Comments on: What Would You Do If You Couldn’t?

By: Dad

Dad — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:57:46 +0000

I’m the father to two children adopted at age 5 from the foster care system in Pennsylvania. This is a no brainer – adult adoptees should have complete access to their original birth certificate.

It doesn’t matter the circumstances which led to their relinquishment or separation from their biological family. Adult adoptees should not be denied their history.

Think about it for a moment. Imagine not knowing if your natural mother is alive or dead. Imagine not knowing where your grandparents are buried. Imagine facing a critical health issue and not knowing your family’s medical history.

Imagine being separated from your brothers and sisters and having no way to reconnect those family ties, even in adulthood. If the state were keeping this information from you, would you stand for it?

My children have their Original Birth Certificates (OBC) and family history thanks to Pennsylvania’s full disclosure law when adopting from foster care. The files we received from the state gave us everything we needed to identify our children’s natural parents.

I guess adult adoptees relinquished at birth are **** out of luck. It’s time the state treats adult adoptees like any other citizen and ends closed records.

Pennsylvania Adoptive Dad For Open Records

By: Judy Foster

Judy Foster — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:02:00 +0000

I too was in Philly supporting adoptees’ access to their OBCs. I surrendered my daughter to adoption in 1961 through Catholic Charities, Paterson, NJ. I was never promised confidentiality, nor did I ask for it. Neither was any other birth mother I know. When my daughter and I were reunited almost 11 years ago, I learned that her adoptive parents always knew my name. Catholic Charities had given it to them. Some 40% of adoptees know their birth name because of this practice, or because it was left on the copy of the adoption decree. So what is the real issue as to why legislatures continue to ignore these facts and keep adoptees’ OBCs sealed? As a person who has been lobbying in NJ for the past 10 years knows, it must be out of fear…fear of something they have to hide. In NJ, it’s the speaker of the Assembly who is blocking our legislation. And he is a staunch Catholic. And the Catholic Conference of Bishops is the main force behind why we can’t get a hearing on our bill. I wonder what they have to hide??? Hmmm….

By: Lorelei

Lorelei — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:51:20 +0000

It’s time to STOP THE MYTH!!!!!!
We birthmothers were never promised confidentiality from our children.

By: Ronnie

Ronnie — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:37:05 +0000

Ah, Mutual Consent Registries! My son was born and surrendered in New York State. His adoptive family moved to Texas shortly after he was placed with them and his adoption took place there. New York’s mutual consent registry is only for people born AND adopted in New York. So, when I tried to register, they kept my fee, but said they had no record of my son being adopted in NY and therefore could not register me. I think many adoptions cross state lines. Another reason why adoptees should just be able to recieve their OBCs with no strings attached.

By: Peach

Peach — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 04:40:36 +0000

Thank you for this post, from an adult adoptee whose mother passed away while searching for me. She was told she had given birth to a boy, so the mutual consent registries wouldn’t “match” us. We need our OBC’s just like everyone else.

By: Kippa

Kippa — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:31:50 +0000

Thank you!

By: Theresa

Theresa — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:55:13 +0000

As an adoptee from Philadelphia, an armchair genealogist and one of the volunteers from the Philly protest, I’d like to thank you for this post!

I have my maternal family tree traced back to the 1600′s in Magherafelt, Northern Ireland, even though it’s against the law in Pennsylvania for me to know my original name – how foolish is that?

By: Priscilla Sharp

Priscilla Sharp — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:40:49 +0000

Thank you! From a fellow genealogist *and* birth mother who relinquished a daughter in 1964 and found her and reunited with her in 1986. I concur with everyone — every person deserves to know everything they want to know about their origins. Even the bad stuff — you can eventually get over and move past the “skeletons in the closet” but you can never, ever effectively deal with the unknown.
Another point I didn’t see raised with respect to adoptees and genealogy is that no adoptee can join the Daughters or Sons of the American Revolution through their own ancestry; because their (revised) official birth certificates list the adoptive family, not the true family, they cannot prove relationship to the qualifying ancestor. This definitely concerns my daughter — she can never become a member of the DAR through me back to our ancestor Joseph Goodenough because the only birth certificate she can provide says she’s descended from others.
What a mess! Let’s do all we can to reverse these idiotic, ill-conceived secrecy laws!
Priscilla Sharp

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:38:06 +0000

I am one of those adoptees who was and is still VERY interested in my own genealogy. Unfortunatley, throughout half of my life, I was under persuasion that I should just “accept” my adoptive parents’ family history and genealogy and just pretend that I was their nationalities. This never felt right to me because deep down I knew I had different genes (thus where the term genealogy stems from!!) Legally, I had and still have no “right” to my own original information including my original birth certificate. I know in the genealogy world, birth certificates are very important!
I eventually found my birthparents (without the help from the state of NJ, who by the way, still to this day, seals my original birth certificate from me–remember I am the one to which this document actually pertains!)
So I am one of the few adoptees who was lucky and able to find my birth relatives on my own (not many are able to do so) and today I know that I am half Jewish! (who would have thought in my adoptive family!) and the other half Irish, German and Cuban. It would have been nice to have grown up with this information instead of wondering while going throught those very young and informative years. So my Hope is that all adoptees will have access to their own original birth certificates (a right every other non-adopted individual enjoys in America) so that adoptees also, like me, can at least know their original name. Such a simple piece of information that so many people and the law want us to ignore can only be appreciated by you, avid genealogists, who know the importance of such information!
Thank you for posting this story to your blog. The more people who are aware of how adult adoptees are being denied basic rights in America, the sooner our rights will be restored.
Anne Bauer,
Author of, The Sound of Hope: A True Story of an Adoptee’s Quest for Her Origins

By: Mary S.

Mary S. — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:46:33 +0000

The adoption business has grown from a concern over who would raise a child, to “who cares if a huge percentage of our citizens do not even know who they are” – let’s charge them big bucks and dole out little hints, like the first name of the maternal uncle, the age of the mother at time of birth, etc. Let ‘em guess and worry and suffer – forever.

This is all very wrong. At age 18 or 21, everyone needs a real birth certificate. This should be dealt with at the national level, but with the current President hiding his own birth certificate, there’s a fat chance a national law can happen anytime soon. So people in every sealed-record state are spinning wheels – some actually spending their entire life to turn this around. Without truth, nothing else much matters.

I would go so far as to jail anyone who hides birth certificate information. In fact, a person also deserves to have a contact number and address of ALL relatives. Imagine not knowing if you are Irish or German or Polish or Swedish; if you were born in the USA or elsewhere; if you were formed in a lab or have Indian tribe rights; if your father was a master violinist or your mother was a writer, if a certain kind of cancer or heart problem is something to be especially guarded against, if you have many siblings (maybe even a twin) or are an only child, if your parents are still alive and if not, a copy of the death certificate……