Join in the discussion started by Peter W Franklin about the New Jersey ACLU at:
http://www.app.com/article/20100830/OPINION04/8310303/Where-are-adoptees-civil-liberties–
Where are adoptees’ civil liberties?
Category: Original Birth Certificate
New Letter to the Editor by Pam Hassegawa needs comments defending adoptees and natural parents
New Letter to the Editor by Pam Hassegawa needs comments defending adoptees and natural parents:
http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201009010600/OPINION02/100830035
ACLU’s adoption stance out of character
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Illegitimacy Not the Only Cover-up in Sealed and Falsified Birth Certificates
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.
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Here’s Why UNICEF is Anti-Adoption
UNICEF’s position on Inter-country adoption
Since the 1960s, there has been an increase in the number of inter-country adoptions. Concurrent with this trend, there have been growing international efforts to ensure that adoptions are carried out in a transparent, non-exploitative, legal manner to the benefit of the children and families concerned. In some cases, however, adoptions have not been carried out in ways that served the best interest of the children — when the requirements and procedures in place were insufficient to prevent unethical practices. Systemic weaknesses persist and enable the sale and abduction of children, coercion or manipulation of birth parents, falsification of documents and bribery.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which guides UNICEF’s work, clearly states that every child has the right to grow up in a family environment, to know and be cared for by her or his own family, whenever possible. Recognising this, and the value and importance of families in children’s lives, families needing assistance to care for their children have a right to receive it. When, despite this assistance, a child’s family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for her/him, then appropriate and stable family-based solutions should be sought to enable the child to grow up in a loving, caring and supportive environment.
Inter-country adoption is among the range of stable care options. For individual children who cannot be cared for in a family setting in their country of origin, inter-country adoption may be the best permanent solution.
UNICEF supports inter-country adoption, when pursued in conformity with the standards and principles of the 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-country Adoptions – already ratified by more than 80 countries. This Convention is an important development for children, birth families and prospective foreign adopters. It sets out obligations for the authorities of countries from which children leave for adoption, and those that are receiving these children. The Convention is designed to ensure ethical and transparent processes. This international legislation gives paramount consideration to the best interests of the child and provides the framework for the practical application of the principles regarding inter-country adoption contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These include ensuring that adoptions are authorised only by competent authorities, guided by informed consent of all concerned, that inter-country adoption enjoys the same safeguards and standards which apply in national adoptions, and that inter-country adoption does not result in improper financial gain for those involved in it.
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Join the great discussion at Take Away Community on Adoptees’ Access
There’s a great discussion going on at Take Away Community:
Adoptees Fight for Access to Original Birth Certificates
Monday, August 02, 2010
Read the article, listen to the radio interview, and post your own comments.
Even though we’ve been saying the same thing for decades, adoptees and our natural parents are still being ignored by lawmakers.
Many thanks to Diane Crossfield of the Adoptee Rights Coalition for speaking out and against Tom Snyder who chairs the family law section of the New Jersey State Bar Association who is in opposition of adoptees’ access to their original birth certificates.
Here are my three comments directed at Erich and the opposition. So what if my comments are repetitious to what I’ve said before. I’ll be saying the same message until all adoptees have equal access to their sealed birth certificates and until the amended birth record is a thing of the past:
I have been fighting for my rights to my original birth certificate in NYS since 1974 when I was 18 years old and found by full blood siblings my adoptive parents did not ever want me to know. This discussion currently revolves around not-married natural parents and illegitimate adoptees and an assumption that all natural parents must hide in shame of unmarried sex. Not all adoptees are of illegitimate birth. I am a half orphan. I was born to married parents, Mom died, leaving behind a newborn and 4 other children. The Catholic Church stepped in and suggested to our father that the only way to proceed was to give up the newborn so she could have two parents and keep the others. My birth certificate was intact for the first year of my life. I lived as a foster child with my pre-adoptive parents for 9 months before my adoption was finalized, after which my birth certificate (of a legitimate birth) was sealed, and a new “amended” birth certificate was issued claiming that my new parents were my parents of birth — thus claiming they were my biological parents. My true mother of birth was stripped of her right to be my mother for all eternity — and she did not give her consent for my adoption! Her “right to privacy or confidentiality” was never in question, but her right to be my mother was obliterated. My natural father, however, signed an agreement that stated he “hereby consents to said adoption and covenants and agrees to acquiesce therein and to refrain from doing or causing to be done any act or thing whatsoever which will in any way interfere with the rights, duties and privileges of said child when so adopted.” He was never told that my birth certificate would be altered and sealed. He was verbally told to stay away from my adoptive parents but they were not told to stay away from him. Other adoptees who are forced into adoption slavery are those who were also born legitimately but were kept in foster care and freed for adoption, step-parent adoptees and full and half orphans. The full spectrum of adoptees must be considered to see the full inequality of the sealed and falsified birth certificate issue. What is needed is to replace the amended and falsified birth certificate with a Certificate of Adoption, and better yet, eliminate adoption, period. Guardianship and kinship care are far superior to the irrevocable finality and destruction of adoption. Also, keep in mind that natural parents, particularly the mothers who give birth, are forbidden any copy of a birth record — as if the birth never took place. The only reason my natural father had my birth certificate was because I was born within a marriage and adoption was not the priority at my birth — the fact that my mother was dying was the priority. Adoption as practiced in America is terribly wrong on so many levels.
and
Erich- Searching and Reunion have nothing to do with unsealing birth certificates.
Protecting parents who do not wish to be found is purely an American ideal. This question is not an issue in other more progressive parts of the world.
Parents who give birth, or who sire a child are obligated to be named on a birth certificate for the person they created. Those are the facts of life. Would you suggest that unmarried fathers should not be forced to take paternity suits and pay child support? These men don’t want to be found but they are found, even if they are married to someone else and have a first family.
