Category: Amended Birth Certificate

The Real Birther Issue

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

President Obama recently released a copy of his Long Form Original Birth Certificate to prove that he was born in the United States. However, if he had been born and adopted in the United States, he would not be able to produce his Original Birth Certificate for the public or even for his own viewing.  By law, he would only be able to produce an Amended Birth Certificate. 

An Amended Birth Certificate is issued at the finalization of a person’s adoption.  This “birth certificate” replaces a person’s birth name with a new name and his/her natural parents’ names/information with his adoptive parents’ names/information.  Once an Amended Birth Certificate is issued, a person is prevented by law from viewing/possessing their truthful documentation of birth.  His/her Original Birth Certificate is sealed forever.

It is discriminatory to seal an adopted person’s birth certificate and replace it with a falsified one.

“We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts.” – President Barack Obama, 3/27/2011.

I have two birth certificates. I was born with one name, issued a birth certificate, and one year and one week later, my adoption was finalized. The Surrogate Court judge who presided over my adoption set in motion the legal process for my true birth certificate to be sealed and an amended birth record to be issued. The Registrar of Vital Records carried out the task of switching my birth facts onto a document which is similar, but not equal to, the form used to create non-adoptees’ original birth certificates. The law is different for all adoptees.

Before I use my own documents as examples, I must explain that while I am not legally allowed to obtain my own Long Form Original Birth Certificate because I am an adoptee in a closed record state (New York), I do have both my short and long form Original Birth Certificate, as well as my short and long form Amended Birth Certificate. Why? How?

Because at the time I was placed in my pre-adoptive parents’ care, my father who relinquished me gave my birth certificates and baptismal certificate to my pre-adoptive parents. My adoptive parents gave all of my documents, including the Final Order of Adoption, to me when I turned eighteen just after my reunion with my natural family.

As previously stated, I am still legally prevented from obtaining my Original Birth Certificate. That is a legal battle I have been fighting with other adoptees since the mid-1970s.

What do my two long form birth certificates state? The forms are similar, but different. Both have a raised seal and are signed by the Registrar.

My Original Birth Certificate states: name, date, time, city, weight, length of pregnancy, hospital, parents, single birth and not a twin or triplet, and attending physician signature. This question was asked: “How many other children are now living?” Answer: four.

My Amended Birth Certificate states my new name, and replaces my parents by birth with the names of my new parents, and includes most facts of my birth. Though the document states this mother gave birth in this hospital, no hospital records would be found for this mother. Deleted are: length of pregnancy, how many other children were living, and the attending physician’s signature.

Records are sealed and amended even in open adoptions. It is time to allow adoptees access to their true birth certificates. It is also time to replace fraudulently falsified Amended Birth Certificates with honest Adoption Certificates. Change the law.

For more information: http://www.unsealedinitiative.com (NYS adoptees), http://www.americanadoptioncongress.org/

Sealed Birth Records Perpetuate the Stigma of Illegitimacy Even When One is Born Legitimately

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

There is the assumption that all adoptees come from “shameful” births that “need” to be hidden by sealed birth records. This is just not so. There are many adoptees who were relinquished by widowed parents, divorced parents, and parents who remain married after surrender. None of these adoptions warrant the stigma of illegitimacy and the dictates of a handful of mothers who want their perceived right to privacy. They don’t have a right to privacy because all their rights were tossed out of the window when they signed the relinquishment papers. I am a half orphan and I see no reason why these mothers’ feel that their perceived rights should supersede my right to my own birth certificate: I am not illegitimate so their logic does not apply to me, or other half or full orphans, or step-parent adoptees or foster care adoptees.

Adoption legitimizes the illegitimate. Since I was born legitimately to married parents, I did not need to be legitimized by adoption. My legitimate and true birth certificate was sealed upon finalization of my adoption and a falsified birth certificate was issued to replace it. I want my legitimate birth certificate returned to me. My argument is not a slap in the face to my fellow adoptees, it is simple fact. I am an adoptee and I stand with my fellow adoptees (illegitimate and orphaned) for the right to our true birth certificates. Whatever we do with our birth certificates is up to us. Our birth identities are on these documents, therefore, they belong to us and no one else.

