Tag Archives: original birth certificates

MINNESOTA DEFORM MEASURE GOES DOWN

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Recently, Minnesota Senate File 3193 passed the legislature. It would have opened original birth certificates to all adoptees unless a disclosure affidavit (veto) is on file. Currently anyone adopted before 1977 is blacklisted. Anyone born after that date has access unless a birth parent has filed a veto–a very active veto. In Minnesota, you see, whenever an adoptee requests their original birth certificate, the state (or its contractor) hunts down natural parents to see if they consent or object to their bastard’s request. If they object, or if the state’s super sleuths can’t track them down–then their poor bastard gets nothing, unless he or she….goes to court for a “review.” The veto remained in 3193. Governor Tim Pawlenty vetoed the bill. Of course, Bastardette is happy that he did. But not for the same reasons. Pawlenty isn’t happy when the state breaks promises to desperate and hiding middle aged natural parents. Bastardette doesn’t like it when the state forges government documents about her friends. Pawlety’s veto message is in pdf form, and I’m not sure if this will get you there, but try it: Ch.%20330%20Veto%20Message.pdf Here’s what Pawlenty (or NCFA) wrote: This bill would erase the long-standing presumption of confidentiality Continue Reading →

ILLINOIS: THAT TRAIN KEEPS A ROLLIN’–MORE PIECE-A-CRAP LEGISLATION

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HEADS UP! According to Kristen Kridel in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune, Sara Feigenholtz’s alleged “records access” bill will be heard in the Adoption Reform Committee of the Illinois House on Thursday. (SF is the committee chair). Feigenholtz and professional confidential intermediary money hound Melisha Mitchell gushed proud during their Monday press conference, which included former Denver Bronco’s fullback and adoptee Howard Griffith and Chicagoland radio personality Steve Cochran. Ms. Feigenholtz, in her prepared speech, glommed a line from DMC, without credit, Chapter 1 of everyone else’s life begins with a birth certificate, a document I and everyone behind me are prohibited from having. WLS elaborated: “We have been deprived of our history and our identity. We have been deprived of the chapter that everyone else in this state simply gets.” Ms. Feigenholtz may talk the talk, but she doesn’t walk the walk. Under her cowardly compromise bill some adoptees are more equal than others. Since the bill doesn’t seem to be on the Illinois Legislative webpage (more about that in a minute) we can only judge from the summary posted in the Trib: Anyone born before January 1946 will get their original birth certificates immediately (their records were sealed retroactively) Anyone Continue Reading →

MASSACHUSETTS BETRAYED: "IT’S NOT ABOUT OPEN RECORDS"

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Massachusetts adoptees have once more been betrayed by their “friends.” SB 63, the re-hash of last year’s SB 2690 pocket vetoed by Mitt Romney, has passed the General Court and will reach Gov. Deval Patrick soon. The so-called Massachusetts reform group ABC (who cutely demonstrates its dedication to adult civil rights with a baby blocks logo) and their sell-out politician friends like to say SB63 “stops the clock” by guaranteeing that original birth certificates will be accessible to adoptees born on or after January 1, 2008. That would be fine, if it also permitted earlier adoptees to access their birth certificates, too. But it doesn’t. SB63 separates and segregates the rest of the state’s adoptees, based on date of birth, into those who can and can’t get their birth certificates. So much for civil rights! SB63 SUMMARY(1) adopted persons 18 years of age or older born in the commonwealth on or before July 17, 1974 or on or after January 1, 2008 or an adoptive parent of an adopted person under 18 years of age and born in the commonwealth on or after January 1, 2008 will be “allowed” unrestricted access to the original birth certificate. (2) Adopted persons born Continue Reading →

NEW HAMPSHIRE: BATTIN’ 1000!

