At 12:30 this afternoon the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Children and Families is scheduled to meet in Executive Session to decide the fate of SB 959. Word this morning is that prospective opening of original birth certificates )for future adoptees) will be voted out favorably. Retroactive access for the thousands of those already adopted in the state– will be tabled. That is , it will be thrown into an “active study committee” for further….well study. In other words, the bill if passed amended, will gut all purpose and intent of the original bill. Compromisers can walk away feeling good that they’ve done “something” for future generations while thousands of already adopted folks are left hung out to dry like ratty underwear. It will take years for those whose records remain sealed to even get a hearing.
A study committee is the legislative equivalent of a task force. It’s where do-gooders, do-nothings, and politicians send issues they don’t want to deal with to die forgotten and alone. If this amendment passes the committee is telling the state of Massachusetts and the rest of the country that its adoptees don’t deserve identity rights. Don’t deserve birth certificates. Massachusetts adoptees should just shut up and die off.
Tossing out the rights of the already adopted is unacceptable. If SB 959 is tossed into the study dumpster all ethical adoptee rights activists should do everything in their power to kill the bill.
Adoptees and their rights don’t need debated, analyzed or studies. They need restored. Now. Leave no one behind!
The session isn’t broadcast. When Bastardette knows what happens she’ll post it here.