Adoptees closer to OBC access in MA and HI--Write right now!

Lorraine 

Good news to report on two clean bills restoring the right of adopted individuals to their original birth certificates (OBC), and thus the right to know and claim their original identities, ancestors and true histories. 

In Massachusetts, a clean bill (no veto, no inane restrictive amendments) passed out of the legislature's Joint Committee on Public Health the other day. Now it goes to the full Senate and House for a vote (2 different bills, same result), at a date yet to be designated before the end of the session, July 31st. This legislation will close the gap that exists between the OBC haves--adoptees born before July 17, 1974 (when access closed) and after January 1, 2008--and the have-nots--those born between July 17, 1974 and 2008. Thus this new bill would cover those adoptees between ages 42 and 8, those caught in the squeeze when the legislature partially opened their records. Sounds good to us!

Giving up your baby before he's born

Mother and child, photo by Lisa Roberts

Should the law allow mothers to sign consents for adoption before the birth of their child? A few states already allow a woman to sign away her baby before the baby is born. This is outrageous and absurd, asking a vulnerable woman at a time her hormones are going bonkers to make a decision that will affect her and the as-yet-unborn child for their entire lives, as well as the generations to come.

You want to ask--What were they thinking? when someone came up with this horrendous idea. Sign here! and we'll give  you a gold watch to boot? You know right off the bat that the adoption industry was behind this noxious and unethical practice. Back in the day when Jane and I relinquished, no such crazy system was in place. Only as adoption became a big business did the purveyors of babies--in response to demands from their true clients, the adopting parents, did even a whisper of "pre-birth" consent come into being.