Women whose names are on an original birth certificate factually gave birth. Removing their names from a birth certificate to “protect” them from embarrassment is fictionalizing the truth of what happened in the birth of a real person. It is also fraud.
As I stated in a previous post, my natural mother died 3 months after my birth. She did not relinquish me for adoption, my natural father did so 1month after Mom’s death. There was no shame in my birth, yet the law sealed my actual birth certificate from me and issued a false Certificate of Live Birth with the following information on it: that a woman gave birth to me, (who factually did not), that this birth was a “single” birth, that the birth took place in a designated hospital at a specific time. NONE of those facts took place. Those details were taken from my actual birth certificate and re-stated on my amended birth certificate. The mother named on my new birth certificate did not factually give birth to me, therefore, the amended Certificate of Live Birth issued one year and three months after my actual birth is factually incorrect. NO hospital records recording that mother’s labor and delivery will ever be found, yet my amended birth certificate clearly states that she gave birth to me vaginally in a single, not twin, not triplet, birth. How do you justify that, Erich?
The gov altered my identity. To be factually correct, the facts of my adoption ought to be presented on a Certificate of Adoption. But the American government has not caught on to what is done in other more progressive countries, such as The Netherlands. There, each adoptee has one and only one unsealed birth certificate, and one adoption certificate and BOTH of these documents are needed for identity purposes.
For more information, please visit my website: http//forbiddenfamily.com and buy my book, Forbidden Family. My adoptive mother threw my original birth certificate and adoption papers at me when I was first reunited with siblings she never wanted me to know. I have published these documents in my book. Even though I have all of my personal papers, and no other new information will be found, I am still legally banned from receiving my original birth certificate from New York State. I am 54 years old and sick of government interference in my life.
and
Erich- your sudden politeness and wishing “us” luck in working this out does nothing to actually change the laws, nor change public opinion. In the past as well as present, unmarried women who give birth are considered as deviants, as pointed out by Carol Whitehead. So, their illegitimate children were, and are, also considered deviants because they are illegitimate bastards, politely known as adoptees. However, as I have pointed out, many adoptees are not illegitimate, we are half and full orphans, or other legitimately-born people who were adopted out of foster care or by stepparents. Yet, as the law was written nearly 80 years ago to “legitimize” illegitimates, adoptees who were legitimately born and then adopted face misplaced stigma and discrimination. These are all moral judgments yet when one looks at the current state of affairs – pun intended or not – of unmarried couples living together and producing children, and so many divorces and remarriages giving rise to so many blended families, why is it still considered deviant behavior for adoptees to want truthful birth certificates? Many people answered your questions, Erich, now, I’m asking you to address all the points I’ve raised in my posts here. Clearly, with white Christians rushing to adopt all those black unfortunate orphans from Haiti and Africa, (and other racial children from Korea and China and South America) there are many children being removed from their families who are not orphans at all and who are not illegitimately born yet these adoptees are subject to the same mangled birth certificates as illegitimate white, domestically born, bastards. No one deserves to be mislabeled and mistreated due to the assumptions and value judgments of others. I am a legitimate half orphan bastardized by adoption. What do you say to that, Erich? How about all of you who oppose adoptees’ access to the truth of our births? How many more decades will pass before you self-righteous bigots stay out of our lives and give us back our civil rights? Just how many priests have fathered illegitimate bastard children? Is that the real reason the Catholic Church opposes adoptee access to our sealed birth certificates? Why are our birth certificates falsified at all? Why not do what other more progressive countries do – issue a Certificate of Adoption and keep both documents unsealed?
~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, born Doris M Sippel, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.
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RePost: Graying Adoptees Still Searching for Their Identities
The following is a great article to dispel myths surrounding adoptees’ and natural parents’ access to birth records, however, the focus centers around illegitimacy. My birth records were sealed and falsified and I am not illegitimate. The laws do not even apply to me, yet, I am bound by them because I am adopted. This is why I chose to post this entry under the screen name of “legitimatebastard”. The law treats me as if I were a bastard. I resent being placed in this predicament by outdated laws that do not apply to adoptees today.
Read the article and then contribute to the discussion at the link:
Graying Adoptees Still Searching for Their Identities
Only 9 States Allow Adult Adoptees to Find Original Birth Certificates, But Changes Being Pushed
55 comments
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
July 27, 2010
Carol Cook of Blairstown, N.J., grew up thinking she was a WASP with Native American blood, a splash of ethnicity that pleased her because she had majored in anthropology in college.
But at 33, the executive secretary and mother of two inadvertently discovered a secret her entire family had held from her: Cook was adopted, born in a Catholic hospital and was likely Italian.
“I suspect the [secret] evolved and it became more impossible to tell me,” she said. “I had good parents. But suddenly I was not the person I thought. I was a totally different nationality. I was floored.”
Now she is 68 and a grandmother, but Cook’s struggle to find her identity is never-ending. In New Jersey — and in all but nine states — it’s against the law to for her to get her original birth certificate.
Today, most adoptions are open, but for a generation of graying Americans like Cook, the doors to their identities are irrevocably closed shut.
Now, in growing numbers, adult adoptees are trying to overturn legislation that sealed up records, but in most states they are fighting an uphill battle.
New Jersey is the latest battleground over laws that were originally intended to protect the birth child and her mother from moral shame, but many say are now antiquated and cruel.
Since 1980, efforts to unseal birth records in New Jersey have failed, but an open adoption records bill that recently passed a Senate committee will go before the state Assembly this fall.
Birth parents would have 12 months to request that their names not be made public or to state how they would want to be contacted by a birth child.
Lawmakers in at least 11 states are now considering the issue and in the last decade seven states have expanded access, according to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, an organization dedicated to education and research.
Today, birth records are broadly available to adult adoptees in Tennessee, Alabama, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon and Illinois, as well as Kansas and Alaska, where they were never sealed.
Just this month, the institute issued a report recommending every state enact legislation restore rights to adult adoptees.
