Category: Adoptees’ Civil Rights

Fighting Back with Words Against a Pro-Life Babble on “Supporting Adoption in a Post-Dobbs America”

On By legitimatebastardIn Abortion vs Adoption, Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate7 Comments

For the last two days, I’ve been writing in response to a Tweet and a blog post, both referencing a blog post from the pro-life movement.

The Tweet is:

https://twitter.com/adopteelaw/status/1578570380574269441

Not sure how to preface this story other than . And the unseen money behind all of this is mind-boggling. https://t.co/tIWKbeHAEl

— Adoptee Rights Law (@adopteelaw) October 8, 2022

…

…

The adoptee’s blog post begins:

In Adoption, Loss Never Truly Ends.

In Adoption, Loss Never Truly Ends.

08, OCT, 2022

This morning I woke up to a tweet by @adopteerights.com

A tweet that chilled my soul.

A tweet that foretold the desire by some to make many more babies available for adoption.

…

Here is the link to the offending blog post from the pro-life movement:

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/supporting-adoption-in-a-post-dobbs-america/

Supporting adoption in a post-Dobbs America

Article by CHARLIE CAMOSY who interviewed Elizabeth Kirk. She is the director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Catholic University Columbus School of Law, where she also teaches family law. She is an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

October 7, 2022.

See the link above to read the full article.

…

In response, I wrote my comments in five parts. I signed up for a free registration to the above link to comment.

I expect my comments will be deleted because no one really wants to hear the truth about adoption. The buyers do not want to hear from the product. So, I posted all of my comments here as a back-up, and at the above link as comments at The Adopted Ones Blog.

Part 1

Because society views all adopted people as perpetual children, some adopted adults refer to themselves as “an adopted child”. In this article, Elizabeth, calls herself “an adopted child,” even though she is an adult. “Adopted child” rolls off the tongue easily. One really has to think before speaking, especially about adoption. The correct term is “adult adoptee”. Or, to be more specific, Elizabeth Kirk could say “I was adopted by my step-father when I was a child.”

Elizabeth doesn’t mention anything at all about her biological father. He sired her so he is her father, even though she doesn’t want to admit this fact of her life. Sure, she loves her step-father-turned-adopted-father. I love my adoptive father, too, but to ignore the facts of life is to ignore life itself.

Every single one of us was sired by a father, gestated inside our mother, and birthed by our mother. These are facts.

Adoption is a legal transaction that does not replace birth. These are facts.

And yet, for every single adoption – including the adoption of step-children – the adopted person’s birth certificate is revoked, sealed, and replaced by a false-fact birth certificate that replaces the adoptee’s name of birth with the new name of adoption, and replaces the names of the natural parents with the names of the adoptive parents. This gives the impression that these people gave birth to the re-named child.

This is a denial of the facts of life.

This is lying.

Lying is a sin.

Part 2

Catholics promote advertising through websites that they want to adopt “your baby”. This is trolling for vulnerable women to give up their babies to the possession of adopters to avoid abortion. This is targeting women for their babies. The end result is the destruction of a family for the purpose of owning someone else’s baby. This is also coveting someone else’s baby, which is a sin because coveting someone else’s spouse is a sin.

There is no mention in this article of lifelong trauma imposed on the mothers who relinquish their infants to adoption. And no mention of the fathers, as if they aren’t important. And, conveniently, no mention of ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Why would anyone willingly inflict stressful and traumatizing events on a newborn? Babies feel pre-verbal loss of mother as all-encompassing body and brain trauma. The child grows up in fear, yet doesn’t know why there is lingering anxiety and panic, or unexplained illnesses. The infant given away at birth or as an older baby or as a young child feels this as abandonment, even when adopted by parental care givers who love this child. Adverse Childhood Experiences develop into medical issues or mental health issues later in life. This trauma is also passed down to the adopted person’s children through a process that changes gene expression: epigenetics.

Why would you intentionally cause life-long emotional trauma on babies and children? Why would you want to cause emotional pain for natural mothers and fathers? Or our siblings?

Part 3

I was born the 5th child to married parents in 1956. My mother died of cancer when I was three months old. A Catholic priest told my father that “the baby needs two parents.” Neither the priest, nor Catholic Charities, offered help to my father to keep our family together. No offering of food, clothes, diapers, child care, or respite care for my father who had to go to work while his older children were in school.

This is not being Christian.

No one in their right mind today would tell a father of a newborn and four older children under the age of 9 to give up his newborn daughter to adoption.

Thirty years after meeting my natural father for the first time, he was recovering from open heart surgery. He sat in a wheel chair when I walked in to his room in a nursing home. He cried, “If someone would have told me what would happen to you, if someone would have told me how to keep you…”

I knelt down in front of him, took his hands in mine, and said, “I never held it against you, Dad. You were in an impossible situation. You were used.”

I loved my natural father, and my natural mother. I also loved my adoptive parents.

The ugliness of adoption is there and must be dealt with. This is a burden I wouldn’t inflict on anyone.

Part 4

In 1956, my name at birth and (Catholic) baptism was Doris Michol Sippel. I carried that name and birth certificate for the first 15 months of my life. I was legally adopted at age of one year and one week, but my birth certificate remained intact for another three months. My Original Birth Certificate was then replaced with a new birth certificate that stated I was born as Joan Mary Wheeler. My natural parents’ names were swapped out and replaced by the names of my adoptive parents, as if they had sired me and birthed me.

In 1959, my adoptive parents asked their lawyer to contact the church in which I was baptized to have a new baptismal certificate issued in my adopted name of Joan Mary Wheeler. The priest wrote up a new baptismal certificate with my new name and the names of my adoptive parents, as if my actual baptism didn’t take place.

The priest lied.

The State Bureau of Vital Statistics lied.

My Catholic adoptive parents lied.

Lying is a sin.

My baptismal certificate was falsified to show proof that I was baptized so that my adoptive parents could send me to Catholic schools.

According to Cannon law, a person can be baptized only once. So, to have a 2nd baptismal certificate in my legal name of Joan Wheeler is morally wrong. I was baptized in the name of Doris Michol Sippel in the eyes of their god. Joan Wheeler was never baptized, yet her baptismal certificate says she was baptized as Joan Wheeler. That is not true.

My Original Birth Certificate was revoked, sealed forever, and replaced by a false-fact birth certificate created so that my adopters could say I was their child. I was their adopted daughter. They were not responsible for siring me, gestating me, nor birthing me. Their names did not, and do not now, belong on my birth certificate. Their names are on the court order of adoption, which is the truth.

It is morally wrong for anyone to claim on a government-issued birth certificate that they sired, gestated, and gave birth to a child when they didn’t. This ought to be illegal – to lie on an official birth certificate. But, in adoption, since the 1930s, it is perfectly legal to lie on a government-issued birth certificate.  

This law must change. Adopted people have the moral, ethical, and human right to the truth of our births. We should have the legal right to one – and only one – birth certificate like all non-adopted people.

Are you paying attention, Elizabeth Kirk? You call yourself a lawyer in family law? Do you really understand adoption and vital statistics laws?

I don’t think you do.

Part 5

I legally reclaimed my name in 2016. But my legal birth certificate remained in the name of Joan Wheeler. Why? Because the final step to changing one’s name requires the State Dept. of Vital Statistics to place the new legal name on a new amended birth certificate with the names of the “parents of record”, which, in my case, my “parents of record” were my adoptive parents. I certainly did not want a new, amended, birth certificate stating that my adopters, Edward and Doloris Wheler, gave birth to me as Doris Sippel!

