Category: Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate

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!

Another Dead Mother as Proof that Adoption is God’s Will and Destiny

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoption Psychology, Adoptive Parents, Death and Dying, False Information on Birth Certificate, Missing Baby, Uncategorized

This post is written as a response to an article in The New York Times in which the writer addresses adoptive parents who think adoption is God’s Will, part of God’s Plan, and their adoptee came to them by destiny and that “it was meant to be”.

After reading the article and a few comments, I dug out a photo, and wanted to write, but left the house for other obligations.

Turns out, while I was away, kostvollmersblog on Land Of Gazillion Adoptees, wrote his own blog post, Dear People Who Believe Placing Children For Adoption and Adopting Children Into Your Families is Destiny and part of God’s Plan. He posted a photo of his mother’s grave.

He had the same idea as I did.

And so, I have been moved to write my own answer to those adoptive parents who believe that adoption is God’s Will and destiny.

Yes, it is God’s will that my mother died, too.

This is my mother:

Mother's Grave, taken 1974-9-1

It was God’s will and His Plan for my widowed father that he relinquish me, his fifth child, born in January of 1956, to be raised the only child of my adoptive parents. Yes, it is destiny that my mother was dying while pregnant with me and her only purpose was to stay alive long enough for me to be born. But she lingered for three more months.

I was two months premature, almost died at birth and was placed in an incubator for two months. Then, I was taken to my dying mother’s bedside where my godparents, a priest, and my mother witnessed the Holy Sacrament of Baptism. I was Baptized under my legal and religious name, recognized by Jesus Christ himself, while my father was at home with his four older children. Three weeks later, his wife, and our mother, died.

The priest said to our father, “The baby needs two parents.”  At the funeral parlor, a woman came up to my father and said, “I know someone who will take your baby.” So, my father, being the obedient Catholic that he was, took the priest’s words to heart. A woman who knew his deceased wife came to pay her respects. It must surely be God’s will, it must surely be destiny, that this woman appeared to my father at the exact moment that his newborn daughter needed a new family because, after all, the priest said that the baby needed two parents. And so it came to pass that my father handed me over to my pre-adoptive parents nearly one month after my mother’s death.

Praise the Lord, Alleluia!

My adoption became final one year and one week after my birth. Within the following three months, the government confiscated my birth certificate and placed it under seal, never to be opened, forever. Paperwork was sent 400 miles away from Surrogate’s Court in the city of my birth to the State Capital where all birth certificates created for NYS adoptees are made and filed. One year and three months after I was born, the Registrar of Vital Statistics set forth a new birth certificate in my  new adoptive name, naming my new parents as my parents by birth, naming my hospital of birth, the time of my birth, and stating that I was a “single” birth and not a twin or a triplet. The Registrar then signed his name and affixed the raised State seal to this new birth certificate certifying that the facts stated were true. He lied. He knowingly created a false government document. He committed fraud and perjury as lying under oath is a crime. But, it was God’s will. It was destiny. He just had to do it since it was God’s Plan.

Three and a half years later, when my adoptive parents wanted a new baptismal certificate for me in the name they had given me, they asked their lawyer to do something. He did. He requested that the parish that performed my baptism in 1956 issue a new, amended, baptismal certificate in my adoptive name so that I could go to Catholic Schools and receive the rest of the Catholic sacraments. The parish pastor created a new baptismal certificate that stated that I, in my legal adopted name, was baptized on the date of my actual baptism in 1956, he named my adoptive parents, named my godparents who were my deceased mother’s brother and his wife, and then issued the new baptismal certificate in May of 1959. This Pastor knowingly issued a falsified baptismal certificate, yet he, being a representative of God, committed a sin by signing his name in witness and testimony that all the information was true as taken from Official Records of that parish church.

Yes, it is all God’s will. It is all destiny. Praise the Lord! I am Saved!

No, it is manipulation, magical thinking, and delusion. My mother’s cancer was not a gift. My father’s grief was not God’s Plan. My living a life devoid of my four older siblings, and they of me, was not destiny. The Lord did not save me.

The woman who told my father she knew of “someone who will take your baby” was the sister of the man who became my adoptive father.

The priest who said that the baby needed two parents was not concerned that the other four children needed two parents, too, he was only thinking that the newborn needed more immediate care. The immediate care could have been found by some charitable ladies coming into our home while our father was at work so that his family could have been kept together.

The only ones to have benefited out of this arrangement were my adoptive parents, Surrogate Court, the Registrar, and the lawyers.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I was raised a spoiled brat, got everything I ever wanted, lived in a house in the suburbs, went to private schools, had a bedroom all to myself, and my Mom made me dresses. Got “everything I ever wanted”? Except for my siblings and my father, except for my name at birth and baptism, except for peace of mind.

Because of this, I left the Church many, many years ago.

Now, all of my parents are dead. I spent part of the day visiting their graves, all of them, because of this magical thinking.

As for the government…

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.

Lawsuit Claims Birth Certificate of Schwarzenegger’s Love Child Was Falsified

On By legitimatebastardIn False Information on Birth Certificate, Family Systems, Genealogy, Natural Fathers

The ex-husband of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lover plans to sue claiming that “the birth certificate of the couple’s love child was falsified.” Details can be found here.

I’m not sure if Rogelio Baena stands a chance in his lawsuit against Arnold Schwarzenegger. While I agree with his outrage and the fact that his name is on the boy’s birth certificate as the father, it is pretty much a universal law that any child born within a marriage is considered the child of both wife and husband. The reason this is so is to protect the wife and child from the rage of the husband should he find out he is not the father and to give the child a name and inheritance rights.

But if Rogelio Baena is successful in his lawsuit against Arnold Schwarzenegger, he may well establish a president: “Rogelio Baena’s name appears on the birth certificate as the boy’s father, and attorneys have told him that if Schwarzenegger and Mildred Baena knew this was not true, they engaged in conspiracy to falsify a public document — a serious crime in California.”

Not only could this be a president-setting case for husbands of women who have children via affairs, but this could also be of benefit to millions of adoptees whose birth certificates are routinely falsified upon the finalization of adoption. According to Rogelio Baena’s attorneys, conspiracy to falsify a public document is a serious crime in California. I suspect it is a serious crime in all of the United States.

As those of us in the adoption reform movement have been saying for many years, why are our birth certificates amended — falsified — by our local Registrars of Vital Statistics? Why is this not a crime? Why can’t adoptees sue? We know our birth certificates were falsified because the parents named on our legal birth certificates did not sire nor give birth to us. Our legal parents became our parents by legal adoption, not biology and birth. When will the truth of our births be fully recognized?

I wonder if Rogelio Baena will win his lawsuit over the falsification of his son’s birth certificate. Perhaps he will be granted the removal of his name and the rightful father’s name will be placed on the boy’s birth certificate.

It is a shame that the 13 year old boy whose birth certificate is in question must go through this public humiliation. That, however, is another story.

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.