Tag: uncertified birth certificates

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.

 

 

 

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).