Sure, I could write a new post, with new examples torn from this year’s headlines, but honestly why bother?

I’ve said it all before.

See my post from last year- “National Adoption Day:” a celebration of sealed records & inequality” instead.

Along with this mass spectacle of kids being stripped of their civil rights and equality in Arizona, (a sealed records state):

100s of children adopted in Valley event

Except of course, by the time it was all said and done, a record 343 children were scheduled to be slammed through the adoption process in Maricopa County Superior Court over the course of 5 1/2 hours.

The Great Germantown, Maryland Earthquakes of ‘10, Think of the Children! (part 1)

and

The Great Germantown, Maryland Earthquakes of ‘10, Think of the Children! (part 2)

They comprise a work of parody (tragically rooted in genuine events) and re-imagining and re-contextualization exploring natural disaster zone adoptions; genuine human needs vs. adopter demand unleashed.

Reacting swiftly to the desperate need in the Maryland burbs, other states rapidly deployed their most important disaster relief asset, adoption agencies.

Back in the real world?

There are people dealing with the real aftermath of the quake.

Trust me, adoption is about the furthest thing from most people’s minds in light of such.

In response to a post at Feministe, Adoption as a Feminist Issue, I threw in my .02 worth:

(As there was a request to limit the number of links in replies, the version of the below on Feministe contains only 3 links, this represents a vastly expanded version with citations for my readership.)

I’ve actually been blogging about adoption from a feminist/humanrights/pro-reproductive autonomy perspective for a number of years now. There’s no question in my mind how it must be considered intrinsic to the broader feminist framework.

Additionally, it must be understood from a “class” perspective both in terms of the classes of women children are (often non-consentually) taken from and those they are granted to. Bastards likewise face legal discrimination as a class, not merely as individuals.

“Class” must also be understood in relation to adoption in terms of economic class. As I said on my about page, my blog

“…has roots in exploring adoption and how it is deeply entwined with many social factors, particularly poverty. Many real life “love children” who are later adopted, are not ‘given up’ for lack of love, but for lack of resources. Many of those mislabeled “orphans” are in fact made available to the adoption process as a byproduct of grinding poverty, both domestic and global.”

Post after post I’ve written chronicle the global adoption marketplace and the human rights abuses and crimes that are an inherent aspect of such. I invite readers to explore some of my posts tags such as “Ethiopia.”

I write as a Bastard and a feminist who has longtime involvement in the struggle for reproductive autonomy.

I’ve spent years documenting those who advocate the compulsory pregnancy stance and the ways in which anti-abortion movement and the religiously based (and at times forcible) adoption movement are more often than not often one and the same. Certainly the major adoption industry umbrella lobbying organizations in the DC area are rooted in such, just as most of their individual member agencies are.

• Here’s a post I wrote back in 2009 about how the adoption industry’s co-optation of genuine reproductive privacy in relation to sealed records and the myth of adoption as a “reproductive right” were being used by the industry to falsely pit feminists against Bastards (adoptee rights advocates) and Mothers (”of origin”) as a means of protecting its own interests- Adoption as a modern Feminist institutional blindspot.
• Here is another post from just over a year ago about the adoption industry’s intentional infiltration into women’s health clinics that provide abortion services (Made all the more relevant now in relation to Dr. Carhart’s desire to position adoption counseling front and center in his Maryland clinic in the course of providing late term procedures)- Adoption in relation to Abortion provision, notes on clinics that embrace adoption marketing.

For those who care about women and our lives, adoption ultimately must be viewed as a feminist issue, as it is so deeply entwined with questions of agency and autonomy both economic and biological.

Those distinctions become all the more clear when a careful study of adoption practices by American entities abroad is undertaken: from Australia to Ireland, Russia to Vietnam, Guatemala to Ethiopia pregnant women globally have been systematically strip mined for their offspring.

(Furthermore, with the rise of repro-tech, the virtually unregulated American marketplace offers the hope of offspring to anyone with enough cash in hand. )

In addition to well, my entire blog, as my Radical (”to the Root”) Feminism is the perspective every word written here comes from, readers may also want to shortcut directly to my “Feminism” tag for some of my most explicitly Feminist posts.