“How a human being comes into a family should not dictate what rights they have,” said Executive Director Adam Pertman. “There has to be a level playing field.”
Adoptees also need access to medical records, according to Pertman, noting that the surgeon general says that knowing family history, “is the most important thing for health.”
The 46-page policy brief also contends that the vast majority of birth mothers do not want to be anonymous to the children they relinquished.
“The single biggest factor that helps women heal and deal with loss and the grief they feel when placing a child up for adoption is knowing the child is OK,” said Pertman.
In New Hampshire, where birth certificates were unsealed in 2005, out of 24,000 records only 12 birth mothers stipulated that they wanted no contact with their birth children, according to research.
“Knowing who you are and where you come from, it turns out, is not just a matter of fulfilling curiosity, it’s something that helps human beings develop more fully psychologically to understand and feel better about themselves,” he said.
As for Cook, she said she doesn’t feel “connected.”
“I have friends who are really into genealogy and when they start talking about it, I shut down,” she said. “I don’t want to be rude, but it’s upsetting.”
In 1975, an older half-sister who knew Cook was adopted told an aunt, who shocked her with the news.
“I asked me mother if it was true and she said, ‘yes,'” according to Cook. “I was standing in the kitchen and literally slid down the wall. Everything just went out from under me.”
Her mother told her she was born at Columbus Hospital in the Italian section of Newark, N.J., nothing else. The hospital has since closed and Catholic Charities told her they have no records.
For a time, Cook attended some advocacy groups and even called the records office to see if she could get her birth certificate.
“I got this nasty person who said, ‘Why do you even want to know it, like I was some kind of horrible person. I really just couldn’t face it.”
When Cook goes to the doctor’s office and forms ask for her health history, she writes “not applicable.”
Cook’s granddaughter was diagnosed with celiac disease and she has wondered if the genetic disorder came from her side of the family. “Whether it has any bearing, I don’t know,” she said.
Religious Groups Oppose Access to Original Birth Certificates
The New Jersey bill faces opposition from New Jersey Right to Life, the Catholic Church, the New Jersey Bar Association, the National Council for Adoption and even the ACLU, who defend the privacy rights of birth parents.
For 30 years, Pam Hasegawa of Morristown, N.J., has been fighting to change a 70-year-old law in New…
For 30 years, Pam Hasegawa of Morristown, N.J., has been fighting to change a 70-year-old law in New Jersey that denies adoptees their original birth certificates. A grandmother and adoptee, Hasegawa still doesn’t have access to her birth certificate, but believes her mother may have been Scandinavian.
(Courtesy Pam Hasegawa)
“Birth parents who place children for adoption should have the right to keep their identities private, both prospectively and retroactively,” is the stance of the New Jersey Coalition to Defend Privacy in Adoption.
“It almost makes us sound like terrorists who are going to creep into people’s lives and destroy them,” said Cook.
Pam Hasegawa, an adoptee and grandmother who has led the 30-year fight in New Jersey with the New Jersey Coalition for Adoption Reform & Education, said their argument is “full of holes.”
Today, with open adoptions the norm, “most birth mothers choose to meet with the family and to know each other’s names, and if they can, get the birth certificate or a copy of it before it’s finalized to give to the adoptive parents,” she said.
Historically, birth records were closed to protect children from the stigma of being born “out of wedlock” and having “illegitimate” stamped on their birth certificates.
It also was designed to protect the adoptive family from intervention or, as older adoption contracts state, “molestation” by a birth mother.
Hasegawa always knew she was adopted, but later learned more detail about her birth mother’s identity through letters written to an adoptive aunt. Her birth parents had married in Paris, but after her father was killed, her mother had to return to the United States and, without help, reluctantly gave up her daughter.
Hasegawa said birth mothers were never promised anonymity. They were forced to sign papers that relinquished their babies, giving up all rights to knowing their fate — if they were later sick, died or even if they were ever adopted.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, most states had sealed adoption court records completely but, typically allowed adult adoptees to obtain their original birth certificates, according to adoption researcher Elizabeth Samuels, a law professor at the University of Baltimore.
“In the 1950s when adoption was more popular, they wanted to hide the shame of the illegitimate family and the adoptive family didn’t want interference in creating the perfect family,” she said. “The adoptive birth certificate should reflect the new person.”
In 1960, the laws in 40 percent of the states still permitted adult adoptees to inspect them, but between then and 1990, all but a handful of the rest of the states closed the birth records to adult adoptees.
When mores changed, a generation of adoptees began searching for their birth parents, and adoptive parents felt threatened that their children wouldn’t love them, according to Samuels.
The focus of protection shifted away from the birth mother and her child to the rights of adoptive families. Efforts to keep records closed were led by adoption agencies, attorneys general and legislators, but not by the birth mothers themselves.
Today’s adoptive parents are more apt to fight for the “rights of the child and their origin,” said Samuels. And birth mothers are speaking out.
In 1979, Mary Lou Cullen gave up a son in a closed adoption when she was just 19, never telling a soul, not even her husband or later three children. She was contacted by her birth son Nathan, who is now 30, by letter eight years ago.
“He said, ‘If you don’t want any communication, that’s fine, but if you do, this is how you can get a hold of me.’ I never even second guessed or had a moment of hesitation, knowing I was going to contact him,” said the Marshfield, Massachusetts, mother of three more children. “But I had a whole lot of people to tell.”
Birth Mother Supports Reform
The reunion and revealing her secret was “stressful,” said Cullen, who is now president of Concerned United Birthparents. But after working it out, birth mother and birth son have become close.
Jean Sacconaghi Strauss, a documentary filmmaker and adoptee, chronicles finding her birth mother…
Jean Sacconaghi Strauss, a documentary filmmaker and adoptee, chronicles finding her birth mother Lee Iacarella Beno, then reuniting Beno with her own birth mother Mary Brown Milosey. The three generations of women, all adoptees, reunited more than three decades after Strauss was born and have since become good friends.
