Category: Amended Birth Certificate

I’m sorry Ohio – Your adoptees are not granted full civil equal rights to non-adopted people

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

Here is an article on good news for Ohio adoptees:

New Law Allows Adoptees to Request Once-Sealed Birth Records

The article begins:

Their applications completed and notarized and the $20 fee paid, Ellaztre Barnett and more than 300 other adoptees left the Ohio Department of Health Vital Statistics Office and went home to await the mail.

And this

Now, adults adopted between 1964 and 1996 — the group that had been barred from obtaining their records — can request their files. Such records usually contain the adoptee’s original birth certificate.

Adults whose adoptions were finalized in Ohio before 1964 already had access. Those adopted on or after Sept. 18, 1996, can receive their files unless their birthparent asks to be excluded.

And this

“Nobody should have to beg or grovel to find out who they are,” she said. “This was like a pseudo witness-protection program.”

I should be happy for my fellow adoptees in Ohio, but I am not.

Perhaps it is because the last quote above really says it all. Adoptees are in a type of witness-protection program. However, we did not step forward, as adults, to witness in court and place ourselves in danger. We did not, therefore, need the government’s help to protect us from harm.

No. Instead, we were born and then adopted. No matter what the circumstances of our conceptions and births, we were stripped of our true identities by the process of adoption. We were given new identities, new birth certificates, and new families.

As a result, our actual birth certificates were sealed. We were issued new birth certificates which are our operable birth certificates now.

We cannot go back. Ever. Unless we have our sealed birth certificates returned to us in full certified fashion.

Even when these bitter-sweet happy adoptees in Ohio receive their sealed birth certificates in the mail, they will not have won the battle. Oh, they will have an uncertified copy of their record of birth, but they will still be bound by the second half of the law that changed their identity upon adoption. Their amended birth certificates are still their operable birth certificates. Their identities are still changed. And their sealed birth certificates are still sealed.

Why did I say that? Because they will be issued UNCERTIFIED copies of their sealed birth certificates, that’s why. That means that the government just releases a mere photo copy and not an officially certified birth certificate. To do so would mean that an adoptee would have two official certified birth certificates, and that, some say, would give adoptees the opportunity to commit fraud.

Commit fraud? By taking back our sealed identities?

The whole concept of identity theft of millions of infants and children for the sole purpose of being adopted makes my blood boil.

I realize that my comrades in Ohio are jumping for joy right now.

I am not jumping for joy. They will get a piece of paper that will give them information that they never had before. But that uncertified piece of paper is not an official recognition that the birth actually took place. These adoptees have won nothing but the right to own a piece of paper that has information written on it.

These adoptees still are not free to claim the name printed on their sealed birth certificate. They still are legally bound to the name on their  operable birth certificate – the amended birth certificate made after they were adopted.

If that is all they want, fine.

But I want more. I want a certified copy of my sealed birth certificate. The government took it away from me for no reason other than I was adopted at my age of one year and one week old. My birth certificate was changed three months later.

I want to know from these Ohio adoptees: what will your uncertified birth certificates look like? What words will be stamped across the front – “Not for Official Use” or ” For Genealogical Purpose Only” or “Pre-Adoption Birth Certificate” as is the case in other states that have passed adoptee-access laws.

How will you feel when you are confronted by those words on your birth certificate?

Is Ohio’s release of uncertified sealed birth certificates to adoptees a step in the right direction?

I am not so sure. While once I thought this would be a victory (and I happily supported other states in their push to pass access laws) I know the truth is that we will not have our full civil rights returned to us. That will only happen when adoptees are granted access to our full, certified, birth certificate that was sealed from us upon the finalization of our adoptions.

I’m sorry Ohio. Your adoptees are not granted full civil equal rights to non-adopted people.

 

 

 

Introducing Identity Press and Their Call For Submissions

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

Introducing: Identity Press – http://identity-press.com/

Identity Press is an independent publisher giving voice to orphans, bastards and adoptees through memoir and biography.