In all likelihood I’ll probably not write a more detailed response to Brigid’s questions in the original post, particularly due to the fact that I’ve already done a number of posts pertaining to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and Hague Convention (both of which were subverted intentionally by the American adoption industry) and the U.N. Declaration of Indigenous Rights, here is but one of several examples.

These provide the existing legal framework for what children’s rights are already internationally recognized and what such could begin to mean, although both the Rights of the Child and the Hague Convention documents provide key loopholes that exempt and divest adoptees from rights otherwise explicitly recognized for all other classes of (at the time) children.

A Bastard-centric and Feminist demand for all our human rights, must of necessity be broader.

So, where do you go from here?

The answer deserved a post of its own, though I’ll let Mike find his own voice in his own timing and post whatever he adds as a guest blog.

I’ve come home to both an office full of the work I had been doing on many states, including Rhode Island, and a home dotted with bits and pieces of our time with BN and  the friendships that have been central to that.

Grieving some of those losses is going to take some time.

Thereafter, or more likely as I go through that process, I’m faced with a multitude of decisions not only about the nature of this work, but about how/when/or even if I decide to work with others- individuals, groups, etc. again.

I don’t expect to have that ‘all figured out’ anytime soon.

I know that my work, and my writings here have had value, both personally and to others.

Part of how we go forward, whether I particularly enjoy dwelling on some of all this or not, still involves spending some time on what just happened with Bastard Nation and Rhode Island. I’ll touch on it here and later decide to what extent I want to write about such further.

Going forward is also going to mean a careful assessment of what was lost as part of that process of our separating ourselves from BN, and the role it was playing in the broader adoptionland ecosystem.

Bastard Nation was in many ways the only domestically based (inter)national adoptee rights group that was genuinely working on these issues from a human rights perspective.

When it endorsed the Rhode Island legislation, tragically, we view it as having joined the ranks of what Marley had termed “deformer” organizations. Such was not a ‘done deal’ until the Governor signed the bill into law, but at that point it was irreparable for me, personally.

As Mike pointed out on BN’s email list, even BN in the end, (again, to our perspective,) fundamentally left the human rights framework, rendering its tagline “The adoptee rights organization” a relic of the pre-Rhode Island bill era.

This left us with no organizational ‘voice’/no existing structure left to work within.

(And no, am I not in any way shape or form inclined to attempt to begin some form of new organization from scratch. In other fields I’ve both worked with and even co-founded such once upon a not so very long ago. But the world is very different now. I’m even less inclined to attempt such anywhere near  the adoption field.)

For the moment at least, the extent to which I decide to continue to work in the realm of Bastard civil/human/identity rights will be, just as I’ve always been, as a GDI, or “god-damned-independent.”

BN was Mike and my idealogical home politically in relation to Bastard rights. It was formative to our thinking and gave political voice to much of what we already knew to be true.

To my view, BN itself organizationally (but also in through the voices and actions of a number of its members both current and former) moved away from many of the views originally expressed in the organizational core documents.

Part of the problem Mike and I faced was that we had had no reason to believe those original writings did not still hold true until we found out, well after the fact, that we were still holding them as core when others clearly did not.

In terms of various other organizations out there, both industry driven or deformers of various other stripes (or the merely completely incompetent,) none of them speak for us.

We are independent voices.

There may be some individual state organizations still attempting to hold the line, but at this point, I hesitate to personally endorse any of them, (all the more so in light of this recent example of how rhetoric can in the end mean nothing when it matters most.)

To that end, I’ve removed the links from my right hand sidebar section labeled “Activists Working for Adoptee Rights- State by State.”

Instead, I’ve added a new page tab to my header- “statement on working with other orgs/activism” and linked it in my sidebar as “BLC statement on working with other orgs/activism.”

Dealing with this aftermath in terms of my Blogroll and other links is an even more painful proposition, a set of decisions I’m not inclined to deal with in an immediate time frame.

