contacted.
What about the vast majority that DO want to be contacted but are waiting for their relinquished son or daughter to contact THEM? Don't they have rights?
What about the ones who reluctantly agreed to relinquishment BECAUSE they were PROMISED that their child would receive their contact information upon turning 18. Should we tell them it was all a lie told just to get them to sign away their rights?
What about the mothers who were told their child was stillborn or died in infancy when he or she was actually adopted? What about their rights to know what REALLY happened to their child?
What about adoptees searching for siblings who had also been adopted? In some cases, sibling groups were split up and adopted separately. When do THEY get to find each other again?
Do you still want to support a system that prevents the vast majority of people (adoptees, parents, siblings) from connecting with each other while professing to "protect" some tiny minority who might be put in an uncomfortable position?
Oh, and that "open records = more abortions" argument? Even the NCFA has backed off their "abortion rates will skyrocket" pronouncement in favor of "if only one". They choose to ignore the Guttmacher Institute report (Concern for Current and Future Children) which says that at least some women having abortions "indicated that adoption is not a realistic option for them. They reported that the thought of one’s child being out in the world without knowing if it was being taken care of or by whom would induce more guilt than having an abortion."
So there you have it --- sealed records cause abortions.
- The paired bills in NY State (A8410 and S5269) have overwhelming support in both houses of the NY State Legislature.
In the NYS Assembly, 72 assemblymembers (out of 150) are SPONSORS of A8410, yet, for the past two sessions, it has not been allowed out of committee for an honest up or down vote on the floor.
S5269 has 15 senators (out of 62) as sponsors. Same story there.
It not for lack of support that the NY bills do not progress. It is because NY's legislature is mired in an antiquated system that allows leadership (an oxymoron) to control what bills get voted on and what bills pass. This is not democracy.
Unfortunately, adoptees do not have a choice. Adoptees who have moved out of their state of birth no longer have any representation in the state legislature that decides whether or not they have the right to their own birth certificates. Any other person with any other issue, you have the option of moving to a state (or country) with more favorable laws or a more progressive legislature. But not if you're an adoptee.
- A curious thing happens when adoptees ask for rights to original birth certificates to be restored.
We are asked WHY we need it. No other person is asked WHY they want their birth certificate. All they need is the application, the fee and some proof of identity.
If we say we want to know who we are - it is a foreign concept for those who HAVE their original documents and they want to know the REAL reason.
If we say we want family medical history - we are told we can have it, even if it is decades out of date and useless.
If we say we want the chance to meet biological relatives - we are warned that we will ruin their lives and they must be protected from us.
I found my mother last year. My father's name (which I have) is not on my original birth certificate. My mother would be happy to get if for me, but she isn't entitled to it either. There is nothing on my original birth certificate that I do not already know, with the possible exception of the name of the doctor who delivered me. Why can't I have my birth certificate?
With respect to the separate-and-not-equal concept of non-identifying information:
The birth parents I've met are very concerned about the state giving out non-identifying information as it is oftentimes inaccurate, biased, and contains intimate details of that parent's life. These parents are concerned that they have no say and no control over non-identifying information. They would, however, welcome the chance to speak to their son or daughter personally and tell them the story in their own words, not the words of a social worker from another era.
If you are a parent who relinquished a child, would you rather be contacted by a third party or by your own flesh and blood? Would you rather tell your story to your son or daughter in your own words, or would you like somebody else to do it from a dusty file?
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