 

http://identity-press.com/call-for-submissions/

Call For Submissions

For our forthcoming book –

FORBIDDEN AND CREATED IDENTITIES:
Adoptees Speak Out on Sealed and Falsified Birth Certificates

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Identity Press will publish this book as a tool to educate the general public – especially policy makers – on the realities of the sealed and amended birth certificate problem in America and the world.
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Seeking 20 to 40 Adoptees (Domestic-USA and Intercountry) who are interested in publishing their views on how sealed and falsified birth certificates have affected them – including being denied a US Passport. Essays will be accompanied with each contributing adoptee’s scanned images of their Original Birth Certificate (certified or uncertified) and their Amended Birth Certificate, and Final Order of Adoption, if available.
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If you would like to participate in this project and you are an author, this will be good exposure.
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Deadline for Submissions: June 1, 2015
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Target Publication Date: October 2015 — Just in time for Adoption Awareness Month (November 2015), National Adoption Day and World Adoption Day.
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Please email us via the Contact Form to begin correspondence and to receive Submission Guidelines.

Birth Certificates for Adoptees and Donor Conceived Should Be Truthful

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate, Reproductive technologies, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

Jennifer Lahl, President of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, recently published an article, which is linked to here: Sex, Lies, and Birth Certificates,that addresses what we adoptees and donor-conceived individuals have been saying for decades, that

A birth certificate should record the name of the biological mother and biological father of the child, not the wishes of adults.

Hmmm. For 80 years in New York State, adoptees have been issued Amended Birth Certificates to replace our Actual Birth Certificates (notice I did not say “Original Birth Certificates – if we keep the language of the government policy makers, we are falling in line with them), changing our identity at birth, name at birth, and our parents of birth with our new name, new parents and sometimes a new birth place and birth date (time of birth is only recorded on the Actual Birth Certificate). At first, this was to hide illegitimacy, but this really was done to give the adopting parents the upper hand: they were now visibly, on paper, parents. Instead of creating a Certificate of Adoption, New York State (along with the rest of the United States) took the politically correct road to appease the sensibilities of the new adoptive parents. They were, and are still given a piece of paper that documents that they gave birth to the child named. This goes against logic. Everyone knows that this “birth” did not happen, so why are we all pretending?

How absolutely preposterously wrong!

In reality, a person is born only once. Everyone knows this. Yet the government creates these false birth certificates as a public show of political-correctness.

Adoptees’ Actual Birth Certificates are sealed and can never be unsealed. This is to benefit only the adults involved, not the child whose birth is recorded. Correction – this decision does not benefit the natural parents at all. This act wipes them off the legal record of birth. It is not enough for them to sign away their parental rights, but they are obliterated from the public record of birth.

In her article, Jennifer Lahl (writing about her state of California) states

Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) authored Assembly Bill 1951, which amends the California Vital Records Birth Certificate law in order to “modernize” California birth certificates by allowing each parent to self-identify as mother, father, or simply “parent.”

Gomez said, “I authored this bill to say that it’s okay to have two mothers or fathers. I believe that parents do see themselves as a mother or a father and that they want to express that on their child’s birth certificate. We should give people the flexibility to accurately reflect their relationship with their child.”

We all know why this bill, which will become law next year, was written. It was to appease gay men and lesbian women who are creating children through sperm donation, egg donation and surrogacy, or by adoption.

If Assemblyman Gomez would take a long look at his own statements, he would realize how ridiculous they are. No one in their right mind would say to any child that you have two mothers because we wanted it that way, when, in school (and life), this will backfire. The child will learn the truth – that a baby is created by one egg, one sperm, and gestated in one uterus. It is definitely NOT okay to have two mothers or two fathers or parent one and parent two named on a certificate that is designed to record the child’s real birth, and not some politically correct mushy sentiment of the two legal and social parents.

What is right – and what would officially record the real truth –  is to have a birth certificate and then an adoption certificate. The adoption certificate not only would show the truth, but it would also serve to “accurately reflect their relationship with their child” – and on THIS document, then, two mothers or two fathers can be named as mother and mother, or father and father, or parent one and parent two. It is important to make the distinction between biological facts and legal facts. The legal parentage, in the case of adoption, also spells out the parents who will be raising the child – they are the social parents.