At the moment, I’m still deciding what I want to say publicly and privately about our decisions to resign from BN.

Furthermore, I have no intention of merely providing fodder for those who already hate or reject BN and its positions and would wish to utilize anything we say as some means by which to build up their own ineffective and broken capitulating organizations steeped in Bastard-phobia. (American Adoption Congress, the National Council for Adoption, the Adoptee Rights Demonstration, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute/(Adam Pertman/Spence Chapin), the various CARE groups/or here, etc. among others.)

Mike and I were always simply, genuinely about achieving full Bastard human rights and ending the stigma, cruelties, and human rights violations that Bastards (and our families) endure under this existing adoption system.

We worked to support good legislation, and worked to fight back bad bills (and anything else) that would cause harm to class Bastard, our families, and our human rights.

The rest of this inter-organizational squabble about whose ‘approach’ or ‘language’ was ‘correct’ or who passes the most bills/who has the most states as notches in their bedpost, who was liked or disliked meant nothing to us.

None of this was about building a social group or any form of political tribalism to us, which is why in any number of circumstances across adoptionland I’ve spoken out for those left behind, regardless of the personal consequence.

We cared about effectiveness as measured against the goal of full Bastard human/civil/identity rights. That was why we were here in the first place, and it’s why I’m sitting here writing now.

So ‘where to from here?’

We do what we can to over and over again attempt to ‘go back for’ those left behind in Rhode Island and the other states like Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, etc.

As for the rest, we go the same place we’ve always gone: support unconditional Bastard rights for all, work against whatever and whomever stands between where we are now and where we need to be.

Only now, I do so without organizational or institutional voice, speaking ‘merely’ with the authentic voice of one of those directly affected when I do.

Any legislator, individual, or organization that sells us out, or stands as an obstacle to our rights is certainly “in bounds” for criticism.

As to how much Mike and I personally still have the stomach for such, well, that remains to be seen.

There were a number of reasons, but they all came down to BN’s “conditional endorsement” of the Rhode Island bill.

I cannot be a part of any organization willing to in any way shape or form to support legislation that erects new barriers for Bastards deemed  ”young.”

Rhode Island’s bill set the age of Original Birth Certificate access at 25- far above its age of consent (18.)

“Young” peoples’ human rights are not expendable.

To my reading, BN violated both its mission statement and existing policies to endorse the bill.

I personally objected to Marley, BN’s Executive Chair, throughout the process by which BN ultimately supported the bill. I did what I could to prevent BN’s support and failed.

It is now ALL our obligations to ‘go back for’ the human rights of Bastards in Rhode Island who were left behind by this legislation.

But I will be doing so separately from any of the organizations who supported this legislative abomination.

I am left feeling I did not leave Bastard Nation, so much as Bastard Nation left me, but more to the point, I feel BN left those under 25  in Rhode Island when they needed an “adoptee rights organization” most.

Missouri SB  351 and Rhode Island S 0478 SUBSTITUTE A have both been signed into law by their respective states’ Governors.

Personally, I view both as unclean bills, (others disagree with me about Rhode Island, viewing the age restriction as not “leaving anyone behind,” but this is my blog, my perspective, and I am gravely concerned about many aspects of what happened with this bill. (I’ll likely write more about this in the future.)

Rhode Island passed with an arbitrarily arrived at age restriction of 25, (down from an originally proposed 40!)  meaning for now at least, from here forward, Rhode Island Bastards will only gain access to their Original Birth Certifcates upon reaching age 25.

This represents carving out a whole new class of those Bastardized by the state, those above the age of majority, yet still not deemed ‘worthy’ or ‘responsible enough’ to handle the facts of their own birth. It creates a whole new form of quasi-adulthood for Bastards to contend with.

Ironic, in that one can enlist in the military and be considered ‘responsible enough’ to make decisions concerning one’s own potential death, yet ‘not ready yet’ to deal with seeing one’s own authentic birth certificate.

The bill continues the long tradition of the state treating Bastards as ‘irresponsible children’ well into adulthood.