In 2019, I sued New York State and won a partial victory. I won the right to replace the names of my adopters with the names of my natural parents on a new legal birth certificate. My Original Birth Certificate is still revoked and sealed. The court order of adoption still stands as proof of my adoption.

Adoption is child abuse by forced separation at birth from mother, and father, siblings, extended family, family history and culture. Adoption is identity theft. Adoption is unnecessary lifelong trauma for both mothers and their infants.  Family preservation, kinship care, and legal custodial guardianship provide legal protections for the child who truly needs a home.

I’m sure you’ll delete my comments here.

But don’t worry. I posted my comments on my blog with a link to your blog post calling for the inhumane removal of infants from their mothers at birth.

Stop inflicting your beliefs onto other people. A woman’s body is hers and not yours. Whatever she decides to do with her pregnancy is none of your business.  

The Adoption Primer

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate

What You Need To Know About Adoption’s Identity Theft, Restoring Adoptees’ Birthrights, and Critical Adoption Studies

© 2021-10-31

For those who asked, here is THE ADOPTION PRIMER. You can copy and paste these two pages onto your own Word document and print on double-sided paper. Fold into a tri-fold pamphlet. 

This is an educational tool to instruct people who are not aware of adoption’s Identity Theft about Original Birth Certificates (OBC) and Amended Birth Certificates (ABC).

I’ve used my own OBC and ABC in this printable pamphlet.

I’ve also included a text-based format below for people who want to see the print flow.

Now, let’s educate people on Adoption’s Identity Theft!

2021-10-30 Tri-Fold- OBCs and ABCs - my 2 articles - The Adoption Primer -pg1

2021-10-30-tri-fold-obcs-and-abcs-my-2-articles-the-adoption-primer-pg2-1

 

The Adoption Primer

What You Need To Know About Adoption’s Identity Theft, Restoring Adoptees’ Birthrights, and Critical Adoption Studies

© 2021-10-31

 

Adoptees are victims of identity theft.

Many Westernized countries have similar laws to the United States. When an adoption is finalized in court, the adoptee’s Original Birth Certificate (OBC) is revoked, sealed, and replaced with an Amended Birth Certificate (ABC). The court mails the Final Court Order of Adoption to the State’s Office of Vital Records where a new birth certificate is created mixing new information of adoption with the facts of birth. The names of the adopters replace the names of natural parents, erasing them. If the child was named at birth, the birth name is replaced with the new name given by the adopters.

 Rewriting the facts of birth — outright lying — on official birth records became law after 1930. Through the passage of time, this has become socially normalized: expected, even demanded, by adopters, then celebrated, “This is my child.”

The stigma of illegitimacy drove legislators (men) to target single mothers and their legally fatherless babies. These children were legally reborn, legitimized, by    adoption to a married man who became the legal father.

Before 1930, adoptees had civil rights to keep their birth certificate, even when adoption changed their name. But adopters wanted the adopted name on the birth record to match the family name, making it easier to prove the adoptee was legally adopted. Proof was needed for educational enrollment, medical care, insurance coverage.

See:

1930: Birth Records of Illegitimates and of Adopted Children

Creating new identities for adoptees had the added bonus for adopters of preventing the natural parents from knowing the child’s new name and address; they couldn’t interfere because the child was unknown to them. Many adopters didn’t tell the adoptee they were adopted. The records were sealed; no one needs to know.

All domestic, Native American, and transnational adoptees in the USA are affected. The US Department of State requires the foreign-born child’s birth record replaced with an ABC before that child is allowed to leave their homeland. Sometimes, naturalization wasn’t completed, resulting in in deportation of many foreign-born adoptees as adults.

See: Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2021:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1593/text

 If adopters no longer want the child they adopted, they rehome the child to someone else. The ABC is revoked, sealed, and replaced with a new ABC issued when the 2nd adoption is finalized.

Today’s Open Adoption is only a social arrangement, adoptees’ OBCs are still revoked, sealed, and replaced. Socially Open Adoption doesn’t equate to Open Records with adoptees’ unrestricted access to the sealed OBC.

When adoptees in closed and sealed adoptions find out their name at birth, many reclaim their names, as I did. Many also want to annul their adoptions due to abuse, adoptive parent pedophilia, or simply want to be un-adopted. But only adopters can annul an adoption. Some adoptees are adopted-back by their natural parents. Many Asian adoptees leave their country of adoption to move back to their homeland, rejecting their removal.

We know there is no need to change the child’s name upon adoption, or to erase the names of the natural parents, or for adopters to pretend to be parents of birth. The Court Order of Adoption is sufficient proof of the legal rights and responsibilities adopters have in their parental roles for the child in their care. 

Birth is birth, verifiable through medical records for maternity care, labor, birth, and by DNA. Adoption is a legal transaction handled by a court. These events should be documented separately. But they aren’t.

When women change their surname upon marriage, they don’t lose their birthright. Married women’s birth certificates remain un-revoked, unsealed, and unchanged. When proof of marriage is needed, a marriage license is presented.

We can do this in adoption, too.

In this modern age, it is the ethical right action to respect adoptees for who we were born as and who we were born to. Our births, our origins, are just as important to us as yours are to you. We came from our parents before we came into adoption. Unconditional love from adoptive parents requires acceptance of what is. Lying, covering up, and denying the truth is wrong.

Since I first saw my OBC and ABC in 1974 at my age of 18, I’ve advocated for changing all current State and    Federal laws (adopting a child born in another country) mandating revoking, sealing, and amending adoptees’ birth records. These laws must be repealed and replaced.

Every free American citizen should have one, and only one, factual birth certificate, otherwise, we are not free.

Reality-based birth certificates for all adoptees and donor-conceived is my recommendation.

 

– Doris Michol Sippel, BSW

https://buffalonews.com/2018/11/15/being-adopted-allowed-state-to-steal-my-identity/

2018-11-15 Being Adopted Allowed State to Steal My Identity - 2

https://buffalonews.com/2019/12/30/another-voice-stop-revoking-and-sealing-adoptees-birth-certificates/

2019-12-31 Stop Revoking and Sealing Adoptees' Birth Certificat4

You might also find this article educational about Original Birth Certificates (OBC) and Amended Birth Certifcates (ABC). I present all of my documents here in this post: 

My Revoked and Sealed Birth Certificate and its Replacement Issued After Adoption – Proof that New York State Vital Statistics Department Uses False Facts on Official Birth Records

Information on USA State-by-state legislation for adoptees’ access to OBCs:

American Adoption Congress:

 https://www.americanadoptioncongress.org

Adoptees United – A National Adoptee Rights Organization:

https://adopteesunited.org

Adoption Truth and Transparency Worldwide Network:

https://adoptiontruth.org/

New York State Adoptees now have Unrestricted Access to obtain a copy of their PRE-ADOPTION BIRTH CERTIFICATE (OBC) effective JANUARY 15, 2020

General Information: 

New York Adoptee Rights Coalition:

 https://nyadopteerights.org/bills/

Where to Apply:

New York State Dept. of Health:

 https://www.health.ny.gov/vital_records/preadoption.htm

THE INTERNATIONAL ADOPTEES RIGHTS MOVEMENT BEGAN IN 1953

ADVOCATING FOR LEGAL ACCESS TO OUR OWN SEALED BIRTH CERTIFICATES

10 USA States passed Unrestrictive Access Laws: Alaska, Kansas, Alabama, Colorado, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Oregon, New York (2020), and Connecticut (2021).