(Courtesy Jean Sacconaghi Strauss)
Even though both Nathan’s adoptive parents and birth parents supported the reunion, he can still not access his birth certificate in Ohio, where he was born.
“Once Nathan met me and my family, he said he felt like it completed him,” said Cullen, now 50. “For me, it was very difficult for a number of years, but it’s my truth and I don’t need to deny it anymore or hide it or cover it up. I can live my honest truth.”
“On top of that, I got to meet my first born, who I never thought I would see again,” she said. “I had no idea what had happened to him. And I was able to deal with the grief that I had never dealt with before.”
But Jean Strauss, a filmmaker who for 30 years has has chronicled the lives of adult adoptees in books and documentaries, admits, “It’s not all about reunions.”
Her film on adult adoptees searching for their identities, “For the Life of Me,” premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March.
“Owning your own information is a very powerful thing,” said the now mother of two. “You are a human being and this belongs to you.”
Born Cecelia Ann Porter in California in 1955, where records are still sealed, Strauss hired a private investigator to find her birth mother after her beloved adoptive mother died in 1988.
“I was terrified I might hurt her,” said Strauss, who described her adoptive mother as “my best friend.”
When they reunited, Strauss was 33 and her birth mother Lee Beno was 54. Six years later, they located Beno’s 80-year-old birth mother, Mary Miklosey, who had grown up in an orphanage where she had been sent when her own mother died.
“The two of them hadn’t seen each other in 60 years,” said Strauss, who told the story in her short film, “The Triumvirate.”
“It’s given me a tremendous sense of freedom,” Miklosey said in the film. “I can say, this is my daughter and my granddaughter and look at the world and say I have a family.”
Strauss also learned she had seven brothers and sisters and for the first time found others who “biologically related to me.” Tragically, a younger brother died of lymphoma, a new relationship she lamented was cut short because of the secrecy of adoption.
“I can’t tell you how it changed me to find out the information,” she said. “I felt so empowered by it and it’s what drives me to help other people to have the truth.”
The “stigma of illegitimacy” that sealed up records has disappeared, notes Strauss, but the world is “much different now.”
Across the border from Kansas in Missouri, an adult adoptee must have the the adoptive parents’ permission.
“Can you imagine being 40 or 50 years old and having to get permission?” she asked. “You have to prove your adoptive parents are dead. If you jump through those hoops and contact the birth parents, they have to give permission. If you are 50, the odds are pretty high that your birth mother is dead.”
In the most restrictive states adult adoptees must pay court and lawyer fees to show cause why their birth certificates should be released.
“It’s a capricious process where some judges say, ‘sure’ and others say, ‘no way, even if your life is threatened,” according to Pertman of the Donaldson Institute.
“People in all 50 states every day are finding their birth parents through the Internet, Facebook and private detectives,” said Pertman. “So what’s the argument and if you don’t believe they are evil people, why not just give them to them.”
As for Carol Cook, she still longs to know who she is — so much so, that she has recently ordered a DNA kit to at least find clues to her genetic roots. Though even if the law passes and she can get her birth certificate, Cook said her parents are likely dead.
“Everyone knew I was adopted except me,” said Cook. “I think that has affected me in some ways. I find it difficult to trust people, It’s not overt. I just can’t get real close to people…I couldn’t let the rest of my life fall apart but it would be nice to know if I can find something out.”
posted by legitimatebastard ~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.
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Watch This Important Video on Birth Certificate Debate in New Jersey: Great Job Pam Hasegawa!
This was submitted for New Jersey Adoption Reformers to watch, but it needs a wider audiance.
First, view the video, which is a repeat program: http://www.njn.net/television/webcast/dueprocess.html
NJN show on Adoption Records starts today:
Airs Sundays at 9:30 am and 6:30 pm • Tuesdays at 11:30 pm.
***NOTE: To watch this on your computer any time this coming week from this morning’s airing on, go to http://tinyurl.com/28urzp and then http://www.njn.net/television/webcast/dueprocess.html
Select “Adoption Records” from the box on the right, then “Watch this week’s show” in the left menu bar 🙂 – Note from Pam Hasegawa.
***After watching the show, please send your feedback 🙂 to: http://www.njn.net/about/feedback.html
Due Process is NJN’s award-winning weekly series on law and justice issues. Launched in 1996, Due Process is its 14th season with the same cutting edge coverage that has marked its more than decade-long tenure.
Criminal law, civil law, consumer law, civil liberties law. In thirteen years on NJN, Due Process has done them all.
Recently we’ve covered issues like the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Pew Study on Prisons, the nature of corruption in New Jersey, and the strides made towards diversity in the legal profession.
The bottom line for every Due Process episode is: Have we aired all sides of an issue? Have we achieved both balance and diversity?
Here is the Feedback I sent in:
Congratulations to adoptee and activist Pam Hasegawa for her excellent and articulate interview!
Language of others is a problem. Terms such as “Adopted child” and “Promises made to children” are demeaning. The correct term is “adoptees” and “adopted adults”. Even “adults adopted as children” puts a slant toward immaturity to a topic that requires mature thought and attitude. It is demeaning for legislators or the general public to unconsciously refer to adoptees as children. Those of us who are in this civil rights reform are not children. We are adults. Our civil rights were stolen from us when we were infants or young children. We fight for our rights as adults — as adoptees who are not children.
Right to Life has no business in the say over the birth records of individuals. This is a Civil rights cause, not a religious cause.
What also needs to be addressed is the fact that not only are adoptees’ birth certificates sealed upon the finalization of adoption, but we are given falsified birth certificates to replace our true birth certificates. These falsified birth certificates are also stealing our civil rights because they claim we were born to mothers who factually did not give birth to us as they adopted us factually.