No one seems to understand what adoptees and donor-conceived people already know: we really DO have two sets of real parents. We really do have two mothers and two fathers; some of us actually were adopted more than once so we have another set of legal parents. One set of parents created us; we share our DNA with them. The other set raised us. We share our memories, daily life, and love with them. Some of us, though, were raised by adoptive parents who did not treat us with love, kindness nor respect, but we cannot get out of the adoption contract easily. And for most of us, we do have love for our genetic parents.

But society says we can have ONLY one set of parents. That is very clear by the new law that will take effect in California.

Not all angles have been discussed, nor planned for in the legal documentation of the splitting-hairs of parentage. There is the surrogate mother, who might be paid a fee and lying in a poor house in India, or she might be in a rich neighborhood in LA, making babies because pregnancy comes easy for her and she wants to be altruistic in making a baby for someone else. Her name, and that of the egg donor, and that of the sperm donor, belongs on the child’s birth certificate. If you doubt that, ask anyone who is the product of such arrangement. Think you want a baby so desperately that you are willing to burden your future child with this for her or his lifetime? What about future generations? Messing with human natural selection and human consequences will NOT be felt by the arranging parents. They will get what they want – the pleasure of parenting. But the child so produced will experience lifetime ramifications for the cavalier decisions made by those in charge.

 

If you think more positively you may find happiness

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Amended Birth Certificate, Family Systems, Original Birth Certificate6 Comments

Earlier this morning, a dear older friend of mine slipped a note in my hand, saying that she had to leave church early but wanted to give me the note after reading the introductory papers to my memoir that I gave her last week.

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After reading her note, I wrote her the following letter:

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January 4, 2015

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Hi L,

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Thank you for your sweet note.

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Please continue to call me “Joan” since that is how you know me! “Doris” is the name I had at birth, and I use it to make the point that all adoptees lose the name they were given at birth. I know it confused you, for that, I am sorry. My legal name, Joan, has been the name I’ve had for 58 of my 59 years of life.

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Thank you for expressing condolences for my plight in life.

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However, I’m not bitter. I’m bitter for what happened to me, but I am neither angry nor bitter now. My writings express it to get the points across, but no, I am quite happy.

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In the last 4 years, I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been because I no longer have to interact with hateful relatives. The last two of my parents died in 2011 and with that came relief – relief that their suffering was over, and relief that the negativity of the relatives associated with my adoptive mother and with my natural father was over for me. I no longer am forced to deal with people who have been cruel to me.

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There are positive relatives whom I miss, some I let go because I don’t want to interact with the rest of the relatives, and others are still in my life. Believe me, there are adoptive relatives who have never treated me cruelly, and there are a few cousins from my natural mother’s family who also have not treated me with cruelty.

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I surround myself with positive people. I have good friends at church, at the YMCA where I exercise daily, and at various live music venues where my musician friends perform.

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So, the papers I gave you explaining my life were meant to share with you why I joined the United Nations Envoy Team – where you and I met last year. With my knowledge, I want to join forces with existing programs to help make the world a better place for women and children, particularly poor women and poor children, especially women persecuted for giving birth to illegitimate children, and widows and orphans. I want to stop the trafficking of poor children in international adoption and to protect our own vulnerable pregnant women and their children.

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Yes, I’ve lived through unbearable trauma. But being in touch with adoptees worldwide through email and Facebook on the Internet, and with mothers (and fathers) who lost their children to adoption, I am contributing to make the world a better place. I am living our UU Principles of social justice! Networking with others to foster understanding of what each of us (adoptees and parents of loss) has lived through is energizing for me. We create legislation to change laws statewide, and we write books, we appear on TV and radio to talk about our lives with the goal of raising awareness of the realities of adoption. So you see, I am not alone in writing about my life.

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Yes, I do see the truth in your statement: “Who knows, behind every turn, life holds treasures that you can’t foresee at the present.” In what you perceive as bitterness in my papers on my life, please keep in mind that writing these specific pieces: “About the Author” and “About the Book”, are meant to be brief highlights of what my memoir is about and a short bit of what happened to me. It all happened in the past – being transferred from one family to another, I lost my family, and my name at birth and my true birth certificate.  Yes, the first years of reunion were filled with confusion and anxiety for me. But please do not believe I am not happy today. I am. It makes me happy to explain my life so that no other child – no other person – has to go through what I did. There are lessons to be learned – that is why I wrote my memoir. And as I said, it is currently being professionally edited and formatted and will be re-published this year.