We are adults and do not need parental permission to do anything in life. Our adoptive parents lost their parental rights over us when we reached adulthood. Our natural parents lost all their parental rights to us when they signed relinquishment papers. It is that simple.

Chicago Tribune’s Article “Open to Interpretation” and My Response

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, Original Birth Certificate

The Chicago Tribune published this article on birth certificate access and reunions:

Open to interpretation

Despite new laws granting access to birth records, many adoptees struggle in search of their past

While people are catching on that it is descriminatory to keep adoptees’ birth certificates sealed, many are missing the point that illegitimacy may have been the cause of the sealed and falsified laws, but there is much more going on.

Because I have been lumped into the category of being illegitimate when I am not, I resent the stigma placed upon me. I resent the stigma placed on my fellow adoptees because this is an out-dated stigma. All humans have value, no matter what the circumstances at birth and childhood.

Here is my posted response to the above article:

The stigma of illegitimacy does not apply to all adoptees. There are adoptees who were adopted by their step parents, adoptees who were taken from married parents and put into foster care and fast tracked into adoption, there are adoptees who were half or full orphaned by the death of one or both parents. In all of the above cases, none of these adoptees were from illegitimate births.

To hold all adoptees in the legal prison of sealed and falsified birth certificates based solely upon the social stigma of illegitimacy is truly discrimination against the class of people known as adoptees. Clearly, it is not the condition of illegitimate birth that makes the government seal and then falsify a new birth certificate for each adoptee, it is the condition of being adopted that sets the series of events into motion that automatically seizes an infant’s or older child’s birth certificate, seals it, and replaces it with a falsified document that states that two biologically unrelated people (to the child) created said child and gave birth to said child.

To stop the discrimination, we must end the process of automatically sealing and falsifying birth certificates of adoptees. Retain the birth certificate as an operable document and then issue an adoption certificate: that is how it is done in more progressive countries, such as The Netherlands.

~ ~ ~ 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.

Not illegitimate

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptive Parents, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Original Birth Certificate

Not illegitimate

Humboldt Beacon

Posted: 09/16/2010 10:47:21 AM PDT


  

  

Dear Editor,

There are obvious limitations of the current debate on adoptees’ access to their birth certificates, but people rarely think of adoptees as legitimately born.

Adoption is not only about single mothers of loss and adoptees who were illegitimate bastards. Half and full orphans are victimized by sealed and falsified birth certificates, too. The law sealing adoptees’ birth certificates was written to hide illegitimacy. Adoptees are “legitimized” by the new, amended birth certificate showing two married parents.

But I am not illegitimate! I had two legitimate parents before being relinquished and adopted! The original intent of the sealed record law does NOT apply to me or my natural mother, or my known natural father.

I’m not the only half orphan victimized by sealed and falsified birth records. Millions of other half and full orphans (domestic and foreign born) are also held captive by laws made exclusively to cover up illegitimacy. Because I am made to be a bastard by the law that confines me, I stand up for other bastards and half and full orphans who are adopted.

Though I live in New York State, orphanhood is universal. Adoptees’ rights to our sealed birth certificates are also universal. Unseal adoptees original birth certificates NOW and put a stop to falsifying new birth records that replace adoptees true record of birth. Instead, issue certified Certificates of Adoption. Leave all birth certificates intact, free from governmental confiscation and falsification.

Joan Wheeler born Doris Sippel

Reunited adoptee found by full blood siblings in 1974 at age 18

Buffalo, New York

Editor’s note: this in response to a Letter that appeared in last week’s Humboldt Beacon by Mara Rigge of Trinidad, Calif.

~ ~ ~ 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.

My Letter to NJ-ACLU Exec Dir Deborah Jacobs: Not All Adoptees are Illegitimate

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

If you’ve been following my posts at various sites you know the content of the following letter already. Considering that ignorance is abundant in adoptoland, I thought I’d write directly to the Executive Director of New Jersey’s American Civil Liberties Union to explain, in detail, that not all adoptees are of illegitimate birth.