Also, not all adoptees are illegitimate and come from mothers who are perceived as lower-class. Many of us, myself included, are full or half orphans, adopted by step parents or were born to married parents and were in foster care. Sealed records and falsified birth certificates were created to protect the illegitimate from knowing their “unfortunate” origins. My origin was not unfortunate nor was my birth embarrassing. My mother died when I was 3 months of age.
All adoptees need to be freed from oppressive legislation that has no importance in today’s suposed enlightened society.
— Joan M Wheeler, born as Doris M Sippel, adoptee, activist, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing.
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I’m a New York adoptee in shock over Illinois’ new “wonderful” law for adoptees
Wow. What a disgrace.
I’m a New York adoptee in shock over Illinois’ new “wonderful” law for adoptees. This is a travesty.
The law is bad enough, but the reporting is bad, too. (See below)
When I joined the adoption reform movement in 1974, public opinion and glaring misperceptions about adoptees and our natural parents were plentiful. Time has not healed these wounds. Despite our reform efforts, society still has misconstrued what we are all about, thanks to the not-so-bright reporting and myths that do not die.
Public officials in Illinois also show a tremendous lack of concern for the public they serve. Granted, I am an outsider from another state, but in adoption reform, as with any other public concern, voices of the people should be heard. I wrote to Sara Feigenholtz and to Illinois Governor Quinn, pointing out the flaws, in what was just a few weeks ago, a bad bill. Instead of treating my letters with respect and professionalism, Sara Feigenholtz and Illinois Governor Quinn did not even respond. By sharp contrast, whenever I have written to my New York Senators or House Representatives or the Governor, my letters were always responded to with quick respectful letters, and sometimes emails, with pointed references to the content of my letters and what the legislator or governor would do to act on the issue of discussion.
When I traveling between Buffalo and Albany a few times, and met with legislators who did not always agree with adoption reformers’ messages, I witnessed both productive and not so productive meetings. Still, there was always professionalism. At the end of even a heated debate, there was professional courtesy.
I have seen none of that professionalism with Sara Feigenholtz and Illinois Governor Quinn. They do not seem to care. I’ve received nothing; not even a letter letting me know that they don’t agree. But they did read my website.
Why should they respond when they seem to think they are shinning stars in Illinois?
Triona did her best to explain her side in the article below, but the reporter gave her minimal coverage. Pam and Ann made terrific comments after this article. I’m sure more will be added as this news spreads.
I’ve listened to both sides of the debate. I’ve once supported, even recently, conditional legislation because I was not yet firm enough in my own convictions. Growth is a process. Even more so now I beleive that adoption reform MUST be for civil rights for ALL adoptees or not at all. I may lose friends over this and if I do, so be it. I care for my fellow adoptees and see how hard theyall work. And the hard work of mothers (and fathers, but mostly mothers) of adoption loss work hard, too. We all contribute to the larger goal, however small or big our contribution. I hear the pleas of desperatation. I feel the pain of defeat.
We need more than state by state, incremental legislation. We need a cohesive civil rights fight to achieve the goal of adoptees’ recognition as free citizens to freely ask for and receive our own birth certificates. We need to stop the bull. We need to stop producing falsified birth certificates. We need progressive thought and action.
I know we’re getting old and dying.
Is this Sophie’s Choice? Save one. Keep one. Trade the other because it is a no-win situation. Is there remorse?
We need real civil rights for adoptees. Once that is achieved, the human trafficking in children may be diminished, perhaps even halted. One group of adults will not be discriminated against in favor of others. We no longer have slavery and women can vote. It wasn’t always that way.
Here’s the complete article and comments as of right now:
Adoptees cheer birth certificate law
‘Today is no doubt the most meaningful day of my life’
May 22, 2010
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter
In a room full of adoptive parents, children and birth parents, Gov. Quinn signed a law Friday designed to let adult adoptive children finally get their birth certificates.
Birth parents who don’t want to be found will have 1½ years to get their names blacked out on their children’s birth certificates. But backers expect four out of five birth parents will opt to let their children find them.
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (center), who was adopted, rejoices Friday after Gov. Quinn signed the law that allows adult adoptees in Illinois to get their birth certificates.
(John H. White/Sun-Times)
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Torment drove Feigenholtz to find birth mom
The law builds on the state’s 1999 birth registry, which facilitates adopted children finding birth parents who don’t mind being found. But the new law takes it a step further.
“Today is no doubt the most meaningful day of my life,” said state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), who had already tracked down her birth mother.
Feigenholtz cried as she said, “I will be able to walk into the state’s Office of Vital Records, plunk down my $15, and get a copy of my original birth certificate. On it will be the name of the woman who gave birth to me 53 years ago. To some, it may not sound like a big deal, but it is.”
Feigenholtz and other adoptive children and parents at the signing talked about living life with big question marks, searching faces every time they went into a mall, wondering if they could be walking past their lost child or parent.
“I have a loving wife and two children,” said former NFL fullback Howard Griffith. But despite spending holidays surrounded by his loving adoptive family and his wife and kids, “There was always a time during those holidays where I would say, ‘Who am I?’ You have all these people around, but you don’t know who you are. You don’t know where you come from. I have had the honor to meet my biological family. I was one of the fortunate ones.”
Feigenholtz said the law was modeled after similar laws in Maine and New Hampshire to balance the rights of adoptive children and parents. But some advocacy groups complain that Feigenholtz and other drafters compromised too much.
“It does not actually open adoption records,” said Triona Guidry, whose birth mother will not let Guidry get a copy of her birth certificate. Even under the new law, the best Guidry will get is a birth certificate with her mother’s name redacted. “Equal rights apply to everyone. Everyone should have the right to go into that courthouse, pay their $15 and get their birth certificate.”
But stripping away all privacy rights for parents might make them less inclined to give up their children for adoption in the first place, proponents of the bill say.
“I learned early on what an emotional and tricky area of the law this us,” said state Senate President John Cullerton, who teased Feigenholtz that the reason he signed on to her crusade was that, “She said if I can pass this bill out of the Senate, she’ll vote for any bill I tell her to vote for for the rest of my life. It’s like I have my own vote over in the House. We’re going to start with that next week.”
