Tag Archives: Missouri SB 351

Distribute Freely BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT! STOP RESTRICTIVE MISSOURI SB351 ASK GOV. NIXON TO VETO Read full text of SB 351 here. Please contact Missouri Governor Jay Nixon immediately and urge him to veto SB 351. (Contact information below.) If you are from or in Missouri or have a Missouri connection, mention it in your communication. Be sure to put: “Please veto SB 351 in the header Bastard Nation’s letter to Governor Nixon is here and directly below this blog. THE BILL SB 351 makes superficial changes to OBC /original identity 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. It allows adoptees, under certain conditions, to access identifying information about siblings, and permits adoptees’ lineal descendants under certain conditions, to access identifying information if the adoptee is deceased. The bill, however, does not even mention the term “original birth certificate” or what “identifying information” could be released and in what form. A letter from the court? An original birth certificate? SB 351 is convoluted. Below is the official legislative summary posted on the bill’s webpage: Current law allows for nonidentifying information, if known, Continue Reading →

Dear Governor Nixon: 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 do not support SB 351 and ask that you veto this badly flawed legislation. Under current Missouri law, the original birth certificates/identities of all Missouri adoptees are sealed and generally 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 is the most restrictive OBC/identity 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 351 makes superficial changes to 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. The bill also allows adoptees under certain conditions to access identifying information about siblings, and permits adoptees’ lineal descendants, under certain conditions, to access identifying information if Continue Reading →