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It’s amusing to me that you think I don’t accept the things I cannot change. See, I have been the only one doing just that: accepting all of my life. It is the rest of the people in my families (adoptive and natural) who have not dealt with the realities that created the trauma of all of our lives where my adoption is concerned. It is also the general public who does not want to hear the realities of adoption; they’d rather believe in the myths of adoption.

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It makes me happy to do the things I do. While you may not realize this, I am one of the pioneers in the field of adoption reform. I’ve been writing about adoption since 1975. I am one of about 500 to 1,000 activists around America and thousands throughout the world.

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It may seem to you that I am not happy since my story is tragic. I am, in fact, very happy inside myself, knowing that I am trying to change what I can to make this a better world.

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Blessed Be,

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Joan

Letter Writing Campaign to The White House During the First Week of National Adoption Month November 2014

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

The following is shared at the request of my dear friend and long-time adoption activist, Sandy Musser, Director of Adoption ALARM Network.

PLEASE SHARE THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

Powers of the President.
The piece below called “No Congressional Approval Needed” is from an article titled A President’s Legislative Powers.

Enacting the ADOPTEES RESTORATION ACT would restore ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATES to all ADOPTED ADULTS in America in one fell swoop!

There is no doubt that this would be President Obama’s GREATEST LEGACY (comparable to LINCOLN freeing the slaves) since millions and millions of ADOPTED ADULTS would have their true identities, their medical histories, their cultures, and and their ancestries restored.

As we begin our letter campaign to the White House during the first week of November, we need to emphasize the extreme importance and need for this to be accomplished. Send copies of your letters to media outlets and let them know that you’re available for an interview.

No Congressional Approval Needed

There are two ways that presidents can enact initiatives without congressional approval. Presidents may issue a proclamation, often ceremonial in nature, such as naming a day in honor of someone or something that has contributed to American society.

A president may also issue an EXECUTIVE ORDER which has the full effect of law and is directed to federal agencies that are charged with carrying out the order. Examples include Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order for the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Harry Truman’s integration of the armed forces and Dwight Eisenhower’s order to integrate the nation’s schools.

My Response to Jayne Jacova Feld’s article on New Jersey’s Fight to Unseal Adoptees’ Birth Records

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Original Birth Certificate

This undated article by Jayne Jacova Feld appeared in my email inbox on October 31, 2014: Opening Up – Bringing the fight to unseal adoption records to life.

This is my response:

Typically, this article confuses reunion with civil rights. The civil right to one’s sealed birth certificate is not the same as reunion or contact. A person who wishes no contact has a right to be left alone. A person who wishes to unseal their sealed birth record still must ask a court for permission, or abide by restrictive laws that allow release of uncertified sealed birth certificates under specific restrictions.

Closed adoptions are indeed performed today as many adoptive parents request no contact at any time with the natural parents of their adoptee.

Open adoptions do not mean open records.

Adoptees are not only illegitimates born to not-married parents. We are legitimates born within a marriage, half orphans, full orphans, adopted by step parents, and older children adopted out of foster care. To lump all of us under the umbrella of persons born to “unwed” mothers is to keep the stereotypes alive.

Except for Kansas and Alaska, every single adoptee in America suffers the injustice of their actual birth certificate automatically sealed at the finalization of adoption. Even in Kansas and Alaska, every single adoptee in America is automatically issued a new, amended, birth certificate indicating, falsely, that the new parents gave birth to the child named. Many adoptees’ actual birthdates are changed, as well as birthplace, and most adoptees’ names at birth are changed to reflect new identities picked by adoptive parents.