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Yesterday, the State of New Hampsphire issued its 1000th original birth certificate. Adoptee rights advocates held a party to celebrate. You can read about it in Foster’s Daily Democrat. For those interested in numbers, according to the latest figures from New Hampshire Vital Stats, only 12 “do not contact” preference forms have been submitted to the state–11 in 2005; 1 in 2006 and 0 this year. New Hampshire media has reported no social disruption (including ax killings) due to the restoration of adoptee civil rights. Adoption in New Hampshire, contrary to the dire warnings of conservative secret keepers, liberal record sealers, and extremist adoption industrialists, remains healthy. Bastard Nation is proud and happy to have been a part of liberating New Hampshire adoptees from the stigma and shame of sealed birth records. Back in 2004 BN’s own Rep. Jane Allen played a key role it passing of SB335. Janet, in fact, was the first person to receive her obc when records were unsealed on the first day of business 2005 (left). She was present yesterday when No. 1000 was issued. Many worked for the New Hampshire victory, Most of these heroes have gone unrecorded and unrecognized. We’d like to thank Continue Reading →

NORTH CAROLINA: ADOPTEES DON’T NEED NO BAGMAN. BASTARD NATION’S RESONSE TO NCCAR’S CAPITULATION

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Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization abhors the decision of the North Carolina Coalition for Adoption Reform to drop its HB 445 equal access records bill and replace it with an amended bill (HB 445 2nd ed) that authorizes adoption agencies, for a hefty fee, to voluntarily act as Confidential Intermediaries. The CI system might have been “progressive” 45 years ago. But this is 2007. Outside of the adoption industry’s extravagant fondness for perpetual control over the lives of its “clients” and love of the fast buck, there is no rationale for privatized child welfare businesses to act as state-mandated go-betweens for adult adoptees and their first families who are perfectly capable of responsible decision-making and relationship-building without their supervision. HB 445 restored the right of adopted adults to access their own original birth certificates without interference from anyone. HB 445 2nd ed denies that right, by allowing the adoption industry to control and mediate the free flow of information between adults. To add insult to injury, there is still no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Original birth certificates remain sealed and unaccesible. If the National Council for Adoption didn’t think up HB 445 2nd ed, Continue Reading →

AN OPEN LETTER TO NCCAR FROM PAT MARLER, OKLAHOMANS FOR OPEN RECORDS

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Pat Marler writes a response to the North Carolina Coalition for Adoption Reform’s decision to replace it’s open records bill with a Confidential Intermediary system proposal which makes adoption agencies the gatekeeper of adoptee information. Bastardette will be posting her own comments about the amended bill today or tomorrow. Dear Roberta, As a Co-Chair of Oklahoma’s open record organization, OORAH, Inc., I know about the Confidential Intermediary Program instituted in Oklahoma in 1997. confidential intermediary related to me that the CI Program has been a failure and I’ve heard from other states, like Illinois, that theirs is a failure too. Adoptees complain it isn’t fair the state charges a fee, and feel it’s a “rip-off.” Even though the CI program reunites them, it does not give them the right to their records. They still have to petition the court to get any birth documents. The CI system is a “bone” thrown to adoptees; with the state saying “you are not capable of taking care of your own relationships, you are still a child under our authority–forever.” I resent this kind of attitude from the state. I hope you do, too. Pat Marler.Co-Chair, Oklahomans for Open Records and Adoption Honesty Pat Continue Reading →

NORTH CAROLINA RE-WRITE: ADOPTEE RIGHTS OUT, ADOPTION AGENCIES IN!

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And the Bad Binkie goes to….The North Carolina House Judiciary Committee! Not only did the committee ditch a clean birth certificate access bill (HB 445) yesterday, but amended it into a Draconian fox-in-the-henhouse bill which puts adoptee identity “rights” into the hands of the state’s adoption agencies– the very people who profit most from sealed records. AND YOU THINK YOUR STATE IS BAD…Laughingly called a “compromise,” HB 445 “2nd edition“will “allow” adoption agencies, if they desire (and are still in business!), to act as “confidential intermediaries” between adoptees 21 years and older and a “biological parent.” With the written consent of each, the agency “could” facilitate contact between the parties or (gasp!) share identifying information. The Associated Press notes that the compromise bill would permit agencies to “obtain” and share non-identifying information between the two sides. Obtain? Don’t agencies keep that information on file already? For all we know, they don’t, and Bastardette bets her advance copy of The Baby Thief, that plenty of people want to keep it that way. North Carolina currently does not even permit agencies to freely pass on information between adoptive parties upon mutual request. The state, in fact, bars agencies from telling adopted adults Continue Reading →