21 USA States passed Compromised-Limited-Access Laws: Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa,     Missouri, Minnesota, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Hawaii. 

19 USA States Total Restrictions-No Access: Complete Sealed Records, at least no access yet: Washington DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, Nevada, California.

…

Our goal is to achieve adoptee equality to non-adopted people.

How would you feel if you were legally forbidden your own birth certificate?  

New York State Passed Adoptee Rights Bill into Law

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Original Birth Certificate, Uncategorized

We Did It!

 By 

 

The New York legislature secured history on an extra day of the legislative session by reversing more than eight decades of discrimination against New York adopted people. With the bill moving through three committees on the final two days of an extended session, the Assembly Members voted 126-2 to pass S3419/A5494 and forward it to Governor Andrew Cuomo for signature and final enactment. If you have not been following this, the soon-to-be enacted law will:

  • restore the right of all adult adoptees to request and obtain a certified copy of the “original long form line by line, vault copy birth certificate,” otherwise known as the OBC, with no restrictions other than the adoptee is at least 18 years of age at the time of the request;
  • if the adoptee is deceased, allow direct line descendants or a lawful representative of the adoptee to request and obtain the OBC;
  • address issues related to people born outside of New York but whose adoptions were finalized by a New York state court. If a copy of the OBC from the other jurisdiction is not available from a New York registrar, then information that would have appeared on the OBC must be provided by the adoption agency;
  • address original birth certificates on file with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, an extremely important provision because New York City currently possesses many pre-adoption birth certificates;
  • address certain OBCs that may also be held by registrars in Albany, Buffalo, and Yonkers;
  • be effective January 15, 2020.

 

Now head on over to the full length post!

New York Adoptee Rights Bill S3419 passed today in the Senate

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Original Birth Certificate

New York Adoptee Rights Bill S3419 passed today in the Senate!

Posted by New York Adoptee Rights Coalition:

 

Senate Votes Overwhelmingly to Pass S3419
June 3, 2019 By New York Adoptee Rights Coalition

The following is the text of a NYARC press release distributed after the New York State Senate voted 53-6 to pass Senate Bill S3419 on Monday, June 3, 2019.

The New York State Senate today overwhelmingly approved a bill that would end 83 years of iron-clad secrecy over the birth certificates of adult adopted persons. The bill, sponsored by Senator Velmanette Montgomery in the Senate, would restore a right that New York adoptees once had: the right as adults to request and receive their own pre-adoption birth records.

It is a right that advocates have been working across the country to restore for decades, going back at least to the beginning of the adoptee rights movement in New York in the early 1970s.

 

 

head over to the original post to read the rest!

Letter to Speaker Carl E. Heastie: I strongly support NYS A5494, an adoptee rights bill

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Original Birth Certificate

May 30, 2019

Phone: (518) 455-3791
Email: speaker@nyassembly.gov

 

Dear Speaker Carl E. Heastie:

Once again, the opposition to A5494, the adoptee rights bill, claims that mothers were promised confidentiality; therefore, birth certificates of all adoptees must remain sealed. That argument presumes that all adoptees were born bastards – the products of illicit sex – and all hell would break lose should the bastard adoptee get a hold of the birth certificate that identifies the fallen mother.

The current law was passed in 1936. It is antiquated and focuses on situations that do not address the majority of adoptions today.

My Circumstances

My circumstances tell of how the current New York State closed records law of 1936 is unjust not only to adoptees who were born as bastards, but to others who were not born bastards.

I am 63 years old; all 4 of my parents are dead and cannot write to you.

My natural father relinquished me in April 1956, one month after my mother’s death by cancer. I was 4 months old at relinquishment and 3 months old when my mother died.

My parents were married for 10 years and had 4 older children. My father did not want to give me away, but no other options or help was offered to him. The judge told him that he must stay away from me and my adopters. My father was not promised confidentiality, or privacy, or protection from the state, not verbally and not in writing, not ever.

Quite the opposite was true.

My father and the judge were not informed that my deceased natural mother was distantly related to my adopting father. This was a very large extended family who wanted nothing to do with my natural father. Once he was out of the way due to the nature of closed adoption, all of my natural mother’s relatives and all of my adoptive father’s relatives were one big family and had no intention of staying away from each other. They did not inform my father or the judge of this connection. Photos and stories of me were passed back and forth during my childhood. The two families – including my adoptive parents – knew they were going behind the judge’s back by breaking the “no contact” restriction of closed adoption. The court issued my Final Order of Adoption – and my falsified new birth certificate – under the belief that MY privacy would be protected and that I would grow up in a safe and secure home.

The reality was that all of my natural mother’s relatives and my adoptive father’s relatives deemed themselves authorities to invade MY privacy by gossiping about me while I grew up. Then these hypocrites held onto society’s belief that “adoptees must never be told the truth” and that there was some terrible secret that must remain hidden.

My siblings made contact with me in 1974 when I was 18 years old. My adoptive parents, extended adoptive family, and my natural mother’s family were horrified. Why? Because the secret that I was never supposed to know was now out in the open. Their little game was over. I was their pawn.

My father was not aware that communication had been going on for 18 years because he was told to stay away. Had he been kept in the loop, he would have received updates and photos of me – as in today’s open adoption (when it works). Meanwhile, I knew nothing of any of this activity. I was the victim of hundreds of adults, and many of my same age cousins, who took control of my life.

What My Father Would Tell You If He Were Alive Today

If my father were alive today, he would tell you, as he told me: he did not sign any paper that told him he would be promised confidentiality, privacy, and protection from the state. There was no contract of confidentiality. Instead, he was ordered to not interfere in my life and that is a very different message.

The Opposition and Rebuttals

Opposition to the adoptee rights bill A5494 is made under the presumption that mothers are in hiding and are in fear of their secret being exposed.

Opposition to our adoptees rights bill firmly believe that mothers can claim now, decades after signing papers given up their parental rights, that they now must be given the power to redact their names from the birth certificate, or that they must be given the power to say no to contact or to say no for the release of the birth certificate to the adoptee.

 Rebuttal:

When a mother and father sign relinquishment papers, they surrender ALL parental rights to that child. That means the adoption agency, adoption attorneys, the court, the adoptive parents — none of these people or agencies are under any obligation to inform the natural parents that their surrendered infant or child has been moved into foster care, has been adopted, or never has been adopted, is sick and dying, or has died.

When papers are signed giving up parental rights, all rights are terminated. The natural parents have no legal parental rights whatsoever.

No parent under any circumstances has the right to redact their name from their child’s birth certificate. Facts of birth are just that: facts.

Raped Mothers

 Opposition to our adoptees rights bill firmly believe that raped mothers must be protected from ever having their rape known to the adoptee.

Rebuttal:

Parents who sign relinquishment papers, or whose parental rights were terminated, give up ALL of their parental rights.

When a child becomes an adult, that person is an autonomous being who is not subjected to any parental authority; this includes natural parents who signed away their parental rights upon relinquishment.

A child’s birth certificate remains their birth certificate even after relinquishment. If a child remains in foster care or guardianship, the child’s rights to that birth certificate are never violated.

It is only upon adoption that the child’s birth certificate is revoked, annulled, canceled, and then sealed, and then replaced by a false-fact birth certificate created upon adoption.

If a child is relinquished but never adopted, they maintain their birth certificate – and the names of their parents – for life. The identity of the parents will always be known to the relinquished child, now an adult.