As for the Missouri bill, speaking as a former Missouri resident myself, I worked against this bill, and kept the Bastard Nation testimony against the bill as an “action alert” in my sidebar.

It cannot in any way shape or form be considered an authentic adoptee rights bill.

Thus Governor Christie, in attempting to sew together bits and pieces from both bad bills offers up a Frankenstein’s monster of his own construction. In the Governor’s offered “substitute” he displays clearly just how deeply he fails to understand the core premises of Bastard equality, genuine protections for women’s authentic medical privacy, and respect for us and our families.

Read his substitute for yourself, and then compare it to everything I’ve written over the past several years about what a genuine adoptee rights bill for New Jersey would and would not entail.

His Substitute fails by every measure.

Moreover, it would create a legislative mess practically guaranteed to please no one, leading all factions right back to the drawing board and forcing them to begin this legislative epic all over again beginning next session. Far from “dealing with the issue” or “putting it to rest” the Governor’s substitute opens the road to nothing but further legislative struggle and potential lawsuits.

Those so set on “doing SOMETHING” (ANYTHING, it seems) rather than the right thing, merely open yet a next chapter in the battle for authentic adoptee rights, and sentence countless Bastards and our families to yet more years of unjust treatment.

There is nothing complicated or convoluted about authentic adoptee rights. I’ll spell it out in the simplest of terms yet again:

• Bastards and our families used to enjoy enqual status under law to non-adopted New Jersey natives.
• The state and various private interests then did us a terrible wrong by constructing a system of unequal treatment specifically set aside for class Bastard, the original documentation pertaining to our births (i.e our original birth certificates/ OBCs) and our families.
• Now decades later, as states begin to readdress that injustice done to us, the only genuine goal behind adoptee rights legislation must be to restore what we once enjoyed, full equality to any other person born in that state, in this case, New Jersey.

Anything less is not justice.

Anything less simply perpetuates the systems of discrimination we have suffered under for decades now.

Furthermore,  any new efforts to, for example compel our mothers to divulge their otherwise legally protected private medical histories to the state in an ongoing effort to maintain dossiers on them, is merely further abuses heaped upon our familes under the false pretext of granting adopted people something no other person is entitled to.

What authentic adoptee rights advocates demand is extremely simple: we want the same rights and protections for ourselves and our families that any other person born in a state is granted. No special treatment, no special files, no mandated confidential intermediary systems run through adoption agencies, etc.

We expect nothing less than the same constitutionally protected right to freedom of association, and access to the authentic documentation pertaining to our births that the non-adopted currently enjoy.

In other words, we want what Governor Christie, for example already has.

Anything less simply perpetuates the structures of injustice and interference in our families personal lives that adoptees currently endure.

Anyone willing to settle for merely adding another chapter to these injustices, is clearly no friend to Bastards, our families, our our human rights.

The Governor’s “substitute” adds insult to injury, nothing more.

Letters should be short, around 200 words. Hard copies are preferable.

Mourning Dress and Hat – 1870s

(Owned by Obscura Antiques & Oddities of New York City)

via 19th Century Post

I shouldn’t have to blog this, I’ve written it all before, over and over again. Today’s events are everything I’ve continually warned of year in and year out.

NJ-CARE’s short sighted, self absorbed damaging and contorted (lack of) access bill, A1406/1399/S799 passed in the General Assembly this afternoon, thus moving one step closer to sealing records for all NJ kids passing through the so called “safe haven” program once and for all.

The bill now passes on to the Governor’s Desk, where if there is any justice left in this world for Bastards and Abandoned Children it should be promptly vetoed.

Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath.

Baby dump proponents were not strong enough to pass a mandatory sealed records clause as the “Safe haven” legislation passed in New Jersey years ago, but as we saw today, they’ve found themselves a set of dupes,  and/or willing accomplices in NJ-CARE,  Adam Pertman and the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Jean Strauss and others, each of whom at this point have been more than willing to do their wretched dirty work for them.

I’ve written for years now about the unfolding catastrophe in New Jersey.