NORTH CAROLINA: SECRETS AND SHAME PROMOTE ADOPTION

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Shortly after I posted my Tar Heel blog this morning, I received an email alerting me to an editorial in today’s Raleigh News & Observer—The Parent Search–which picks up the tea and sympathy where the Tar Heel scraped off. “It’s perfectly understandable why an adoptee would…”the N&O writes, as it sharpens its ax. Like the Tar Heel, the N&O fears that adult adoptees getting their very own personalized true and original birth certificates unsealed and unimpounded from the State of North Carolina will “harm” adoption. It offers compromise: * Maybe a state-run contact registry for adults (though apparently records access opponents believe these evil databases “could deter potential adoptive parents for fear they would lose the child’s love once a birth parent was found.”) *Maybe a way for “birth parents” to reveal “limited information about themselves–their medical histories, for instance, or their land of origin.” Land of origin? Yes, in North Carolina, state-mandated forged birth documents just don’t change the names of the kid and the parents; they also change the place of the adoptee’s birth! Do we need any more than that to tell us that adoption in the US is a witness protection program? That falsified birth certificates Continue Reading →

NORTH CAROLINA: "DAILY TAR HEEL" STICKS IT TO ADOPTEES

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Bleating behind their Yankee co-religionists at UConn (see previous blog) the “editorial board” of the University of North Carolina Daily Tar Heel, in a misnamed editorial, Adopt a New Law, has decided that the clean records access bill (and here) currently under debate in the NC legislature, is “fundamentally unfair to birth mothers.” No mention is made that the state’s sealed records law in place since the 1940s is “fundamentally unfair” to adopted people. Of course, not. The “editorial board” considers us all perpetual, and petulant children undeserving of being treated the same as the non-adopted–whom Bastardette presumes they are: In North Carolina, the birth certificates of children given up for adoption are sealed and cannot be retrieved by adopted children later in life…. We sympathize with adopted children… Adopted children, by searching out their biological parents… …the state should find other ways to contact birth parents besides releasing their identities to the adopted child. …If birth parents whose children already have been adopted under the previous law wish to allow their children’s birth certificates… I haven’t followed the North Carolina campaign as I should, but I am pretty sure that North Carolina Coalition for Adoption Reform chair Roberta McDonald Continue Reading →

CONNECTICUT: THE UCONN "DAILY CAMPUS" PROJECTS AND PROTECTS FIRST MOMS

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The editorial board of the UConn Daily Campus decided it knows what first moms want. Yesterday it weighed in the April 13 defeat in the Connecticut General Assembly Judiciary of a bill that would have granted birth certificate access to adoptees 21 and older born on or after October 1, 2008. Yeah, that’s right. Prospective. 2029. This bill was a “response” to last year’s bill vetoed by Gov. Jodi “first grandma” Rell which was also prospective. The usual hand wringing applied. The Daily Campus editorial board, sounding as if it were writing with the pickle it was collectively weaned on, called adopted adults “adopted children” 4 times. I guess that’s an improvement. About 11 years ago the Chicago Trib’s Bruce Dold used that abomination something like 16 times in a 500 word op-ed when he went flakey over a records access bill Anyway, the best part of the Daily Campus’s jaunty little editorial, was the board’s paranoiac projection of first moms. Women are weak, ya know! Visions of rape and incest break danced in their heads: “a woman who becomes pregnant as a result, and elects to have a child, should not have to relive the tragedy 21 years later Continue Reading →