Recently, the South Carolina House Committee Medical, Military, and Public Affairs voted Do Pass on the amended HB 3775.
The original clean bill which, if passed. would have restored the right of all South Carolina adoptees to access their own original birth certificates. It was replaced with amendments that gut the right of ALL South Carolina adoptees– current and future–from full access without restrictions or conditions.
The amended bill:
- Makes access prospective only. That is, only those adopted after the effective date of the bill would be eligible to receive their OBCs at the age of 21– sometime in 2040.
- But, those adoptees cannot receive their OBC without explicit written biological parent(s) consent
In other words, those adopted before the effective date remain in their black hole. Those adopted after that date can be shoved into that black hole with them if a birthparent refuses to grant permission to the adoptee to access their own OBC.
The original bill is here
The amended H3775 is here.
Now, you would think that even the most die-hard deformer would find these amendments unacceptable if not reprehensible–especially being added to a perfectly clean bill with no restrictions. You know, the kind of bill they claim to want. (Even those deformers who give in eventually, at least hold on for a while and don’t wave the white hanky at the first sign of trouble). H3775 doesn’t even meet Get-What You-Can-Get Now baby steps standards.
Which side are you on?
But wait!…Meet Rich Urlaub…If you haven’t yet, you’ll find a brief introduction to him in my Victory in New York: Cuomo vetos dirty bill; Deformers complain. Urlaub, who bills himself as an adoptee activist, argues there that we already have “rights,” but that they are just misinterpreted or need to be tweaked… or something, H3775, as you will see in a few minutes, is fine with him.
I first heard this no-such-thing- as-adoptee-rights hog swill two years ago at the Denver AAC, when Uhrlaub theorized that the Colorado bill that he worked on that opened records and files in that state, was accomplished without a single mention of “rights.” Legislators, you see, are scared away with terms like “rights” especially when prefixed with “adoptee” so they need to hear softer less “divisive” language.Perhaps beggary will do. Perhaps scabbery.
Two years later, Urlaub has turned his theory into practice with a topsy-turvy dog and pony act demeaning the adoptee rights movement which, he has dubbed All or Nothing Now. (AONN). Apparently, for him, there is such a thing as ” half-measure “rights.” (Sojourner Truth take note!) where it is OK for some adoptees to enjoy their rights in full, and for others not to. According to him, an agenda of unrestricted, unconditional adoptee rights while preferable is also neffective. alienating, and dangerous. He’s even stooped to the old “Adoptees are dyin'” routine to try to convince inexperienced or burnt out individuals and groups to reject a political rights, agenda in favor of a personalized wish list that depoliticizes Class Bastard and adoption and seeks individual solutions for collective justice. Sorry, Rich! An injury to one is an injury to all. Equality under law is not an insult.
Full access is a bridge too far
A few months ago Urlaub outed himself in Florida where he supported two restrictive bills. At around the same time, he lamented New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s veto of the dirty A5036N/S4845B and the establishment of a group to study access issues and make recommendations for action. Oddly, Uhrlaub initially supported the veto by endorsing the joint letter sent by a group of over 40 adoptee rights/reform, birth and adoptive parent organizations and hundreds of individuals,
Uhrlaub, writing about New York on his personal Facebook page (but not on any of the “activist pages” he runs) called himself an “observer.” He admitted that he did not participate in the New York oppositional campaign except to sign the joint letter in the name of his organization, Adoptees in Search: Colorado’s Adoption Connection. Yet, he felt compelled, after the fact, to criticize our campaign and specifically certain high-profile members of it, implying that promoting the “right” of adoptees to unrestricted record and file access endangers the adoptee rights movement and generations of future adoptees.
Recently, Urlaub criticized the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (Quad A), a longtime opponent of adoptee rights, for stepping back and endorsing our right to records. Not only did Quad A endorse OBC access, but also the release of court and adoption agency records to the adoptees to whom they pertain. Urlaub, losing any shred of creds he possibly had left, complained on his blog that Quad A may have gone “a bridge too far. ” He implied that the movement could be endangered by Quad A’s tectonic change, in the same manner of course, that those of us who promote adoptee rights, endanger adoptee rights.
In a discussion on Quad A posted on Greg Luce’s Adoptee Rights Law Center FB page, Urlaub, who has shown a disturbing hostility to women in the movement attacked Texas activist Shawna Hodgston founder of Adoption Support Advocates in Houston, Texas.(My computer still refuses to make screenshots-only cut-and paste.
Jean Uhrich Richard Uhrlaub, I am laughing so hard. I have heard report of you mansplaining across the internet, of your dirty language against women, but THIS (above) on International Women’s Day is the height of misogyny in Adoptee Land. Wow Rich! As you can imagine, I’m sending to all senators and reps that go near you in multiple states. I’m starting with your latest failure in Florida. Let your reputation proceed you. Indeed. Next time, try to learn the difference between your gnashing of teeth in closed Facebook groups vs when you are out in the light of day – called PUBLIC.
In this same thread Uhrlaub referred to women in the movement, presumably Bastard National women in leadership, as “harpies:”
AONN approach “extremely ineffective”
This brings us back to South Carolina. and H3775. After the bill was amended, Greg Luce, posted some comments about the change in his FB page. Below is the dust-up between Urlaub and Luce. Urlaub, of course, declares that we AONNs are doing it all wrong in South Carolina and says it’s our fault it was amended. (Note, that this bill, it is a legislator’s bill, not brought by any adoptee rights, reform group. We had nothing to do with it except to support the clean version and oppose the dirty,
Richarad Uhrlaub Or here’s a novel idea: Given that the bill sponsor is a 77 year old adoptee in the minority party of a heavily conservative state who has, astoundingly, managed to single-handedly get a bill introduced, make influential friends across the aisle, and get the bill passed through two committees onto the House floor for a vote (only to have it hijacked at the last minute by a lawyers’ lobby) — what if, instead of calling for its death, you put out a call to raise funds for a lobbyist to help turn things around in the Senate and help the woman accomplish the goal instead of insulting her work and motives?
Adoptee Rights Law I’m not sorry I may have insulted your own apparent involvement in South Carolina, Richard Uhrlaub, to get whatever you can today, leading to a bill that will negatively affect adoptees in South Carolina for generations. This is certainly the lesson of what people like you reap when you pursue whatever you can now at the ultimate cost of equality never. And, as usual, you call on others to clean up a mess that you helped create, when you know full well it is way too late to do anything except kill the bill. Nice work. Please get out of adoptee rights advocacy. You make matters worse.
The term “misandry” is like “reverse racism.” Folks haul it out when they are anticipating that they are about to get an education they don’t want (but desperately need) and to be exposed for who they truly are.