We stand with Adoptees.
We believe an adopted person’s right to their own original birth certificate is absolute.
Adoptee Rights are Human Rights
We believe it is a basic human right to know one’s identity and we are against all practices that abuse this right, including but not limited to the practice of sealed records in adoptions. We believe an adopted person’s right to their own original birth certificate is absolute and we only support policy that restores this right without restrictions or qualifications. Every single adult adopted person in America has a fundamental right to his/her/their original birth certificate.
We were never promised confidentiality.
The myth that birth/first mothers were promised confidentiality is often used to oppose restoring equality to adult adopted persons. The reality is that keeping us anonymous was convenient for an institution that functioned on shame and secrecy which is exactly how the domestic infant adoption system operated when we lost our children to it. We were never promised confidentiality. No document we signed in which we relinquished our rights were we promised confidentiality. Further, we are united in that we never expected confidentiality from our own relinquished children, not at the time of relinquishment and certainly not today.
We do not support discriminatory policy that seeks to “protect our privacy.”
We often hear well-meaning people cite “protecting birth/first parent privacy” in opposition to restoring equality to adopted persons. We believe those people are confusing privacy with secrecy. Privacy refers to the ability to control information about oneself and involves the basic human right to keep certain aspects of one's life or personal information away from public scrutiny or unauthorized access.* Secrecy is the deliberate act of hiding something from others even if they have a legitimate reason to access it; secrecy is literally what state policy keeps legalized by failing to restore rights to adult adopted persons.
*We do not consider the men/women/non-binary persons whom we gave birth to as “the public.” We believe they are authorized individuals to access their own original birth certificates and that they have earned this authority simply by being born: it is their birthright to know the truth about their birth.
Adoptee Rights are Women’s Rights
Keeping a discriminatory policy in place against adult adopted persons in the name of “protecting birth/first mothers” actually perpetuates the demeaning stereotype that as women who lost children to adoption, we are weak and less than competent adults who need state protection to handle our most basic affairs. To us, nothing is further from the truth. We did not have a voice back then to stand up against a powerful system that victimized us at our most vulnerable when we were pregnant and unwed, but we have one today. We are united in our stance to sitting and future elected policymakers: we do not need your protection. We need your courage—your courage to stop using us as an excuse to keep adult men/women/non-binary persons in a state of second-class citizenship.
National Support For Adoptee Rights as Women’s Rights
Genetic Secrecy Is Over
The consumer DNA industry has brought an end to the era of genetic and adoption secrecy. The irony is that it has also created a very public way to identify relatives. When we listen to adoptees, they tell us they feel forced to use consumer DNA to circumvent discriminatory policy that denies them their original birth certificates. They tell us if they had their original birth certificates, they could initiate private and direct communication.