Here is a copy of my letter to Deborah Jacobs:

 

Dear Deborah Jacobs: 

This letter will serve as part of your education into the matter of birth, baptism, and adoption of a half-orphaned adoptee: me.

 You are misguided about adoptees’ birth certificates. Please be sure that you copy and share this letter, in  its entirety, with Edward Barocas, Legal Director of the NJ-ACLU, and any other person or agency with which you will determine the fate of adoptees’ lives.

There are obvious limitations that you (and the NCFA, the Right to Life, Catholic Conference) have overlooked.  The law was written to hide illegitimacy:  the adoptee is “legitimized” by the new, amended birth certificate showing two married parents, but adoption is not only about single mothers of loss and adoptees of illegitimate birth, half and full orphans are victimized by sealed and falsified birth certificates, too.

I am a half orphan trapped with illegitimates and their natural mothers. My mother was married and died when I was three months old. At her funeral, a Catholic priest told my grieving father that “the baby needs 2 parents”. What about the other four older children? Didn’t they need two parents? Their mother just died, so, not only did they lose their mother, they lost their newborn sister to adoption. We grew up separated by law — and by six miles. Our family was destroyed by relinquishment and adoption. Family Preservation could have prevented further damage to five siblings and our father. Guardianship was not necessary, and certainly, permanent relinquishment and adoption of the newborn was not necessary. The only ones to benefit were my adopting parents.

My mother didn’t sign relinquishment papers, my father did, so your posse of unwed mothers who want to remain anonymous shouldn’t have influence over my father’s situation, or over me, or others like me.

No one, not one single authority figure, legislator, or priest, has EVER acknowledged my loss or my dead mother’s loss. SHE lost her right to be named on my legal birth certificate! (My OBC was legal for 1 year and 3 months before the finalization of my adoption.) Sure, my mother was DEAD, but, according to the ACLU, the dead do not matter. My mother is named on my OBC because she gave birth to me, but my amended BC states someone else gave birth to me, her daughter via a traumatic life-threatening birth for a dying mother. So much for respect for the dead and my LEGITIMATE mother! 

I am not illegitimate! This law does NOT apply to me or my natural mother. The only aspect that applies to me is sealed and falsified birth certificates. Yet, the ACLU, NCFA, the Right to Life and the Catholic Conference hide behind a bunch of mothers, raped or otherwise shamed into relinquishment, as if they control the entire class of adopted people and all other parents of adoption  loss.

I am not the only half orphan victimized by sealed and falsified birth records. Millions of other half and full orphans (domestic and foreign born) are also held captive by laws made exclusively to cover up illegitimacy.

Anyone who assumes that all adoptees are illegitimate and need to be kept away from our own birth certificates for our own protection and that of our disgraced mothers is not considering all facts. One size does not fit all. I was born legitimate, there is no shame in my birth, yet the ACLU claims that a bunch of whinny women who want to remain anonymous are held in better social and legal status than I am. Where are my civil rights and that of other orphaned adoptees? Get out of my life Right to Life, NCFA, ACLU and New Jersey Catholic Conference: you do not speak for me and you are not protecting my civil rights. There is no need for me and my fellow adoptees (illegitimate or orphaned) to be treated as inferior human beings.

My natural father was NOT promised confidentiality nor privacy. He was verbally told to stay away from his daughter and that he would not contact me until after I turned 18. He signed a court document promising that he would not interfere with my adoptive parents or my life.

My natural father gave my certified birth certificate (in my birth name) and my baptismal certificate to my adopting parents at the time he relinquished me to them. My adoptive mother kept them, and my Final Order of Adoption, and my falsified Baptismal Certificate in my adoptive name (I was baptized at the bedside of my dying mother) in a safety deposit box. After my siblings found me in 1974, my adoptive mother threw all of my personal documents at me in a fit of rage. There was no need for this rage as I did not cause the problem. The onus of secrecy (and damage done) was and is on my adoptive parents and the court.