Opposition: Hiding the Identity of Criminal Natural Parents

There is an argument for not releasing a revoked and sealed birth certificate to an adoptee in search if the father or mother is a criminal who murdered or who are guilty of some other extreme crime.

Rebuttal:

While this seems logical to want to protect adoptees from a violent criminal father or mother, it must be stated that many non-adopted people also have parents who are criminals who are incarcerated. There are many non-adopted people whose parents are mentally incompetent and are institutionalized. These non-adopted people know the conditions that keep their parents in prison or in institutions, but they are not prevented from owning their birth certificates due to the crime committed by their parents or the mental state of their parents.

The Opposition

 In the end, the opposition wants us to believe that their concern is keeping the bastards away from their fallen mothers who must be protected and kept anonymous.

Rebuttal:

It isn’t about being born a bastard. It isn’t about protecting the identities of the “unwed” mothers.

The 1936 New York State law and social attitudes of those times may have implied that fallen women and their bastard babies must be hidden, but since that law was enacted, over the past eight decades ALL adopted people were, and currently are, included in the sealed records law:

  • children of divorce are sometimes adopted by step parents
  • grandparents adopt their grandchildren
  • aunts and uncles adopt their nieces and nephews
  • older siblings adopt the youngest sibling
  • half and full orphans born of married parents are relinquished and adopted

In ALL of these cases, the adopted person’s actual birth certificate is revoked, sealed, and replaced by a false-fact birth certificate naming the new legal parents as if they sired, gestated, and gave birth to the re-named child. This is fraud!

The Opposition

The opposition would like us all to believe that their fear of being found out should be used to prevent all adoptees access to our revoked and sealed birth certificates.

Rebuttal:

Their irrational fears have been interfering with the civil and human rights of all adopted people for far too long.

The answer to the oppositions’ cries of confidentiality, privacy, and the perceived need of protection is therapy, not punishing laws.

If the antiquated stigma continues to be used as an excuse to prevent all adoptees access to our revoked and sealed birth certificates, the law will continue to obstruct justice from adoptees, like me, who were born within a marriage and then adopted out. Or adopted by a stepparent. Or adopted by grandparents or other relatives.

I am a Half Orphan Not A Bastard

My mother DIED when I was 3 months old. She died knowing she was my mother. Adoption took official motherhood away from her, and took away my right to the truth of my birth. I am a half orphan, not a bastard! Give me back my authentic birth certificate! Stop playing games with the facts of life!

I Support A5494

I strongly support A5494, an adoptee rights bill that will finally restore equality to adult adoptees in New York. I ask you to bring this bill to the Codes Committee agenda as soon as possible. The bill has overwhelming bipartisan support in the Assembly and is awaiting a floor vote in the Senate where it is expected to pass. This bill is a direct result of the Governor’s veto of regressive legislation in December of 2017 and his subsequent mandated work group.

Please do not give the opposition any more stalling time. Adoptee activists and mothers-of-adoption-loss who are fighting with us have been working hard for many decades for adoptee justice to access our revoked and sealed birth certificates.

The time is now. Please move this bill forward to the enactment of A5494.

Please let me know your position on this issue.

Yours Sincerely,

 

Doris Michol Sippel

(formerly known as Joan Mary Wheeler)

 

Two Major Adoption Conferences This Weekend

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptees Search, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Baby Selling - Child Trafficking to Adoption, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Uncategorized2 Comments

There are two major adoption conferences held this weekend. Due to a combination of private matters, I’ve been unable to attend a conference since 2014.

I highly recommend that adoptees, natural parents, and adoptive parents, other family members, and spouses attend these conferences next year. Hopefully, both of these conferences will not be held on the same weekend again!

Here is a Facebook post by American Adoption Congress showing a photo of, and quoting, New York State Assemblyman Robert Carrol:

2019-4-6 Asbly Robert Carroll speaking about NYS Adoptee Rights Bill A5494

 

Keynote Speaker Assemblyman Robert Carroll speaking about New York Adoptee Rights Bill A5494

“This is about dignity, about allowing adopted people to self actualize.”

 

Here is a news article about this weekend’s conference hosted by The Indiana Adoptee Network:

The non-profit was vital in the passing of a law releasing adoption records in Indiana. They’ll help people working through the process of getting their records from the state.

The Indiana State Department of Health has received more than 4,200 requests for adoption records. The wait to receive records is more than 20 weeks due to high volume. Organizers of this weekend’s conference said they encourage people to remain patient and to contact them if they need help through the process.

“We’re going to help them here at the conference with their information and then once they get their file, we will help them with that, too,” Pam Kroskie, president of the Indiana Adoptee Network, said.

…

Adoption conferences are more than helping adoptees access their original birth certificates in their state (provided their home state has laws that allow adoptee-access). There are workshops on searching and reunions, adoption psychology, adoption research and family systems, state by state legislative efforts, networking, and learning in general why adoption as we know it, must change.

Many non-adopted people are not aware of how adoption affects adoptees throughout their lives. Many non-adopted people have mis-perceived notions about mothers of adoption loss. For this reason, I suggest that the general public attend these conferences as a learning experience.

You can contact The Indiana Adoptee Network at their website here.

You can contact the American Adoption Congress at their website here.

My Comments Marked as Spam and Deleted from this Discussion on Adoptees’ Rights to Sealed Birth Certificates

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate, Uncategorized

This post is about the comment section following this article:

Most American Adoptees Can’t Access Their Birth Certificates. That Could Soon Change.

A slew of new state laws are being debated right now.

JORDAN GASS-POORE MARCH 13, 2019 6:00 AM

As promised on Facebook, I saved not only my comments, but screen-shotted the ones  that were flagged as spam and deleted in the comment section of the above article.

I am re-printing them here should anyone question what went down when two rather mouthy individuals spouted off at me and then didn’t like my responses.

This was my first independent comment (not in a thread):

Doris Michol Sippel • 2 days ago

It is important for readers to know that there are many more situations in which a child is given up for adoption than the typical not-married-mother giving up a bastard baby. Some children are adopted by their grandparents or aunts and uncles. Some children are adopted by their step parent. Some children lose one or both to death making them either half of full orphans who are given by the remaining parent or another relative or an orphanage. Still other children are removed from abusive parents and sent into foster care where they may or may not be adopted out. All of the comments here target the “unwed mother and bastard baby” stereotype. In every single adoption, the adoptee’s birth certificate is revoked, sealed, and then replaced by a false-fact birth certificate that states two people who were not there for the conception and birth are named as if they were responsible for creating this new life. They weren’t. Adoptees are forced to live a lie. Access bills to allow adoptees to have a copy of their sealed birth certificate are a solution to only part of the bigger problem. The bigger problem is that adoptees should never have falsified birth certificates to begin with. Facts are facts. Adoptees are the only group of people who are targeted by laws that steal our identities.

To which, clemans responded:

clemans  Doris Michol Sippel • 2 days ago

With the popularity of DNA tests, none of that matters. At some point a family member will do a test and the matching begins. And it all comes out.

Here is a screenshot of my first comment and clemans’ response:

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Here is a screenshot that my response was marked as spam 3 times (It has been marked as spam for the 4th time and now only one “This comment was marked as spam” line remains):

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Now I am responding directly to “clemans”:

March 15, 2019 11 AM

To clemans —

none of that matters” — oh really?

I find it fascinating that when I, an adoptee, post the truth about birth certificates; my posts were flagged as spam and removed 4 times! That is censorship! I am screen-shoting everything!

