Bastard Nation Letter to NJ Legislature: Vote No on A1406/S799

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, upon request, of their own true, unaltered original birth certificates (OBC). We oppose A1406/S799: the Adoptees’ Birthright Bill.

A1406/S799 permits some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through the compromise language of the birthparent disclosure veto, will receive only a false and mutilated government document with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services by order of the birthparent(s).

Bastard Nation rejects this special veto right of “birthparents” to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Why should “birthparents,” whose parental rights were terminated decades ago, have different rights and rules?

A1406/S799 is promoted as an “adoptees’ birthright” and OBC “access bill.” Unfortunately, it is neither. The bill reinforces out-dated adoption secrecy through the disclosure veto. It also seals by default, the OBCs of babies surrendered under the state’s “safe haven” program (apparently whether they are adopted later or not) even though a good number of these children are born to identified parents. What name and “official” state identity papers those never adopted will have is not addressed in the bill.

A1406/S799 requires “birthparents,” under specific circumstances, to submit a medical and health history to the state, a requirement that may be illegal under HIPAA and other privacy laws. No one has a right to anyone’s medical history. Medical histories have nothing to do with birth certificates and have no connection to the right of all adopted persons to their own OBC.

Finally, A1406/S799 includes a fiscal bill of $90,000 to advertise the law if it is passed. At a time when Governor Christie is proposing massive cuts in education and social welfare programs and instituting wage caps, this advertising campaign is an unconscionable waste of taxpayer money.

For nearly three decades we have heard the claim that biological parents have been promised anonymity from their own offspring who were placed for adoption, yet not one document has ever been presented in New Jersey or any other state to show that so-called promise.
In fact, courts have found that “birthparents do not have any legal expectation of anonymity.” (Doe v Sundquist, 943 F. Supp. 886, 893-94 (M.D. Tenn. 1996)) (06 F.3d 703, 705 (6th Cir. 1997)) (Does v Oregon, Summary Judgment Oregon State Court of Appeals) (Does v. State of Oregon, 164 Or.App. 543, 993 P.2d 833, 834 (1999)). Moreover, OBCs are sealed at the time of adoption finalization not surrender, and the birth certificate of any child not adopted is left unsealed and available to him or her. If an adoption is disrupted, the birth certificate is unsealed.