In the few states that have passed laws “allowing” adoptees “access” to their sealed birth records, these adoptees are not given certified copies of their actual birth certificates. They are given uncertified copies which are stamped on the front with one of the following in big bold letters: “VOID”, “Not For Official Use”, “For Genealogical Use Only”. While many adoptees jump for joy over the fact that they are able to unseal their previously sealed actual birth certificates, their elation over seeing their birth certificates for the first time in their lives should be tempered with the realization that their legal birth certificate (the one that was falsified at the time of finalization of adoption) overrides the uncertified birth certificate that they now have in their hands.

There is a big difference between a mere knowing the truth of your origins (by “winning” the right to an uncertified birth certificate that was previously sealed) and actually reversing the oppressive laws that instituted sealing and falsifying adoptees’ birth certificates around the USA beginning in 1930, state by state.

Many adoptees, like me, advocate for the total restoration of our civil rights. We want our actual birth certificates to be reinstated and certified by our government. And we want our falsified birth certificates to be rescinded. Some of us want adoption certificates to replace them, others want to rescind their adoptions altogether.
As for the Catholics who want control: I was conceived within a marriage, yet your one-sided attack on “unwed” mothers devalues my birth, and that of adoptees who aren’t in your narrow focus of being born bastards.

As for “birth” parents who want to redact their names from birth certificates: your name, whether you want it there or not, was recorded within five days of birth on a government document recording the fact that you gave birth. When you signed relinquishment papers in the courtroom, you lost all rights to the person you gave up for adoption. You did not retain the right to dictate to that person 50 or more years after birth. All persons over the age of 21 are of legal age and are not bound by parental authority.

Lastly, the first advocacy group was not Adoptees Liberty Movement Association, as stated in this article (Opening Up – Bringing the fight to unseal adoption records to life), but rather Orphan Voyage, founded in 1953 by adoptee and social worker Jean Paton.

I was very fortunate to have known Jean Paton. She was a delightful lady with a quiet sense of reserve. She deserves recognition as the one person who started the adoptees’ rights movement in America. Others followed and we now have a very extensive network of activists and organizations. Readers may be interested in reading about her life in a hardcover book written by historian E. Wayne Carp: Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption (January 2014).

 

 

 

 

Response to Von’s Bitch Slap With Troops on the Ground

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

This post is written in response to Von’s post today: Bitch Slap.

As for myself, I’ve been using the term “adoption reform” for so long, over 30 years, and it’s only within the past few years that I’ve come to realize it isn’t adoption reform that’s needed. What’s needed is the end to adoption. What’s needed is a soul-searching of the inhuman practice of permanently separating parents and their children and permanently and needlessly separating sibling groups. When the realization hits those who are a part of this horrific chain of separators, they will certainly have a gut-wrenching remorse for what they’ve done. I have seen it. A slow realization for some, and for others, it hits like a ton of bricks. Once the correct words are spoken so as to change the focus of their agency-speak, then those in power experience an awakening and they are changed. And once those regular people who insist on telling me their opinions on adoption, as if those opinions carry more weight than my 57 years of life experience and my research for 39 years, once these people hear my words from the point of view of being the victim of adoption, then I see a change: one person at a time.

 

This soul-searching realization then turns into the awareness that family preservation, kinship care, guardianship and adoption prevention must then become priorities.

 

Beyond that, I’ve achieved one-on-one change by telling ordinary people the facts of adoption that go beyond the destruction of a family to create the “loving option of adoption”. I tell them that every single adoptee in America suffers the confiscation of their birth certificate by the State Government via the Court Judge controlling the adoption and that the Judge then initiates orders to place that birth certificate under protective seal, and then the Judge orders the Registrar of Vital Statistics to create a new, amended birth certificate that replaces the names of the parents of birth with the names of the new adoptive parents as if they gave birth to the child and that child now has a new name on this new birth certificate.

People are stunned. They ask, “They do this? Still?”

I say, “Yes.”

They ask, “Why?

I answer, “Because that’s the way it’s been done since 1930 in America and States aren’t too eager to let adoptees have their true birth certificates. For the States that do ‘allow’ adoptees this ‘privilege’, there are conditions and restrictions because illegitimate bastards aren’t worthy to own the truth of their shameful births. But I’m not illegitimate, yet, I am bound by this archaic law that wipes out all adoptees’ births as if they never happened. And for the two States that never sealed adoptees birth certificates – Kansas and Alaska – those states have been, and still are, falsifying adoptees new birth certificates.”