For the 5th time:

This bill addressed in this article is about ADOPTEES CIVIL RIGHTS to access our revoked and sealed birth certificates. This bill has nothing to do with the misperceived view that mothers need protection or have rights to anonymity. Mothers have no rights because they signed relinquishment papers giving up ALL PARENTAL RIGHTS.

The truth of the facts of birth are recorded by the attending physician on a medical record of live birth. Every newborn gets one of these – it’s your birth certificate. The attending physician verifies the birth by her or his signature on the birth certificate that is then signed by the registrar of vital statistics.

The only people who are segregated from the rest of society – who are discriminated against – are adopted people who are forced, by law, to be victims of identity theft via adoption.

In each adoption – illegitimate or not – the medical record of live birth – the birth certificate – is revoked and then sealed forever. Then, a false-fact birth certificate, not signed by an attending physician, is then issued to legitimize the illegitimately born bastard adoptee.

In the examples I gave earlier, but were deleted as spam: step-parents adopting their step child, grandparents adopting their grandchild, children born within a marriage who are removed due to abuse or neglect, children who are full or half orphans (one or both parents have died) – many adoptees are legitimately born and do not “need” to be legitimized through adoption. Yet, the nearly-century-old laws funnel all adoptees into this narrow definition of who should be re-born via adoption. Long ago, bastards were targeted. Now, every child who is adopted is a victim of identity theft perpetrated by the government.

If 4 full blood siblings are removed from their married parents, and 3 are adopted into 3 separate adoptive families, these 3 siblings will then be issued new birth certificates stating that each one was born to the new adoptive parents. There will be no evidence on record that these 3 siblings actually are full blood siblings with the same legally married parents.  Meanwhile, the 4th full blood sibling ages out of foster care with her birth certificate intact. Even though her parents were involuntarily stripped of their parental rights, this child, now an adult, has her birth certificate from birth. Meanwhile, one of her other 3 siblings is re-homed and adopted a 2nd time, and is issued a 3rd birth certificate. None of the adopted-out siblings has any legal rights to the truth of their births. Only the not-adopted siblings retains that right.

This is not a matter of DNA to uncover family secrets. This is a matter of discriminatory laws targeting a specific group of American citizens who are stripped of our civil and human rights.

Yes, secrets people keep will be found out by DNA. That is not the point I was making. My concern is the law that revokes, seals, and falsifies birth certificates of adopted people.

My second concern is the law that prevents adoptees access to our revoked and sealed birth certificates.

This is about ADOPTEES CIVIL RIGHTS, and not about DNA, and not about the misperceived rights of mothers to anonymity.

Like it or not, relinquishment does not guarantee adoption. That means: when a mother who loves her newborn is faced with no option but to give up her baby, all of her parental rights are removed upon the signing of surrender papers. When a mixed-up, confused, terrified, angry, bitter, disgusted mother wants nothing to do with her newborn or older child, and she gives up that child, she signs relinquishment papers. There is no statement of confidentiality in any relinquishment agreement. She loses all parental rights over her child forever. Arguments holding up the assumption that mothers have rights to anonymity are incorrect.

Signing relinquishment means that the parent signs away all parental rights to the child. There is no guarantee that the child will be adopted. If that child ages out of foster care and the mother does not know, that person has their own birth certificate with the mother’s name on it. Once an adult, the relinquished person can either contact the mother or not. No parent has any legal standing to tell an adult daughter or son what to do.

Here are screenshots of my comment just in case it is marked as spam and is removed again:

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And now Fractal and I are talking to each other. “Fractal” also flagged my comment as spam so it was removed:

March 14, 2019 8:30 pm

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Here are my comments, and Fractal’s comments, as they appear in text on the comment section with links:

Doris Michol Sippel  fractal • 2 days ago

Stop calling adoptees “children”. Activists are adults, not children. With all your questions, the way you talk is full of stereotypes from the Victorian Era. No, no mother was ever promised confidentiality. No surrender documents contain those words. Women were coerced into giving up their babies. They still are pressured to keep the supply to meet the demand. There are so many points wrong in what you post…

To which Fractal replied:

fractal  Doris Michol Sippel • 19 hours ago

Stop telling me what to do.
In the birth mother’s mind, the adopted person will always be their “child”.
And so I will continue to call them such.

In the past when women were considering giving a child up for adoption, the GREAT CONCERN was that birth mother would try to insert herself into life of her adopted child.

She would be told that the records were CLOSED FOR LIFE and that she should never attempt to see the child.

And in fact, she would be told that doing so would be incredibly painful for the adoptive family.

With that meme comes the implication that the birth mother doesn’t need to worry about the child coming to find her, because the records were sealed. It would never occur to most birth mothers in the past to think that the child would be able to open records and, because of this internet age, be so easy to find.

You must be adopted to assume the story that all women who give children up are “coerced”.
I can assure you many are HAPPY to be relieved of the burden, and many would have aborted if something hadn’t prevented them from doing so—money, timing etc…
I know this because I used to work in reproductive health, and saw how many women who came for an abortion had to turn to adoption when abortion wasn’t an option any longer.
Of course, these women will someday have to LIE to their adoptive child and pretend they didn’t want to abort them, or cause them more grief and loss of self-esteem.

Seems to me you have zero respect for the wishes of the birth mother and have a lot of emotional energy invested in big, happy reunions!!!!!!
Doesn’t work that way a lot of the time.
In fact, an biological child of theirs who shows up and corners them might well not get the reunion they are hoping for.
And that could cause a tragedy.

Now stop being so bitchy.
BTW, why is your comment history private?
I bet you are just another Fundy Troll on MJ.

March 15, 2019

The following comment to Fractal was also flagged and removed as Spam.

This is in response to “Fractal” who had some rather harsh words for me.

To Fractal –

You don’t need to give me lectures as I know all about the various aspects as to why the records were sealed. Did you not read that I have been an activist for 45 years? That means I have been to numerous conferences and have talked to hundreds, if not thousands, of adoptees and natural mothers. I know every aspect of what you say. You are not telling me anything new.

Fractal said – “You must be adopted to assume the story that all women who give children up are “coerced”.”

My answer: Me being adopted has nothing to do with mothers being coerced into giving up their babies. I know many mothers of adoption loss who are activist for open records. They all say that they were coerced into giving up their babies. There were no choices. The only option was adoption.
Fractal said – “I can assure you many are HAPPY to be relieved of the burden, and many would have aborted if something hadn’t prevented them from doing so—money, timing etc…”

My answer: YES, exactly! I know this too! That’s why I said earlier “disgusted mothers” because I know that many mothers do not want the burden of being a parent so the get rid of their baby. And then hide behind sealed records as a cop-out – not taking responsibility for their actions.

Fractal said – “Seems to me you have zero respect for the wishes of the birth mother”

My answer: NOPE. I have utmost respect for the mothers of adoption loss who are for open records. I have zero respect for anyone – mothers, fathers, priests, politicians, etc – who continue to insist on revoking, sealing and falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates, and then want to deprive adoptees of their civil and human rights to access these birth certificates when they are adults.

Fractal said – that I “have a lot of emotional energy invested in big, happy reunions!!!!!!”

My answer: NOPE! I am not invested in happy reunions at all! I am invested in changing the law to restore adoptees’ human and civil rights to their truths of their births. What an adoptee does with their birth certificate is up to them. Searching and Reunion are NOT the issues. The issue is the law that currently prevents adoptees from accessing our revoked and sealed birth certificates.
Fractal said: “Doesn’t work that way a lot of the time.
In fact, an biological child of theirs who shows up and corners them might well not get the reunion they are hoping for.
And that could cause a tragedy.”

