Sealed and Falsified Birth Certifciates are not only an “unwed mother’s and her illegitimate child’s” issue, this is an issue for widows, widowers, and their half-orphaned children, and stepparents who adopt step children and children from married parents who are relinquished.

The original intent of the current American system of sealed and falsified birth certificates was started with an idea in 1929 and became a model state law in 1930, upon which individual states voted. Most voted to seal and falsify birth certificates for adoptees to protect the unwed mother’s reputation and to give the adoptee a chance to be “legitimized” by virtue of a new, amended birth certificate. See: Family Matters, Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption by E. Wayne Carp, 1998, and The Idea of Adoption: An Inquiry into the History of Adult Adoptee Access to Birth Records, Rutgers Law Review, by Elizabeth J. Samuels, 2001.

This protection of the illegitimate child’s legal legitimization morphed into protection of the adopting couple in recent decades.

But people forget that real half and full orphans are adopted. We come from legitimate births, our birth certificates and our births do not need to be legitimized, and our parents are not sinners. This is not an attack on actual illegitimate adoptees and their natural parents, I am simply pointing out facts for the benefit of others.

Half and full orphans, adopted step children, and other children born within a marriage are still subject to the full impact of adoption: their legitimate births are legitimized by the process of the sealing their original birth certificates and falsifying new birth certificates to simulate legitimate births through the process of adoption. Consequently, our married natural parents are now belittled by the process originally meant to target unwed mothers and their illegitimate children.

Sealed and falsified birth certificates presume illegitimacy and the false premise of protection of the unwed mother’s reputation, when, in fact, these are outdated morals and principles. Adoptive parents these days want the protection for themselves to keep the adoptee and natural parents under control and to preserve the adoptive family unit.