People then ask me, “I never heard of this. In this day and age, why does anyone care about illegitimacy? Every child is precious.”

I say, “Of course every child is precious, but if you are born to unmarried parents, then the law says you aren’t worthy. And every other way a child becomes adopted – me, a half orphan, full orphans, and step-parent adoptees and foster care adoptees – we all are bound by the law of shame and secrecy. Of course you haven’t heard of this. The government and adoption agencies don’t want you to know. No one is stopping the continued falsification of birth certificates when a child is adopted. It’s all big business. All of it. Adoption agencies and social workers and adoption attorneys and court staff and court judges get paid. And the Registrars of Vital Statistics get paid to seal away a child’s birth rights and then commit fraud and perjury for the sake of doing their jobs.”

People then ask me, “I never realized the scope of this. So what can be done?”

I answer, “Just stop it. Demand that these barbaric practices cease. The whole process of permanently separating families needlessly must end, and, unethical confiscation and sealing of an infant or child’s birth certificate must end, as well as the unethical and fraudulent practice of lying on government documents must end. Now you know what really happens in adoption. People can achieve the same goal – of giving a child who actually needs a home – by promoting family preservation, kinship care and guardianship instead of adoption. You are hearing it from an adoptee. Word of mouth. Go spread the word. You now know the truth and now you must decide: will you join us in the legislative fight to change these barbaric, but legal, atrocities? I can provide you with information on how to stop this.”

People need to know and are stunned to hear the facts. Change is happening.

Daniel Ibn Zayd is right. People on the ground, in the community, talking about the realities of adoption – this is making a difference in my home city, one person at a time.

But we in New York State, and America as a whole, are so far behind the accomplishments of Australia. I, too, as Von points out, may not live long enough to see the drastic changes in public opinion and public policy that are needed. I sure as hell am giving it my all while I am here!

What a Day for Adoption Contradictions

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Amended Birth Certificate, Death and Dying, False Information on Birth Certificate, Uncategorized

On one hand, we have the new reality cable TV show “I’m Having THEIR Baby” (https://www.facebook.com/#!/ImHavingTheirBaby) (OXYGEN premiered Monday July 23, 2012), which promotes the separation of mother and baby for the benefit of waiting adoptive parent wanna bees, and supposedly, for the pregnant non-mother and her newborn who will become an adoptee.

And on the other hand, we have these two contradictory reports about James Holmes, the gunman at the at the midnight movie premier of The Dark Knight Rises in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado (Friday July 20, 2012). One says that he was adopted (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2178304/James-Holmes-Gunman-used-police-evidence-bags-hand-puppets-mother-admits-feared-disturbed-years.html#ixzz21aOHJZdz), and the other says that his lineage goes way, way back to the beginning of American history. (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/22/colorado-shooter-james-holmes-family-history-goes-back-to-the-mayflower.html)

So, which is it? Was James Holmes adopted? Or was he born to the parents who raised him? Hmmm. I suspect that, if he was adopted, then the story on his lineage just might be true. After all, his adoptive parents have a birth certificate for him that says he was born to them and that he is their biological son. That makes the lineage real. If his lineage is “real”, might this adoptee be confused about his identity? And what of his two sets of parents? What were adoptive parents like? What happened that his natural parents relinquished him? If he is adopted, and his birthdate is now known publically, perhaps now his natural parents will want to make contact, or hide in despair and grief. And guilt.

And where do the baby brokers fall in this picture?

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Or maybe he really wasn’t adopted and this was just someone’s snide comment, like in The Avenger’s movie (He’s adopted – oh that explains everything! Laugh laugh, giggle giggle – Don’t be offended, it was just a joke!). Yeah, blame it on the adoptee. Everyone knows adoptees have “bad blood”.  See a few bloggers’ takes on the subject: http://adoptedintheuk.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/all-joking-aside/ and http://73adoptee.blogspot.com/2012/05/avengers-why-is-making-fun-of-adoption.html.