My answer: Wow. Paint adoptees as stalkers and creeps. Way to go.

Again: Conflating the need to change the law to advance adoptees’ rights to our own birth certificates with does not equate to searching and reunions. We do not need reunion registries. We do not need confidential intermediaries. We need to restore adoptees’ civil rights to own our original birth certificates.

Fractal said: Now stop being so bitchy.
BTW, why is your comment history private?
I bet you are just another Fundy Troll on MJ.

My answer: Ok, I’m bitchy. If you say so…

I have no idea why my comment history is Private and I don’t care. I don’t comment on Discuss frequently. I assure you I am who I say I am – Doris Michol Sippel. That is my real name. I see that you, Fractal, are hiding behind a fake name. I am not a Fundy Troll. I am an adoptee, a liberal, a democrat, and an activist. Look up the articles I posted links to.

12:30PM March 15, 2019

Came back from lunch to see that my comment had been removed a 3rd time!

OK then, I’ve  removed Fractal’s name and posted my comment again! Don’t forget, I am screen-shotting this!

Doris Michol Sippel • an hour ago

To Nameless Opposition of my adoptee comments:

I am screenshotting all of this to post on my website!

You don’t need to give me lectures as I know all about the various aspects as to why the records were sealed. Did you not read that I have been an activist for 45 years? That means I have been to numerous conferences and have talked to hundreds, if not thousands, of adoptees and natural mothers. I know every aspect of what you say. You are not telling me anything new.

You said – “You must be adopted to assume the story that all women who give children up are “coerced”.”
My answer: Me being adopted has nothing to do with mothers being coerced into giving up their babies. I know many mothers of adoption loss who are activist for open records. They all say that they were coerced into giving up their babies. There were no choices. The only option was adoption.

You said – “I can assure you many are HAPPY to be relieved of the burden, and many would have aborted if something hadn’t prevented them from doing so—money, timing etc…”
My answer: YES, exactly! I know this too! That’s why I said earlier “disgusted mothers” because I know that many mothers do not want the burden of being a parent so the get rid of their baby. And then hide behind sealed records as a cop-out – not taking responsibility for their actions.

You said – “Seems to me you have zero respect for the wishes of the birth mother”
My answer: NOPE. I have utmost respect for the mothers of adoption loss who are for open records. I have zero respect for anyone – mothers, fathers, priests, politicians, etc – who continue to insist on revoking, sealing and falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates, and then want to deprive adoptees of their civil and human rights to access these birth certificates when they are adults.

You said – that I “have a lot of emotional energy invested in big, happy reunions!!!!!!”
My answer: NOPE! I am not invested in happy reunions at all! I am invested in changing the law to restore adoptees’ human and civil rights to their truths of their births. What an adoptee does with their birth certificate is up to them. Searching and Reunion are NOT the issues. The issue is the law that currently prevents adoptees from accessing our revoked and sealed birth certificates.

You said: “Doesn’t work that way a lot of the time.
In fact, an biological child of theirs who shows up and corners them might well not get the reunion they are hoping for.
And that could cause a tragedy.”

My answer: Wow. Paint adoptees as stalkers and creeps. Way to go.
Again: Conflating the need to change the law to advance adoptees’ rights to our own birth certificates with does not equate to searching and reunions. We do not need reunion registries. We do not need confidential intermediaries. We need to restore adoptees’ civil rights to own our original birth certificates.

You said: Now stop being so bitchy.
BTW, why is your comment history private?
I bet you are just another Fundy Troll on MJ.

My answer: Ok, I’m bitchy. If you say so…
I have no idea why my comment history is Private and I don’t care. I don’t comment on Discuss frequently. I assure you I am who I say I am – Doris Michol Sippel. That is my real name. I see that you are hiding behind a fake name. I am not a Fundy Troll. I am an adoptee, a liberal, a democrat, and an activist. Look up the articles I posted links to.

Screenshots of the above:

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It is now 1:40 PM on March 15, 2019. My above comment to Clemans has been marked as spam and removed for the 5th time!

The Opposition really does not want the truth to be told!

Ha! Screenshotted and posted it all right here!

It’s been 45 years of censorship from people who oppose adoptees’ rights to our birth certificates.

I will fight to my dying breath for the right to own my revoked and sealed birth certificate – I will fight for all other adopted people as well.

…

Sure enough! Censored and deleted again! March 15 at 1:59PM

Doris Michol Sippel • a few seconds ago

Here is a blog post I wrote with screenshots of all of the times my comments have been Marked As Spam and Deleted. The Opposition to Adoptees’ Access to our Sealed Birth Certificates really does not want to hear the truth! Cognitive Dissonance, eh? You can still mark thhis comment as spam and delete it, but the truth is you don’t wan to face the truth!

https://forbiddenfamily.com…

My Comments Marked as Spam and Deleted from this Discussion on Adoptees’ Rights to Sealed Birth Certificates

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The Editors of The Buffalo News Approved of, and Published, My Article “Being Adopted Allowed The State To Steal My Identity”

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate2 Comments

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20181116 AnotherVoice-BeingAdoptedAllowedTheStateToSealMyIdenti

 

NOTE: While some people may see this as controversial, the Editors of The Buffalo News approved of my article. That is why they published it.

Here is the link to the original article posted on The Buffalo News website on Thursday November 15. The print version was published on Friday November 16, 2018.

Another Voice: Being adopted allowed state to steal my identity

New York State stole my birth certificate, revoked it, sealed the facts of my birth on Jan. 7, 1956, and replaced reality with an amended birth certificate in the name of Joan Mary Wheeler, swapping out the names of my parents with the names of my adoptive parents. This new document states that I, as Joan, was born to two people who neither sired nor birthed me. These legally appointed guardians renamed me when my adoption became final on Jan. 14, 1957.

I legally reclaimed my name of birth in 2016. My adopters remain my legal parents. Joan’s birth certificate remains my legal birth certificate. Doris’ accurate birth certificate remains revoked and sealed under the 1936 state law designed to conceal verifiable facts.
I’ve owned my secret birth certificate since 1974. My adoptive mother gave my documents to me days after my natural family initiated a reunion.

Knowing that I do not have the legal right to use it, I did so anyway to reclaim my name, to update my name and parents’ names with Social Security and to obtain a driver’s license and a passport. My legal birth certificate does not match my other identity documents.

The final step for a legal name change is to send the court order of name change to Vital Statistics to update my name with the “parents of record.” If I do that, a new amended birth certificate will be issued stating that I, Doris Michol Sippel, was born to Doloris and Edward Wheeler. That amended birth certificate would be far worse than the one issued upon my adoption. At least in 1957 my adoptive identity was completely separate from my identity of birth. Complying with this last step would mean that both identities would be mixed together, and my parents’ names — Genevieve and Leonard Sippel — would not be on my birth certificate.

Does your brain hurt? Mine does.

I refuse to take this last step. I broke the law. I do not care. New York State is at fault for revoking my birth certificate, sealing it, and replacing it in 1957.

Three remedies are possible.

I petition New York State Supreme Court to update my parents’ names on a new amended birth certificate to align all of my identity documents with one another. Obviously, creating yet another amended birth certificate is illogical.

I petition the state to restore my revoked birth certificate. According to current law, this would undo my adoption and dissolve inheritance laws with my adoptive family.

