Now is the time for all good women and men to come to the aid of adopted people and let legislators know that everyone should have a clear and unfettered right to their identities, the one locked up with their original birth certificates.
Texas, California, Missouri, and my home, New York, are the states with legislative action going on (that I'm aware of) that would give adopted people the same rights as those not adopted.Now while the legislators are still in session is the time to make our voices heard. Instead of just sitting back and reading and venting about what went wrong in our lives when we took a left turn instead of a right, or why our reunions are not better, turn that emotion and passion into action. Please take a few minutes to write your own state assemblyman and senator and speak up and speak out! If I had a megaphone like Harvey Milk to get this crowd going, I would use it. So today instead of writing about feelings, or the latest adoption-related outrage, I'm posting there the letters I am sending to legislators in New York.
Please join me. Use any parts of the letters below but always tell who you are in relation to the bill in your own words. That will be a hundred times more effective than using someone else's words. These letters of course are for New York legislators. If you are from a different state (see notice about Texas in the sidebar alongside this blog)
I am writing to ask you to support The Adoptee Bill of Rights, S5269, that would give adopted people their original birth certificates without restrictions.
I write as a birth mother who relinquished her daughter in Rochester in 1966, when the world was a far different place. I kept my pregnancy secret, as I did not want to be known as someone who “got in trouble." But I—like the vast majority of women who have been in this position—never sought or desired anonymity in perpetuity from my child. I desperately wanted to know her one day.
I did find her, and had a rewarding relationship with her—and her adoptive family—for more than 26 years. But I am not alone. Records from other states and other countries that have open records have found that the vast majority of birth mothers wish to be reunited with their children, if only to learn that they are all right. The sorrow of now knowing is great. We do not wish to stay hidden from them. In Oregon, where the records have been open since 2000, more than 9000 adoptees have requested their original birth certificates. During that time, fewer than one percent have found letters on file with the state that their mothers did not wish to be contacted.