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.
Advocate Resources
We often get requests from adoptee rights advocates for collateral to distribute as they work to educate legislators in their own state. To that end, we have created a few printables here you can use. These are especially good for in-person meetings with legislators where you want to leave something behind.