Today is but the latest chapter in the ongoing co-optation from without and gutting from what is often mistaken for “within” the movement(s) for the full restoration of adopted people’s full human rights.

I say mistaken for “within” the movement as people like Jean Strauss have plainly admitted that for her, this is not grounded in any notion of rights based work or a restoration of rights, nor to her, is it work pertaining to working to eradicate a deep injustice perpetrated on adopted people and our families (quoting from my partner Mike’s blog):

…Strauss, in the course of organizing that doomed effort, has explicitly denied that open birth certificates are a civil right of adoptees. Regarding the advocacy of her organization in California, she wrote “… this is not an effort to ‘right a wrong’ or ‘a fight for our Constitutional rights.’

Clearly, by her own admission, people like Strauss are not part of the rights based movement.

Organizations such as NJ-CARE who not only bring her in relying upon her (non-rights based) “expertise” (advocating a ’sell some out’ approach) and going so far as to adopt the same model as Strauss’ failed California “CARE” effort, likewise certainly leave themselves open to the question of whether or not they are genuinely part of the human rights based adoptee rights movement either.

NJ-CARE and individuals closely associated with it, have long signaled their willingness to trade away the human rights of adopted people standing next to them, and the access to original birth certificates for the entire class of (mostly yet even unconceived) legally abandoned children (some of whom will in turn, be reprocessed into adoptees.) Their support for and work on behalf of the fatally flawed and corrupted A1406/1399/S799 bore that out. Saying in effect, ‘we want (the possibility of maybe) getting ours, we don’t care who we trade away or trample over in the course of attempting to get that.’

It’s both shameful, and pathetic.

But more to the point, such negates any possibility of being rooted in human or civil rights, as human and civil rights are based in class based solutions. (Not “class” in terms of economic, but “class” in terms of a delineated set of people.)

One cannot “gain” human rights at the direct expense of the person also in your class standing next to you.

Or as I’ve said before ‘adoptee rights cannot be “won” at the direct expense of abandoned children (many of whom will go on to become adoptees themselves.)’

I’ve stated so often rights based solutions must apply to all, otherwise the injustice is merely sustained as the systems of power and control have not yet been dismantled.

The New Jersey bill not only fundamentally maintains the systems of discrimination, it builds new hoops for adoptees and their families to jump through, new bureaucracies, and hands the industry gifts on a silver platter, all at the expense of the human rights of other New Jersey children and eventual adults.

This is no victory, this is unconscionable.

NJ-CARE and its allies lost the ability to speak on behalf of Class Bastard and Class Bastard’s interests the moment it cleaved off other portions of Class Bastard and determined them expendable.

As to who is left speaking on behalf of those fucked over and left behind, the answer is simple enough, those firmly rooted in the human rights based demand for equality for all.

We speak on behalf of those no one else cares about, in part because some of what may come to be their circumstances were once ours.

Let me be perfectly blunt:

You can’t claim to genuinely be for adoptee rights if your strategy involves leaving subsets of adoptees behind.

That’s why I have written so often and so clearly over and over again about how the genuine adoptee rights work is rooted in leaving no one behind. (As but one of many examples, see my post, Bastard Access- either we all go together or we don’t go at all- “Nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”)

Let’s be clear,  those  willing to sell out Class Bastard in their personal rush to (possibly) gain access to their own, (provided of course, they don’t find themselves on the receiving end of a contact veto, now repackaged as a “contact preference”- precisely the form of  “contact preference form” creep that again, I’ve warned about for years now) are not part of the genuine adoptee rights movement.

Their willingness to over and over again, attempt to ‘justify’ their hope that (some) records might be restored to their rightful owners by turning to tactics such as the insistence that ‘need for medical history’ as the basis of their call for legislative ….something, (rather than standing firm on the simple demand that equality alone is enough, that all of us must regain that right we once held) has in fact worsened the preexisting quagmire NJ’s adoptees ALREADY find themselves trapped within.

NJ-CARE and its allies through their support of this bill have worked to construct a new system that will compel mothers to turn their otherwise  legally protected personal medical histories over to the state.

