Mara’s tenacity paid off.

I’m glad to re-print her published letter in the Times-Standard (serving Eureka and California’s North Coast) here. It is a testimony as to the generational effects of adoption’s sealed and falsified birth certificates for adoptees. Coincidentally, Mara’s article  was published previously here as “Guest Post: Census Rant”.

http://www.times-standard.com/letters/ci_14754681

Sealed away

Letters to the Editor

Posted: 03/25/2010 02:10:17 AM PDT

Recently, I found the 2010 Census form hanging on my door. As I began filling it out, I came across a dilemma. The U.S. government wants to know if my children are adopted or not and it wants to know what our races are. Being adopted myself, I had to put “Other” and “Don’t Know Adopted” for my race and “Other” and “Don’t Know” for my kids’ races.

Can you imagine not knowing your ethnicity, your race? Now imagine walking into a vital records office and asking the clerk for your original birth certificate only to be told “No, you can’t have it, it’s sealed.”

How about being presented with a “family history form” to fill out at every single doctor’s office visit and having to put “N/A Adopted” where life saving information should be?

Imagine being asked what your nationality is and having to respond with “I don’t know.”

It is time that the archaic practice of sealing and altering birth certificates of adopted persons stops.

Adoption is a $5 billion, unregulated industry that profits from the sale and redistribution of children. It turns children into chattel who are re-labeled and sold as “blank slates.”

Genealogy, a modern-day fascination, cannot be enjoyed by adopted persons with sealed identities. Family trees are exclusive to the non-adopted persons in our society.

If adoption is truly to return to what is best for a child, then the rights of children to their biological identities should NEVER be violated. Every single judge that finalizes an adoption and orders a child’s birth certificate to be sealed should be ashamed of him/herself.

I challenge all Times-Standard readers: Ask the adopted persons that you know if their original birth certificates are sealed.

Mara Rigge

Trinidad

~ ~ ~ posted for Mara by “halforphan56” Joan M Wheeler