2 Responses to “Heads up from Marley!”

1. Angela
   February 29th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

   

   I got Ky’s original BC by mistake and didn’t know until later that many (most) foster parents are not allowed to get it while the child is in their care so I lied when asked if I had the original (which I did!) at one point. The previous social worker had included it as part of the paperwork and inadvertantly passed it on to me so when the new one asked I said I had no idea where it could be!LOL I figured that if she went back to her first mom then I could give it to her (or include it in her scrapbook) and if she stayed with us then I’d be able to save it for her for later. I don’t even know if I would have been able to get it for her at a later time so I’m so glad I lied and kept it.

   After the adoption we got a new BC w/ with our names as her parents. I wish that, instead, we would have gotten something showing all of us (like a slot for her first parents and then a slot for adoptive parents) or an amendment of sorts but not a replacement as if they had never existed at all. I remember how excited we all were but how wrong it started to feel to have their existance erased. So now I keep both (the original one and the one showing us as her parents) for her.

   For simplification purposes (and this turned out to be a good thing because we have travelled twice outside of the country and extensively inside the US and the BC showing that her name matched ours saved “inquiries” a few times…sad but true) we changed her last name to ours BUT now I wish I had kept her original last name and hyphaenated (sp. ? - nope…not looking this word up!LOL), but if she wants to in the future she can do it w/ no guilt…we’ve had some conversations about it so she knows that we won’t be upset or hurt if she ever wants to use one or the other or both.

   Anyway…all this to say how much I believe that not only should they have access to their birth certificates but how it bothers me that these legal documents are changed to erase birth parents out of them.

   If I had not lied and kept it, we would only have the one showing our names only. We are lucky that we could always ask her first mom to go get one for us but what if we didn’t have contact? She would not be able to get that info and it’s simply not right/fair.

2. Sarah
   March 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am

   

   So I have a question about this. To me it seems obvious that in all future adoptions, original birth certificates should be provided. In fact, I’d like to see some kind of adoption certificate rather than a new ‘birth’ certificate that makes it look like the adoptive parents actually gave birth.

   My question is about adoptions that have already taken place. Once the law is changed, women choosing to place will know from the beginning that the information will be available. They will be able to make decisions about whether and how to place and about who to tell and when with that understanding. If we passed a law now that opened up all past original birth certificates, it seems like there would be a generation of women for who the rules would be changed in the middle of the game. They made all of those decision assuming that information would never be available, and suddenly it is. Instead of being asked to tell who they needed to tell from the beginning, they would be asked (in some cases) to admit to those people that they haven’t told them for years.

   So should there be a ‘grandfather clause’ that says that the law only applies to future adoptions? If not, is it because the situation this places some women in is no different than the current situation, in which some adoptees search successfully even without a birth certificate? Or is it because the right of adoptees to know their story outweighs the right of the women who placed in this case?