this woman’s work

HB 7 open records shot down

May 9, 2008 Adoption

The open records language has been removed from HB 7. This is despite moving testimony supporting the right of adopted people to have copies of their original birth certificates and absolutely no testimony against it. That’s right — Ohio’s elected public officials rate the concerns of imaginary people over the concerns of those folks who actually exist, actually vote and get in their cars and take the time to testify.

By refusing to grant access to this basic human right of a non-falsified document that the rest of us non-adopted people can freely take for granted, the Ohio house health committee says this:

1. Adoptees are perpetual children who need to be protected from their curiosity about their shameful births.
2. Adoptees should be unduly grateful to the people who take them in since everyone knows that adopted kids are damaged goods.
3. Birth families are disposable and inconsequential.
4. Yet birth families must be protected from the prying eyes of their adopted away relatives.

If you are not adopted, the friend or family member of an adopted person, a birth family member or the friend or family of a birth family member you need to know that this says something about the way the Ohio house health committee thinks of you, too.

They are saying that basic civil rights are conditional; that the government should have more control over the very truth of your existence than you should; that unexpected pregnancies and the women who have them are shameful; and that the government isn’t here to protect your rights but to shield you regardless of your wants and wishes.

In other words? We should all be concerned.

Join Buckeyes for Equal Access (or your state’s equivalent) to learn who you should contact to let them know that EVERYONE — not just the non-adopted — has a right to his or her true, unmodified, unfalsified birth certificate.

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