Let me get this straight. People are making money off of pregnant girls and women, convincing them that they can’t possibly be good enough parents to their unborn baby so it would be so unselfish of them to give up their baby to older, wiser, and financially better off — more stable people, and then the adoptee grows up to be “disturbed”?

Something in this equation isn’t right. And that is adoption itself. Adoption is legalized kidnapping, especially pre-birth and at birth, as is promoted and exploited in Oxygen’s “I’m Having THEIR Baby” TV series. Adoption is legalized fiction, legalized lies, as in amended and falsified birth certificates. Adoption forces the adoptee to live a lie, and a series of lies. If this doesn’t mess with a person’s mind, I don’t know what does.

Suppose adoptive parents never tell their adoptee that he was adopted? And he finds out later in life, at age 40 or 50 or 60. What might that do to the adoptee’s psyche? Suppose adoptive parents tell half truths, such as, you were adopted, but then withhold vital information from the adoptee that he finds out during his early adulthood? My adoptive parents told me I was adopted, but they left out a critical detail: that I was the 5th child born to married parents and my mother died when I was three months old. I can tell you, when I was found by these siblings I was never supposed to know, that lie my adoptive parents told, or rather the omission they committed, had a profound and lasting effect on me. Nothing like discovering that your parents lied to you: that destroyed my trust and self esteem. Not to mention a childhood in which I was raised an only child and deliberately prevented from knowing my own siblings. Now that is definitely a head trip.

Think Open Adoption is the answer? Think again. Open adoption is a legal adoption, complete with confiscated birth certificate which is sealed forever, a falsified birth certificate, a Final Order of Adoption, and a verbal agreement between the natural parents and the adoptive parents. The adoptive parents have all the control, the natural parents have none. This is not the same as a divorce and visitation court order. This is a total and complete makeover of identity and possession (not simple custody) of the adoptee. If the natural parents and the adoptee are lucky, and they are allowed to visit each other, perhaps there are siblings living with the natural mother who do not live with adoptee in the adoptive home. How does that adoptee cope with that? How do those siblings cope with the loss of their sibling? How does the natural mother cope with the loss of her child? She is, and isn’t, the mother. And where’s the father in all of this? Many adoptive parents deliberately derail his knowledge and consent for the adoption of his child because, well, it’s THEIR child, not his, in their eyes.

None of this is healthy. Everything about any form of adoption is traumatic and deceptive.

Want me to be more specific about that falsified birth certificate? The adoptee’s actual birth certificate is confiscated, not upon relinquishment, but upon finalization of adoption. The court places it under protective seal and the adoptee can never have it, ever. Then, the court sends orders to the State’s Capital where the Registrar of Vital Statistics takes the information given to him and creates a new birth certificate for the adoptee under the child’s new adoptive name. This new birth certificate is officially called an amended birth certificate. The adoptive parents names are substituted for the names of the actual parents, and the date and time of birth are recorded, thus giving the impression that these parents gave birth to this child. They did not. The Registrar knows they did not. But he signs his name and embosses the State seal on the certificate certifying that the information on the document is true. But the information is false: he created false facts on a government document. This is perjury: lying under oath. The adoptee thus receives a fraudulent birth certificate. And, the physician’s signature is not on this amended birth certificate: he did not witness this birth because this birth never happened.

So the adoptee grows up with lies. And contradictions. This is enough to drive anyone crazy.

So Oxygen promotes baby stealing in their new cable TV series “I’m Having Their Baby”.

So James Holmes may or may not be adopted.

Which is it? Is his lineage a correct bloodline? Or was he really adopted? That would negate the published report of his fine lineage of good America stock. And if he was adopted, that means he is somehow tainted, and we have a massive crime that needs explanation and blame.

But then we have the rainbow farters and the cool-aid drinkers who believe that separating a baby from his mother at birth and then adopting him into a loving home is a very, very good, great, wonderful thing.

And we have mothers who give up their babies fully believing that they “did the right thing”, but they are traumatized for the rest of their lives.

And we have babies who grow inside their mothers (http://findingchristopherfindingmyself.blogspot.com/2012/07/why-our-birth-matters.html) only to be ripped away from her forever. They are traumatized for the rest of their lives.