As a longtime abortion and women’s reproductive health advocate myself, who understands that many of the modern origins of consent and consent forms as well as personal privacy and freedom from unwarrented governmental intrusion (rooted in Eisenstadt v. Baird, not Roe and Doe) I’m appalled at NJ-CARE’s support for yet FURTHER government intrusion into women’s genuine medical privacy rights.

But obviously, I have many areas of grave concern with the bill.

The substitute bill version that was approved today contains precisely some of the windfalls to industry at the expense of our rights that I warned about, such as a new liability shield, ensuring we will not be able to seek redress in court, even in cases wherein “inaccuracies” are proffered as reality, (such as in the NJ Catholic Charities fraud I blogged here):

7.    (New section)  a. A person, firm, partnership, corporation, association or agency that has placed a child for adoption shall not be liable in any civil or criminal action for damages resulting from information provided by the State Registrar pursuant to this act.

b.    An employee, agent or officer of the Department of Health and Senior Services who is authorized by the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services to disclose information relating to the certification of birth pursuant to this act, shall not be liable for:

(1) disclosing information based on a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act; and

(2) any error or inaccuracy in the information that is disclosed after receipt of a written, notarized request submitted in accordance with this act, and any consequence of that error or inaccuracy.

It’s a gift to the adoption industry. It strips us and our family members of our right to sue.

This bill is not about increasing our rights, it’s about decreasing our rights.

It is not about opening records, so much as it is about sealing records, both through vetoes and for the dumped kids.

I could go on and on, pulling sections of the bill and pointing out over and over again the damage they stand to do to our rights, to our Mothers’ rights, to the rights of children passing through the baby dump program. (Fortunately Bastard Nation has already catalogued many of the bill’s horrors.)

But as I said in New York at the Evan B. Donaldson cheerleading pep rally for the bill (at which Mr. Pertman, the EBD head openly lied about the institute’s support for the bill)

“Have you read the bill?”

It’s all there in black and white.

Those proponents I’ve spoken to about the bill are past the point of listening.

It’s become tribal, an article of “faith” that this bill is a good thing, and any of us who dare stand against it we are being re-categorized as the ENEMY of adoptee rights.

Not surprising, considering it’s precisely what Strauss and her CARE group did in California.

(Never mind the fact that groups with CARE in their name in the adoption realm have yet to ever pass any of their deformer bills and are synonymous with sellling adoptees out and making messes wherever they go, while those they’re busily attacking, like Bastard Nation DO have a track record, and an extensive one at that, of actually getting clean bills passed that genuinely restore access to all.)

I know speaking only for myself personally, I stand on the side of all adopted people receiving equitable treatment under law and deserve to have our records restored to us for no other reason than this is a matter of our basic human rights.

No child should be intentionally stripped of their identity by the state. Certainly not merely for passing through New Jersey’s legalized child abandonment child laundering system, and all the more so those who were never at any risk, who were born in hospitals to identified Mothers only to have that information stripped from them after the fact.

No adoptee should be left behind by a “contact preference” creeped contact veto. No Mother should be forced by the state to hand over her personal and legally protected private medical history year in and year out so that yet another state bureaucracy can be constructed rather than simply restoring class Bastard’s basic equality.

Yet this is the very damage ACS 1406 stands poised to unleash.

Our genuine “birthright” is that of equal treatment under law.

This legislation fails that most basic test.

For those who care about the real rights of Bastards and those legally abandoned in New Jersey, all I can say is the clock’s ticking. If this damnedable bill gets signed into law, it’s those with the least voice, the least political power, and precious few advocates indeed who will be forced to pay the price.

Not that NJ-CARE cares.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Missouri HB 351: Bastard Nation Submitted Testimony – OPPOSE

Tuesday, the Missouri Senate Health, Mental Health, Seniors, and Families Committee held a hearing on it’s greatly flawed SB 351. (text, status/history) Bastard Nation, through our long-time member Carla McBrine as able to submit our opposition testimony in person. Unfortunately, the committee voted the bill out of committee (I haven’t been able to find the roll call vote) and the bill is headed for the Senate. At this time, we don’t know if it will be scheduled for a vote. The session ends May 13.