A few key provisions of the law:
• Effective immediately, children and parents involved in adoptions that took place before 1946 can get birth certificates.
• For later cases, Feigenholtz and other state officials will spend the next 1½ years notifying birth parents and adoptive children that they need to contact the state and declare whether or not they wish to be found. Notices will go out on Illinois’ residents’ vehicle renewal stickers and other state documents. After Nov. 15, 2011, people involved in adoption can request birth certificates, and if the other parties involved have filed no objections, the birth certificates will be turned over.
• If a birth parent says no, an adoptive child can ask again in five years and the state will check to see whether the parent has changed her or his mind.
COMMENTS
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Unitarian Universalist Church Does Not Quite Get it About Mothers Day and Adoption
I write today’s blog post from the point of view of being the daughter of two mothers: one who gave me life and the other who raised me.
It is not easy being the daughter of two mothers, especially since my time with my first mother was so short. She died when I was three months old. She was dying during her pregnancy with me — a death that resulted in my father’s grief and belief that his only option and the best choice of action he could do for me was to relinquish me to the total care of another set of parents.
I do not believe that was the best choice. I needed to be with the family I was born into.
But since I was raised instead by a stranger who became my mother through a legal decree, I struggle through the sadness and loss each and every day of my life. I grieve for the family I lost because of adoption. I grieve for the loss of a mother who left the earth far too early. I grieve for the mother who adopted me as she was misguided in her possessiveness. She clings to me now in a nursing home. I give her what I can, but mostly, what’s done is done. I’m sad for her suffering and pending death. I also have a step mother who is married to my natural father.
Mother’s Day is a day of sadness for me.
I start each Sunday, including Mother’s Day, by attending a service at my local UU Church.
It’s bad enough that a dear friend of mine, a mother of adoption loss, will not attend our local UU Church (she used to) for the hypocrisy there. I agree with her. There’s wealthy adoptive parents who give lip-service about the natural parents of the adopted children they hold dear. Like the adoptive mother who got a standing ovation for adopting a three year old Haitian earthquake survivor. And don’t get me started about the abundance of gays and lesbians at church who use ANONYMOUS sperm and eggs and surrogate mothers and don’t seem to care that they willingly withhold knowledge of the absent genetic parent(s) to the children so created. In the face of all of that, I still attend the Buffalo Unitarian Universalist Church. My friend doesn’t. I miss her. I honor her for her integrity to stay away.
I look beyond these human failings, even our minister who spoke awhile back about the appropriations of other religions, or rather, the miss-appropriations, without even noticing, or caring, that many people appropriate other people’s children with a sense of entitlement.
It is not easy to look beyond these in-your-face adoption assaults.
I am at this church weekly for the spiritual, intellectual, and suburb musical performances of our choir and musicians.
Today’s guest minister, Reverend Sally Hamlin, participated in a service inspired and encouraged by Debra Hafner, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, sexologist and Director of the Religious Institute. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-debra-haffner/honor-thy-mother-reducing_b_549650.html
This was the responsive reading: http://www.religiousinstitute.org/sites/default/files/initiatives/Rachel_Sabbath_Responsive_Reading_Mothers_Day_0.pdf
A Responsive Reading for Mother’s Day
On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers and caregivers everywhere – women who have given birth, women who have adopted children, women who care for the children of others.
We affirm the nurturing love of mothers, and the blessings of parenthood.
We pray for a society in which pregnancy is freely chosen, and mothers and children receive the care and support they need.
We affirm the sanctity of life and the moral agency of women.
We mourn the 1,500 women around the world who will die today in childbirth, or from the complications of pregnancy, because they lack basic health services.
We envision a world where childbirth is safe, and all children are wanted and loved.
Together, we break the silence surrounding women and their partners who suffer infertility, pregnancy loss, still births, and difficulties in adoption.
We bless them and hold them in love.
We celebrate the many ways that people create families and become mothers in our communities.
We call for a commitment to make every day Mother’s Day.
© Religious Institute, 2010, May 9
And this bulletin was read out loud:
Global Maternal Health
* Every minute, a woman dies in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications – at least half a million women worldwide every year.
* 99 percent of all maternal deaths occur in developing nations. More than half occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and one-third in South Asia.
* Most maternal deaths take place during labor, delivery or in the immediate post-partum period. More than 3.4 million newborns die within the first week of life.
* More than one million children are left motherless every year due to maternal deaths. Children are three to 10 times more likely to die within two years of the mother’s death.
* The leading cause of death for girls ages 15-19 worldwide is pregnancy.
* There is no single cause of death and disability for men that compares with the magnitude of maternal death and disability.
* Doubling current global investments in family planning and pregnancy-related health care (to approximately $24.6 billion) could save the lives of 400,000 women and 1.6 million infants every year.
The Rachel Sabbath Initiative: Saving Women’s Lives supports the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 5, which focuses on improving maternal health. The Religious Institute calls on congregations across the country to raise awareness and support for the UN’s targets of reducing maternal mortality worldwide and achieving universal access to reproductive health care by 2015. This initiative is named for the matriarch Rachel, who died in childbirth (Gen. 35:16-20).
Religious Institute, 21 Charles Street, Suite 140, Westport, CT 06880. Join the Faithful Voices Network at http://www.religiousinstitute.org
In an effort to spread the word that maternal health is important, the UU Church sorely misses the mark on the focus of adoption.
Here is what I AM ADDING to the above (in bold and italics):
We don’t have specific statistics, but for every adoptee there is a mother who gave birth. That mother suffers the loss of her child to adoption but society does not recognize nor acknowledge that loss. There are millions of childless mothers (because there are at least 6 to 7 million adoptees in America) who grieve for the loss of their babies and who dread Mother’s Day because they were made feel shame and guilt for even being a mother in the first place. We must practice Adoption Prevention.