Though I have all of my documents, and have been reunited for 36 years, and there is nothing in any sealed birth certificate that would pose any threat to anyone, I am still legally banned from obtaining a certified copy of the record of my own birth. (Some states allow for adoptees to receive an uncertified informational copy, but that further erodes adoptees’ civil rights by not certifying the truth of their births). There is NO justification in preventing me, a 54 year old American citizen, from my own birth record! This affects not only me, but my two grown children and their future children, too.

The human cost in preventing adoptees from accessing the truth of their birth can be measured in emotional deprivation, mental health, physical health, spiritual health, religious beliefs, and death and dying. Let’s put the shame where it belongs: on governmental bodies, adoption agencies, attorneys and religious entities who claim moral and legal superiority over others. It is time for moral and legal justice in adoption and birth certificate law to prevail in favor of adoptees’ civil and moral rights.

I am not the only half orphan victimized by sealed and falsified birth records. Millions of other half and full orphans (domestic and foreign born) are also held captive by laws made exclusively to cover up illegitimacy. Because I am made to be a bastard by the law that confines me, I stand up for other bastards and half and full orphans who are adopted.

Though I live in New York State, orphanhood is universal. Adoptees’ rights to our sealed birth certificates are also universal. Unseal adoptees original birth certificates NOW and put a stop to falsifying new birth records that replace adoptees true record of birth. Instead, issue certified Certificates of Adoption. Leave all birth certificates intact, free from governmental confiscation and falsification.

In America, for no other reason than the finalization of adoption is a person’s birth certificate taken, sealed from view except by court order, and a falsified document issued to replace the true facts of birth. There is something fundamentally wrong with that universal practice. However, it is not universal across the globe. The Netherlands respects the births and adoptions of all adoptees by not issuing a changed birth certificate upon adoption and by both the birth certificate and adoption certificate open to all adoptees and parents. Adoptions in New Zealand and Australia are being phased out in favor of guardianship and family preservation.

I am enclosing scanned images of all of my birth, baptism and adoption records. Here is a list of what follows this letter (note no information is deleted). Though I have all of these documents, I am STILL legally banned from obtaining them in New York State, and, the New York Mutual Consent Reunion Registry is of no use to me as my mother is dead and cannot give her written permission for any information to be released to me. This is so even after a 36 year reunion.

This is a list of my birth, baptism and adoption records (no information deleted):

  1. Hospital Birth Certificate
  2. Certificate of Birth Registration (Short Form) Name at Birth (Front and Back)
  3. Certified Birth Certificate – Name at Birth
  4. This is To Certify – (Short Form) Name After Adoption
  5. Certified Certificate of Birth – Name After Adoption
  6. Certificate of Birth and Baptism – Name at Birth and Baptism 3-4-56
  7. Certificate of Birth and Baptism – Name After Adoption 5-27-1959
  8. Petition to Adopt – names of all parents, description of natural family members and ages of children, results of investigation of adopting parents
  9. Petition to Adopt and Consent to Adoption – names of all parents
  10. Final Order of Adoption – names of all parents and both names of adoptee

Now that you have read my letter and have seen my documents, do you still believe that a few whinny women whom you claim (their letters to you could be faked) want to be anonymous shall dictate over my life? Abortion has nothing to do with my birth circumstances, unless you want to consider that a medical abortion was offered to my parents to save the life of my dying mother. Guess which way my married parents chose? Their decision had nothing to do with illegitimacy and getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy. The women you seek to protect have a beef with their life circumstances — they need to seek professional therapy to deal with their feelings over being raped and relinquished a child to adoption —  but they created children who are American citizens. Civil rights of autonomous individuals supersede the rights of any parents, except in adoption, and that is wrong. Adoptees should not be bound by adoption contracts. Because they are bound now, this is modern day slavery.