The third and most realistic resolution also violates current sealed records law: Restore Doris Michol Sippel’s certificate of medical live birth, annul Joan Mary Wheeler’s amended birth certificate, and issue an adoption certificate. By doing so, the state would validate the facts of my life while not vacating my adoption. Then my brain, and my heart, would not hurt.

Doris Michol Sippel is the author of “Forbidden Family: An Adopted Woman’s Struggle for Identity.”

 

An Open-Adoption Adoptive Mother Tries to Explain the Anti-Adoption Movement – Here is What I Said to Her

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Adoptive Parents, Amended Birth Certificate, anti adoption, False Information on Birth Certificate, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Original Birth Certificate, Sealed Adoption Records, Uncategorized11 Comments

In April of 2018, an adopter named Amey wrote a blog post – The Anti-Adoption Movement – What Does It Look Like?

I will open this post with a hats-off to adoptee Marilynn Huff who made an extraordinary comment to Amey’s post in that blog post’s comment section on adoptees’ birth certificates. Marilynn’s comment is one of the best I’ve ever read, including my own writings.

I will break down Amey’s blog post one phrase at a time.

Under the heading “Adoptees” Amey said:

Adoptees often resent the idea that they were “given up” for adoption. I hate that phrase. We say “placed’ or “made a plan.”

It doesn’t matter what YOU say – that you hate the phrase “given up” – that “We” (meaning infertile people, or adopters) say “placed” or “made a plan” – what matters is how adoptees experience the permanent separation that adoption actually is. The adoptee, as a newborn or an infant too young to have verbal and mental cognition, experiences the sudden loss of Mother as a terrifying break. This Primal Wound is internalized as the infant cries out for Mother. (Read The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier). The Primal Wound creates brain damage in certain areas of the brains of infants who are taken at birth from their Mothers. On this basis alone, adoption should be seen as extreme child abuse. With new studies being done, hopefully, it will be, and we will see a stranger movement to end adoption as we know it on a global scale.

Be sure to read this blog post and be sure to read the comments for links to scientific studies.

Amey said,

Maybe the birth parents had a problem with substance abuse or were young and not ready to parent. It doesn’t matter. The adoptee still feels unwanted and alone.

Again, it does not matter what the parental circumstances are at the time of birth, the newborn is traumatized by sudden removal of the nurturing mother within whom the infant lived for nine months. The pre-born infant hears mother’s voice and knows her emotions, and is influenced by her emotions. The pre-born infant is happy when mother is happy and feels anxiety and distress when she is nervous or angry. These are proven facts.

The pre-born infant feeds by mother’s food intake – both mother and baby share a symbiotic relationship. The unborn infant needs mother for sustenance, nutrients (in addition to feeling her love), and even receives her bacterial microbiome as she passes through the birth canal during birth. There is now evidence that the infant and mother exchange body and brain cells. The mother’s cells live on inside her offspring’s body and brain, and conversely, the infant’s cells also live on inside the mother. Scientists believe that these cells aid in immune functions.

Such phrases as

the birth parents had a problem with substance abuse or were young and not ready to parent

are a form of distancing the natural parents from their child. This is dissociating, detaching, and distracting from the primary relationship. These words are weapons meant to evoke emotions in observers who then internalize the message that adopters are then “better than” the child’s natural parents. This psychological twisting is then passed down to the adoptee who grows up feeling indebted for being saved from a life of hell with unfit parents. This distorted message permeates society’s belief that adoption saves infants and children.

I hope you, Amey, can now see that your last two sentences in that first paragraph:

It doesn’t matter. The adoptee still feels unwanted and alone

are quite true of the facts of life as experienced by a newborn or an older baby.

The first sentence in Amey’s next paragraph states:

Adoptees sometimes feel that everyone who makes this decision is selfish, while everyone says that they are selfless.

This reflects upon adoption as it happens in today’s society. Adoption has been warping and changing over the last 9 decades. When I first joined the Adoptees Rights Movement in 1975, nearly a year into my reunion with my natural family, I met mothers from the Baby Scoop Era. Here is a blog post I wrote about honoring their contributions.

I might add that you, Amey, should try to avoid words such as “everyone.” There are many adoptees out there who do not see relinquishment, or surrendering, a newborn or older child as selfish. Many adoptees understand that many mothers and fathers of adoption loss are not given proper counseling of all options available, and this includes ways to sustain keeping their child.

As a social worker, I worked in homeless shelters where our clients where homeless mothers with children or were entire families. We had a checklist of goals that we helped our clients obtain one by one – including parenting classes, finding apartments, finding employment and child care – so that the young mother and/or father could raise their own infant and older children.

Still, I have seen just the opposite – where certain social workers are hell-bent on removing children from their parents just to fill their monthly quota of “placing” children for foster care and adoption.

By using your words of “selfish” and “selfless,” I can only guess you are part of the Brave Love Movement. This Christian movement is deleterious and demoralizing to the expectant mother and the mother who has just given birth. It goes against natural to feel obligated to strangers to “make an adoption plan”- specifically because a pregnant woman or teen is already a mother. Her first and foremost obligation is to the infant she is carrying. Pre-birth adoption plans are immoral and ought to be illegal.

It is sad that modern adoption practices, even those that promote and practice open adoption, make it a point and a goal to instill unnatural feelings and beliefs in the minds of pregnant teens and young women. The idea that it is “unselfish” to give your infant to strangers is brainwashing. Many of the women who now boast that they, too, are proud mothers whom selfishly made an adoption plan for their baby, will one day wake up to the horror of what they’ve done. When they do wake up to realize that they were tricked and coerced into giving their babies to strangers, we will see them in the Anti Adoption Movement.

I’ve seen the jewelry line for Brave Love. I’ve seen T-shirts for pre-adoptive-parent- wanna-bees that state “Paper Pregnant” or “My baby is in Nepal” (for those who are waiting for a baby who will be born to a poor woman in a baby farm who will get paid to gestate a baby for strangers so she can use that money to sustain herself and her family).

Such baby farms exist so that wealthy gay men, lesbian women, heterosexual couples, or even single men and women can make a baby through buying sperm and eggs via contract and then rent the womb of a poor woman for their selfish motives of making a baby at extreme means for the pleasure of experiencing parenting.

Buying and wearing a t-shirt that state the words “paper pregnant” with the drawing of a pregnant belly is an advertisement of the absurd ego-mania that exists in today’s wanna-be-adoptive-parents. Only narcissistic, selfish women with too much money to spend would demean themselves to the point of walking around wearing such a t-shirt, let alone actually using a vulnerable young pregnant woman for the sole purpose of taking her baby upon birth.

Amey, your next sentence:

The Expectant or Birth Parents don’t want to parent; the adoptive parents only want a baby.

seems to accept the myths that are out there today. Most unexpectedly pregnant girls and women actually do want to keep their babies and to parent their child. True, there are some mothers who are, indeed, drug addictions, or are involved in crime, or are completely detached to their pre-born infant. I saw a few of these mothers in the homeless shelters I once worked at. There are mental illnesses that won’t allow a mother to be a mother. There are addictions and criminal behaviors that warrant the removal of newborns or older children from such parents.

Children born to these mothers and raised in foster care in safety carry with them their own birth certificate. They may be raised together with their own siblings. One or two of those siblings may eventually be adopted. However, the one who ages out of foster care maintains the birth certificate created upon her birth, even when her parents are dead beats, drug addicts, in prison, or do not want to have anything to do with their children. Meanwhile, the siblings who were then adopted are given new names, new birth certificates, and new parents. The siblings are still full-blood siblings but are not legally siblings.