A Responsive Reading for Mother’s Day
On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers and caregivers everywhere – women who have given birth, women who have adopted children, women who care for the children of others. We also honor mothers who have lost their infants to unwanted relinquishment to the adoption industry by resolving to end this practice of taking other mothers’ children as our own.
We affirm the sanctity of life and the moral agency of women.
We mourn the 1,500 women around the world who will die today in childbirth, or from the complications of pregnancy, because they lack basic health services. We mourn the countless women around the world who suffer the moral indignation of disrespecting the pregnancies and infant births by the unwanted snatching of their infants at the moment of birth at Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Birthing Rooms that allow adopting couples to witness the sacred moment of birth, and mothers who are victims of Open Adoption scams and Open Adoption Agencies. We mourn the scorn still inflicted upon young teens and young women who are not married and humiliated into giving up their wanted babies because society tells them they cannot parent their own children.
We envision a world where childbirth is safe, and all children are wanted and loved.
Together, we break the silence surrounding women and their partners who suffer infertility, pregnancy loss, still births, and difficulties in adoption. Difficulties in adopting other women’s children? We break the silence that women who desperately want their children are taken advantage of by the cruelty of the adoption industry — women who want their children ought to not suffer their children ripped from their arms into the waiting arms of adopting parents. If and only IF a child does not have caring parents is GUARDIANSHIP NOT ADOPTION ever a substitute for motherhood. In cases of abuse and neglect, removing a child from harm is best, but working toward reunification and stabilization of that family unit is primary to the wholeness of that mother and her children.
We bless them and hold them in love.
We celebrate the many ways that people create families and become mothers in our communities. We celebrate to every mother the right to be mothers in life, and to be named on their child’s birth certificate, not dishonored by sealing and falsifying that document. This means that we honor the facts of birth by issuing ONLY 1 true Certificate of Live Birth and strive for the abolition of the amended birth certificate in adoption; such a document is a mockery of motherhood. Ultimately we strive for the abolition of adoption itself for every mother who gives birth and who wants her child needs to be a mother and every child needs their mother. For adoptive mothers everywhere, we strive for the acceptance that the role of raising children can be handled by a caregiver who is a guardian who does not usurp the dignity of another mother by taking her child.
I have no choice but to accept that I have two mothers: one by birth and one by adoption. My lesson learned from my life lived in this reality is to strive for a better world in which the sanctity of motherhood is respected everywhere on this planet. What might appear to be harsh to the adoptive mothers out there is actually a plea: stop trying to own someone else’s child and if you must fulfill your desire to be in a parenting role, be a guardian and not an adoptive mother. A guardian respects that child’s identity and true mother. Adoption, by its very nature, disrespects both the child and her natural mother by destroying the natural mother-child bond. Caring and love in a parenting role can be achieved by guardianship. Offended? I am offended that my life as the daughter of my mother who died in my infancy was not honored nor respected because of the all-almighty power of adoption.
~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.
PS — See this post: Happy Birthmother Day or Happy Adopter Day; and this quote from AustinHolistic : Which makes me think, if a woman wants her child, we need to provide emotional support, financial support, and psychological support for women who want their children: and this post with this quote: There is no paradox, no contradiction and certainly no upside in having been on the loosing end of the adoption exchange.
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My Response to Sara Feigenholtz: No Thanks for the Insult
Sara Feigenholtz spouted off to an adoption reformer on Monday. Bastardette wrote a post displaying the email and commentary yesterday; see it here.
After reading Ms. Feigenholtz’s email, I decided to give Sara an education by writing her a real letter:
April 27, 2010
Sara Feigenholtz, Illinois State Representative
1051 W. Belmont
Chicago, Illinois 60657
Dear Sara Feigenholtz:
Sara, you, or a staff member using your email address, wrote the following email to an adoption reformer; shame on you. Very unprofessional, indeed:
To:Lori Jeske
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: HB 5428
Lori:
Thank you so much for your kind remarks about HB 5428.
We will pay for your travel and housing expenses if you will come here and start working on a new bill that completes the effort so that all adoptees get their obc. Are you ready to move to Illinois and sacrifice your life to work for adoption reform for the next fifteen years in the frigid winter tundra of Illinois?
Would you consider giving Representative Feigenholtz the key to your (delusional) Eutopian world where all ungrateful bastards think it’s easy to pass a bill that makes everyone happy AND CAN ACTUALLY PASS ? Pass a law? what a concept !!
Many Illinois born 65+ year old adoptees will get their birth certificates BEFORE THEY DIE— very soon.
We will tell them that you would prefer to throw good under the bus while waiting for perfect and that you think they should wait a little longer.
Good luck in Washington state with your efforts. We can hear the unsealing now…….
NOT.
YOu sound so positive and committed to opening all records that I wish you could give me the key to your adoption.
Sara, I demand a written apology from you. I am an adoptee, but I am not a bastard.
Sara, I hereby take you up on your offer for a job. I live in the frozen tundra of Buffalo, New York, so moving to Illinois will not be that much of hardship for me. I am a disabled social worker, (SSI not SSDI) disabled by 54 years of stress caused by adoption and ignorance. You will have to provide me with accommodations to my disabilities (which I will not discuss with you until I have the job you offer).
I have sacrificed my life by working on adoption reform and personal recovery from adoption trauma since I was 18 years old. I have been fighting prejudice against all adoptees and our natural parents since 1974. I have been victimized by adoption for all of my life.
I will be happy to work with you to devise a clean bill that will not give compromises: you either have full civil rights, or you don’t. Adoption reform legislation should give all adoptees what they deserve: unconditional access to certified copies of their true and sealed birth certificates. No person is under parental authority after the age of majority, and so it should be in adoption reform.