And please, don’t ask me to talk about adoptive parents. We hear too much from them.

And then, we have a Facebook message that reads: {A little late but this is the confirmation that he isn’t adopted: Just had a tweet from NY Post’s @Clayton_Sandell: Lawyer Lisa Damiani:”James Holmes is the biological son of Arlene and Robert Holmes. Even if he was adopted, they would love him the same.” Hope the media’s got it now.}

Really?

“Even if he was adopted, they would love him the same”. That sounds like an admission to me.

If it is true, that James Holmes is not adopted, then New York Post’s Clayton Sandell better publish a formal retraction in his paper for this tweet to be newsworthy, believable, and valid. And perhaps this lawyer, Lisa Damiani, better make sure that UK’s Daily Mail publishes a retraction as well.

The shootings happened. People are dead. Their loved ones are grieving. A man is in custody. All of this is very sad. I do not want to diminish what happened in any way.

So please, clarify. Is he adopted or not?

Oxygen: take your disgusting reality TV show off the air. Stop exploiting women, pregnancy, birth, fathers, siblings, and adoptees for your TV ratings and income. Baby selling is human trafficking.

Real birther issue is still unresolved

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial-page/from-our-readers/my-view/article450236.ece

MY VIEW

Real birther issue is still unresolved

Joan Wheeler, born Doris Sippel, lives in Buffalo and thinks adoptees should have access to their birth records.

Published: June 10, 2011, 12:00 AM

President Obama recently released a copy of his long-form original birth certificate to prove that he was born in the United States. If he had been adopted, he would not be able to produce his original birth certificate for the public or even for his own viewing. By law, he would be able to obtain only an amended birth certificate.

Does this mean that adoptees are prohibited from becoming president?

I am an adoptee and I have two conflicting birth certificates.

As in all adoptions, the judge who presided over my adoption ordered my original birth certificate sealed and replaced with an amended one. The registrar of vital records switched most of my birth facts onto a new document, but the amended certificate does not contain the attending physician’s signature attesting that he

witnessed the birth. And it does not prove who my biological mother and father were.

In the aftermath of 9/11, to obtain a passport or an enhanced driver’s license, one must present documentation of birth filed within five days of birth. Many adoptees’ amended certificates were issued a year or more after birth; delayed birth certificates are not acceptable proof of birth. And amended certificates don’t prove who actually gave birth to the individual named. Adoptees cannot obtain documentation of birth and adoption because these records are sealed.

Birth records for adoptees have been sealed and altered since the 1930s to hide illegitimacy for mother and infant, and to protect adoptive parents. The adoptee rights movement began in the 1950s to change these laws. Two states never sealed records; six states have varying degrees of open records. New York has been a closed-record state since 1935.

I, like many adoptees, want unrestricted access to my original birth certificate. Adoptees are the only group of people denied access to their own birth record. This is a matter of civil rights, social inequality, personal dignity and genealogical knowledge. Non-adoptees can obtain their birth record, but adoptees cannot get theirs.

Opponents to open records claim mothers’ identities must be kept secret because they were promised confidentiality. Mothers who have lost children to adoption say that secrecy was imposed upon them. Additionally, the stigma of illegitimacy doesn’t hold true for full or half orphans (like myself) or step-parent adoptees. Adoptees say that stigma in adoption is unwarranted.

So, how did I get my short-and long-form original birth certificate if the records were sealed?

My widowed father, at the time he relinquished me, gave my birth certificates to my adoptive parents. When I turned 18, they, in turn, gave the documents to me.

Despite this, I am still legally prevented from obtaining my original birth certificate.

All amended birth certificates state the adoptee’s new name, replace the parents by birth with the names of the new parents and include most facts of the birth. A registrar of vital statistics certifies the facts are true. They are not, since no adoptee is born to the parents named on the amended certificate.

New York State adoptees are supporting passage of Senate Bill 1438 and Assembly Bill 2003, which would give adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates. This is half of the solution. For true adoptee equality, falsified amended birth certificates should be replaced with honest adoption certificates.