Amey, I must challenge you to re-examine your words:

The Expectant or Birth Parents don’t want to parent

How do you know that? According to the natural mothers I communicate daily with on Facebook  and on their websites say that they wanted to parent their baby, but many were coerced and many were de-babied during birth by harsh birthing methods of the attending physician and by nurses who took the baby immediately upon birth.

Amey, your next words:

 the adoptive parents only want a baby.

say it all. Wanting a baby and then using a pregnant girl or young woman to meet your desires is the worst form of anti-woman, anti-feminist beliefs and behavior. Rich and powerful women should not abuse and use disadvantaged pregnant women to satisfy cravings to be a parent. Coveting another woman’s baby and actually going through with the plan to obtain her baby for your benefit is a very selfish act.

And your next words, Amey:

In an infant or young child adoption, they are the only people in the triad who don’t get a choice. Other people make it for them, decide what is best because they’re too young to understand. They resent that, too.

Of course adoptees resent the actions of adults who made life-altering choices and made legally-binding contracts over them when they were too young to say no. The world is now facing a great uprising. Adoptees are gathering together to not only voice opposition to what was done to them, but to end adoption altogether.

Then your next paragraph, Amey, is about adoptees:

And it doesn’t matter if they had a wonderful home life with an adoptive family. Often, they’ll say that they love their adoptive parents, but that they resent them for taking them away from their birth family. They recognize that they were given opportunities that they might never have had, yet they feel incomplete, never whole.

Yes, many adoptees do feel this way. It is a burden to walk through life knowing that you may have had “a wonderful life” and that you do love your adoptive parents, and at the same time feel that loss, feel that resentment. While many adoptees have been raised in economically superior adoptive homes, adoptees are split in half feeling guilty for wanting to know their natural parents and to know why they were not kept. Yes, many adoptees know that they were bought at a high price – thousands of dollars – $25,000 or $50,000 or $75,000. When the realization sets in as to the truth of baby-selling, baby-trafficking, and that adoption agencies make their living this way, many adoptees are disgusted as to the means they became adopted.

And yes:

For them, the loss is more powerful than the gain.

Amey, your next section is about Expectant Parents. I will only say this – that pressuring expectant mothers and fathers into a pre-birth matching contract with adoptive-parent-wanna-bees is just that – unwanted and unhealthy pressure for both the pregnant mother and her unborn child.

Your next section, Amey, is about Birth Parents is actually correct in your assessments of the situation for many natural parents.

You are correct in assessing that many Adoptive Parents are:

Adoptive parents are affected by the anti-adoption movement, but I find that they are more often Anti-Open Adoption. I think it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t me, but I understand the sentiment.

This “Anti-Open-Adoption sentiment exists because many adopters feel that they are the adoptees ONLY parents. Many adoptive parents do not want to know that there is another set of parents who has more than genetic ties to the adoptees in their care. They believe that the adoptee owes them loyalty and elegance. Often times, these types of adoptive parents are very possessive over their adoptees. Some actually believe the false-facts stated on the amended birth certificate – they are living in a delusional fantasy, believing that they gave birth to someone else’s child.

Amey, now I will tell you what happened to me.

My mother was dying of cancer while pregnant with me. During her 7th month of pregnancy, my father took his wife to the hospital. She was very sick. It was two days after Christmas 1955. The doctors x-rayed my mother’s abdomen. There they saw me and a cancerous tumor the same size as I was. Two weeks later, in early January 1956, I was born at 8 weeks gestation – two months premature. My mother died on March 28, 1956, at age 30.

My 31 year old father was left with a deceased wife and five children. His parents were old and sick. He was an only child, so he had no family to lean on. His wife’s siblings were married with several young children, and a few had newborns of their own.

At my mother’s funeral, two things happened very close to one another. The parish priest came up to my father and said, “The baby needs two parents.” A few minutes later, a woman approached my father and said, “I know someone who will take your baby.” My father was given no options. No one offered help to keep his family together. My father was a deeply religious man so he followed the priest’s suggestion. He contacted that woman and arranged for her brother and his wife to come and get me. When he gave me to my future adoptive parents, he also gave them my birth certificate, baptismal certificate, and my clothes. I was 4 months old.

My father married his second wife very soon after. His second wife helped take care of my four older siblings. Meanwhile, my adopting parents lived just one block over and three blocks up away. About nine months later, they moved six miles to the north.

By the closed adoption practices of the time, my father was told to never contact my adoptive parents. He was to stay away from me. My adoption became final when I was one year and one week old. My name was changed. My birth certificate was revoked,  sealed, and replaced by one that states my new name, and my new parents – as if I was born to them in that hospital. The Catholic Church even changed my baptismal certificate.

It is these lies and cover-ups that I resent.

I also resent my adoptive parents’ possessiveness.

In 1974, at my age of 18, I was found by siblings I did not know I had. My adoptive parents knew I had siblings, but they did not tell me. They knew where my mother was buried but never told me. Why? Because I belonged to them. I was theirs.

There is much more to my adoption/reunion story; too much for this blog post. That is why I wrote a memoir: Forbidden Family: An Adoptee’s Struggle for Identity.

There are many reasons why I am anti-adoption. I did not need a new home. I already had a home. I had parents. I should have been allowed to grow up knowing my Mom died and visiting her grave. I should have had my siblings and my father with me. Adoption took all of that away from me.

What did I gain from adoption? I was raised an only and lonely child. I had my independence. I had material middle-class things that my siblings did not have. This created resentment in them when we were reunited. While I loved my adoptive parents, I mistrusted them ever since 1974 when I learned that they lied to me for the first 18 years of my life. I spent the next few decades as the adoptee who belonged to two families, who had the burden of integrating two identities, and the burden of taken the brunt of everyone else’s opinions as to what I should feel and what I should do. It was bad for me to be an anti-adoption activist.

All four of my parents are dead now. I have no contact with any abusive relatives – that means my siblings as well as extended family by blood or by adoption. I do have close relatives on both sides…

My life was ruined because of adoption. I am very resentful, and I will fight to my dying breath to end the revocation, sealing and replacement of adoptees’ birth certificates. I join thousands of adoptees around the world who say that adoption should end.

I will close with this thought:

Amey, your last token of a misguided message is this meme:

death-is-not-the-greatest-loss-in-life.png

I don’t know who this person “Tupac Shakur” is, or was, but that meme is extremely hurtful. My mother died when I was three months old. That loss was the single most devastating event in my life. My mother’s death led to my adoption. I am not grateful for this.

On the other hand, maybe the meme is right. I lost my name, my family, and my birth certificate all because of adoption. I am supposed to be grateful and happy. I am not.

Adoption has left me fighting for my civil rights to my factual birth certificate. I fight not only for myself, but for millions of adoptees worldwide. I fight for the humanity of all pregnant girls and women, and for all mothers, and fathers, of adoption loss.

As for adoptive parents – you reap the benefits of adoption. I don’t see any of you running to legislators to turn in those amended birth certificates to demand adoption certificates instead, nor do I see any adoptive parents demanding that the revoked and sealed birth certificate of the child in your care is reinstated. I don’t see any adoptive parents willing to, and actually returning the child back to the natural parents after they rebuild their lives.

Why? The answer is because you now have what you want: ownership of someone else’s child.

That just about sums up the need for the anti-adoption movement.