In fact, I have already done the work for the Federal level. See: Chapter 41, Proposal for Federal Legislation on Adoptees’ Birth Records, in my enclosed book, Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing (http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000137652). See also: Chapter 37, Presenting My Personal Documents as Evidence of State Fraud. See also: Chapter 38, Unequal Treatment of 1 Half Orphan Out of 36 Resulted in a Traumatic Life Outcome — A Social Work Assessment (of my adoption). Yes: three out of four families (my adoptive mother’s family, my adoptive father’s family and my natural mother’s family) all conspired to keep me away from my siblings and my father. These are the keys to my adoption, as you snidely asked Lori Jeske to provide to you about her adoption. I know you mean legislative and legal keys, but without understanding the family dynamics, you won’t have a clear picture of the destruction caused by adoption. Once you see how the interwoven family dynamics worked within, and because of, the framework of legal adoption, you then have a better picture of what to do to dismantle the beast of adoption and free its victims.
So you think all adoptees are ungrateful bastards, do you? Well, I am not a bastard, but I AM an ungrateful half orphan, dear Queen Sara. How dare you insult me and my fellow adoptees!
Adoptees come in all flavors: adopted by step parents — meaning that they were conceived within a marriage; children of married parents are lost to adoption for a variety of reasons; and many of us were born legitimately but lost one of both parents by death — we are either half or full orphans. All of us in these sub-categories of adoptees are technically NOT illegitimate bastards, but we are all funneled together with bastards under the sealed records laws of adoption. By law, I am treated like a bastard because New York State seized my birth certificate as if I were a criminal, then issued a falsified birth certificate that indicates I was born to woman who factually did not give birth to me.
Meanwhile, illegitimate bastards are conceived everyday and live with their parents in their common-law marriages, and these bastards are never “legitimized” by adoption, nor are they ever given a “new” birth certificate, nor is their birth certificate ever sealed. Not one single legislator has ever given me an explanation for the direct discrimination against all adoptees. In a society that glorifies: single women (lesbians or straight women) with money who can pay for fertility treatments using anonymous sperm; or gay men who use the services of a rental womb of a surrogate mother and then use anonymous eggs to create children; or married people who trick their children into believing that they were conceived within a marriage when, in reality, a mother accepts anonymous sperm and pretends that her husband is the father and that child’s birth certificate does not reflect the truth — NONE of these DC (Donor Conceived) individuals are considered illegitimate bastards, nor are they treated as such in society or by laws that seal and then falsify their birth certificates.
I deeply resent being swept up in the dirt bag and persecuted because I am a half orphaned adoptee. My mother DIED when I was three months old. I was the youngest of five children born to married parents. My father relinquished me and kept the others. And I am expected to be grateful for being raised for 18 years in the same city as my siblings, yet being forced to live a life in protected custody apart from them. Disgusting. This was not only identity theft, but child abuse of me, and the siblings from which I was separated.
At age 54, I am still legally banned from obtaining my own birth certificate, yet my full blood siblings (who also lost their mother and who are also half orphans) can get their birth certificates. We have the same parents. The only difference is that I was surrendered to a closed and sealed adoption.
Adoption is destruction of personhood and family. It should be abolished. And don’t give me any crap such as “what about the children who need homes?” I did not need a new home, my adopting parents wanted a child; it was their insistence that I never see my own full blood siblings. I needed my birth identity and my siblings and my father. I needed to be told when and how my mother died. I needed to be taken to her graveside on Mother’s Day and her birthday and my birthday. I needed the truth. If a child is truly homeless and family-less, then guardianship needs to replace adoption. Guardianship retains the child’s identity and birth certificate, retains family connections and identity formation while providing a home for that child. That’s why I wrote my book as a testimony as to the destructiveness of adoption.
I needed then, as I do now, unconditional access to my sealed and certified real birth certificate. I also need my amended birth certificate stamped in big red letters: VOID. I demand a truthful Certificate of Adoption issued to replace this lousy piece of garbage that I must hold up as my real birth certificate.
The Bill you propose, should I live in Illinois, would not benefit me in any way.
I have worked in adoption reform for the past 36 years. Give me a job, Sara, and I’ll show you how to write a Bill that will take care of adoptees’ long-overdue and long-abused civil rights. Adoptive parents and natural parents do not have the authority over anyone over the Age of Majority. In most states the Age of Majority is 18, some states it is 19, and some states it is 21. If young adults are allowed to die for their country in war, they can certainly have the maturity to handle the emotional impact of their civil rights to the truth of their births. And for those of adoptees who are aging, get the job done right: include us all in clean legislative action. Obviously, I do not buy the notion that this is a State-by-State issue. Civil rights are a Federal concern.
Your website says that you are an “adult adoptee”. Really? You sure holler as a two-faced bigot. Stop being so patronizing.
I hereby submit my bill for adoption consultant fees of $500 an hour for 2 hours, $45 for the cost of my book, and $20 for shipping and handling to mail the book and legislative tips to you.
Very Truly Yours,
Joan M Wheeler
born as
Doris M Sippel
PS
I do mean TRULY. I know my birthname and I have my birth certificates because my father gave them to my adopting parents, but I am still legally banned from obtaining my short and long form OBC from the Registrar of Vital Statistics in Buffalo. America is not a free country.
* * *
Other bloggers on Sara Feigenholtz’s email:
Cheaper Than Therapy: http://lilwalnutbrain.blogspot.com/2010/04/asshat-of-week-illinois-rep-sara.html
Baby Love Child: http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/04/27/illinois-hb5428-and-rep-sara-feigenholtzs-offices-contemptuous-use-of-the-term-ungrateful-bastards/
73adoptee: http://73adoptee.blogspot.com/2010/04/so-called-champion-of-adoptees-illinois.html
Bastard Grannie Annie: http://bastardgrannyannie.blogspot.com/2010/04/another-open-letter-to-representative.html
The Daily Bastardette: http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/04/sara-speaks-sara-feigenholtz-tells-us.html
~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.
FORBIDDEN FAMILY 
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