Government seizure of birth certificates for infants who are in the process of being adopted is certainly a form of slavery. A birth certificate records the facts of a specific event. Those facts cannot be changed physically because the genes live on in the adopted person and future generations, with or without factual documentation. When a person’s birth certificate is changed by the government under the guise of protection from illegitimacy, the individual is thought to be reborn through adoption. Illegitimate infants are “legitimized” by the adoption process, giving a fatherless child two legitimate parents on a new Certificate of Live Birth. The idea reeks of eugenics of decades long gone in which unwed mothers were considered imbeciles (Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell — Google it), so why does this practice continue? Both practices need to be abolished: the continued sealing of birth certificates of adoptees, and, falsifying new birth certificates. To add injury to this barbaric legal practice is the fact that not all adoptees are of illegitimate birth: millions of adoptees were born to married parents and one or both parents died, resulting in the adoption of the half or full orphans whose birth certificates are also seized, falsified and kept from the adopted person for life. It is not the circumstances of birth, but the condition of being adopted that perpetuates these atrocities.

I suggest you and your comrades also watch the following video: Response of Origins Inc to Apology of Western Australia to Unmarried Mothers.mov … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC1aP2JnpU4. No mother (and you might be a mother) can watch this educational video and not be affected by the atrocities committed against not married mothers whose infants were violently ripped from them. This continues to this day in American Crisis Pregnancy Centers run by religious organizations. Adoption is a crime against women and children BY other women who want other women’s babies.

Yours Very Truly,

 Joan Wheeler born Doris Sippel

 Adoptee reunited in 1974 at the age of 18 when found by full blood siblings my adoptive parents never wanted me to know

~ ~ ~ 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.

Deborah Jacobs of ACLU (NJ) Takes a Heated Stand in Comments: We need to fight back!

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate4 Comments

http://www.app.com/article/20100830/OPINION04/8310303/Where-are-adoptees-civil-liberties-

Where are adoptees’ civil liberties?

By Peter Franklin

August 30, 2010

 

From Comments section:

 

Prisicilla151 wrote:

I’ll answer that. To adoptee and birthparents who want records open it is only about them. Birthparents who followed the rules and did it right don’t matter. And adoptees who wish to stay anonymous are traitors.
Here is what I believe. Adoptees are adoptees are adoptees. They got a life and most likely a better life then what their birthparent could give them at that time. The adoptive parent and birthparent chose a closed adoption in their best interest. As an adult we don’t agree with every choice our parents made but we have to live with it.
Birthparents with regrets. To bad once the birth certificate was sealed it was done. It was your job to decide what was right for you, choose an open adoption if you want contact.
While I sympathize with their needs. Find a way without stepping on the birthmothers who followed the rules made an educated choice knowing the consequences. Keep working for birthmoms who want to remain anonymous, thank you Deborah Jacobs and ACLU.

 Prisicilla151 wrote:

Dead parents deserve to rest in peace. If the law was that birth certificate should remain sealed when she died they should remained sealed.

Find a way to bring adotee and birthparents together without hurtiing the birthparent who followed and is willing to follow the rule as it was written. Why do the 95 % need to be punished.. you made the wrong choice there are many things that are not a do over when you change your mind. I don’t want to undermine or deminish the feelings of birthmom or adoptee who feel the need for a birth certificate but why is it the birthmom who wants to remain anonymous who followed the rules that need to be punished. That is why ACLU is looking out for the rights of birthmoms. They are willing to compromise in a fair way. Adoptees and birthmom’s who now changed her mom don’t want that they just want it all.
9/2/2010 3:21:36 PM

New Letter to the Editor by Pam Hassegawa needs comments defending adoptees and natural parents

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Amended Birth Certificate, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Original Birth Certificate

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

Illegitimacy Not the Only Cover-up in Sealed and Falsified Birth Certificates

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

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.

Here’s Why UNICEF is Anti-Adoption

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Trauma, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Family Preservation, Family Systems, International Adoption, Natural Fathers, Natural Mothers, Original Birth Certificate, Race and Adoption

UNICEF

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. 

Join the great discussion at Take Away Community on Adoptees’ Access

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptees' Civil Rights, Amended Birth Certificate, False Information on Birth Certificate, Original Birth Certificate

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.

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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.