TESTIMONY

SB 351:

access to identifying information for adoptions original birth certificate

Missouri Senate Health, Mental Health, Seniors and Families Committee

March 29, 2011

OPPOSE

Privilege is the opposite of rights

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons, SB 351.

Under current Missouri law, the original birth certificates of all Missouri adoptees are sealed and cannot be released to the adoptee except by court order and only with the consent of both the biological and adoptive parents. This 4-signature consent represents the most restrictive OBC access law in the United States. For as long as we can remember, Missouri adoption reform advocates have been attempting to free the state’s adoptees from these onerous restrictions.

Unfortunately, SB 351 is not the bill to overturn the current law. SB 351makes superficial changes to the OBC access structure, removing adoptive parent sign-offs, while maintaining retrospectively and prospectively the other restrictions which keep Missouri adoptee birth records and identity a state secret.

SB 351 is misleading and inimical to the rights of all Missouri adoptees. The measure is promoted as an “adoptee rights” and OBC “access bill.” It is not. SB 351 reinforces out-dated adoption secrecy through the disclosure affidavit for “birthparents” The bill even authorizes a natural parent to not only order the state to withhold the OBC from the adoptee, but to override the wishes of the other parent that it be released! SB 351 does not restore the right to the OBC once enjoyed by all Missouri adoptees. Instead, it makes adoptee access to their own birth certificates a state/”birth family” conditioned privilege separate and unequal from the right enjoyed by Missouri’s not adopted.

Sooner or later Missouri and every other state that has not opened OBCs unconditionally to adoptees are going to be forced to. The issue isn’t going away. This is not a matter of if, but when.

Adopted adults, especially since 9/11, are increasingly denied passports, drivers licenses, pensions, Social Security benefits, professional certifications, and security clearances due to discrepancies on their amended birth certificates, and their inability to produce an original birth certificate to answer the problems.

Adoptees without a genuine original birth record could soon be barred from running for public office.‭ ‬At least‭ ‬10‭ ‬states, including Missouri (HB 283; sp Lyle Rowland, Mike Kelly) have introduced legislation requiring presidential and vice-presidential candidates to present their original birth certificates to appropriate authorities to prove citizenship eligibility for office.‭ ‬Some of these bills go farther,‭ ‬mandating anyone running for office to prove citizenship through an original birth certificate.‭ ‬It is no stretch to think that someday soon adoptees could be barred from voting due to lack of‭ “‬legal‭” ‬identity over problematic amended birth certificates,‭ ‬and the perpetual sealing of the originals.‭

Kansas and Alaska have never sealed original birth certificates. Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: Oregon through ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. No statistics are available for Kansas and Alaska, but approximately 17,000 OBCs in the latter four states have been released with no reported ill consequences.

Rights are for all citizens, not favors doled out to some Missouri does not segregate rights by religion, ethnicity, age, or gender. It should not segregate rights by birth, adoptive status, or third party preference.
Vote DO NOT PASS on SB 351. All of Missouri adoptees must enjoy equal protection, due process, and dignity. Missouri adoptees deserve better than SB 351!

Submitted by Marley Greiner
Executive Chair
Bastard Nation: the adoptee rights organization
March 27, 2011

Bastard Nation is dedicated to the recognition of the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. Toward that end, we advocate the opening to adoptees, upon request at age of majority, of those government documents which pertain to the adoptee’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. Bastard Nation asserts that it is the right of people everywhere to have their official original birth records unaltered and free from falsification, and that the adoptive status of any person should not prohibit him or her from choosing to exercise that right. We have reclaimed the badge of bastardy placed on us by those who would attempt to shame us; we see nothing shameful in having been born out of wedlock or in being adopted. Bastard Nation does not support mandated mutual consent registries or intermediary systems in place of unconditional open records, nor any other system that is less than access on demand to the adult adoptee, without condition, and without qualification.