Another thing about adoption reunions in Ohio
Aug 2, 2008 Adoption
If you’re an 18-year old (you know, an adult) who wants to put in a request for a court order for your records, you can’t. You have to get your adoptive parents’ permission or wait ’til you’re 21.
If you’re an 18-year old birth sibling (you know, an adult) and want to put in a request to get information on your lost to adoption sibling. You can’t. You have to wait until you’re 21.
That’s called justice around these here in parts. (Here’s the law in all of its glory.)
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Tags: adoptee rights, Adoption, adoption reform, adoption reunions, birth parent rights, Ohio, reunion
When your “yes” means nothing
Jul 31, 2008 Adoption
This is something I just learned.
Let’s say you’re an adoptee born in the no-man’s land between 1964 and 1996. (When “Adoption Records are Sealed and Only Opened by a Court Order” thanks to H.B. 84.) Let’s say you contact the adoption professional who oversaw your adoption and give him/her written permission to share your identifying information with your first parents. Let’s say that your first parents have also met with this adoption professional and have also given him/her written permission to share their identifying information with you. Can the adoption professional share said information now that s/he has the two signed release of information documents? No. No.
Your consent doesn’t matter because it’s all about the court order.
Some of the arguments I’ve heard about not opening records is that it wouldn’t be fair to the people at the other end of the search (I don’t buy this but there — that’s one of the arguments). But in Ohio, the government is so worried about “protecting” people separated by adoption that even when everyone WANTS to find each other, Ohio says no.
Now the adoption professional certainly could blow off the law and hand the info over but then said adoption professional is at risk of getting his/her license revoked if someone gets angry at them for breaking the law. Given how emotional adoption discussion tends to be, it’s not beyond comprehension that some angry person might get said professional in trouble if they got wind of these mututal consent reunions.
So you get a court order, right? Or at least you try. Only if you talk to adoptees who have tried to get court orders, they will tell you about judges who say, “I’m holding your original birth certificate right here and I’m not giving it to you. Do you know why? Because you have no right to betray your real parents like this.” Or they say, “You should be grateful that you’ve had a home with loving parents and you should let the past lie.” (I know — it’s insane but it’s true. It all depends on what judge you get.)*
Anyway, I just learned this (I thought mutual written consent superceded the law) and thought I’d share.
*If your first parent or a biological sibling also goes to the court then the two of you might be able to hook up. But you can’t just hook up in your old lawyer’s office unless s/he wants to risk their law license.
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Tags: adoptee rights, adoption records, adoption reform, birth parent rights, open records
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:
- Adoptees are perpetual children who need to be protected from their curiosity about their shameful births.
- Adoptees should be unduly grateful to the people who take them in since everyone knows that adopted kids are damaged goods.
- Birth families are disposable and inconsequential.
- 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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Tags: adoptee rights, Adoption, adoption reform, bastard nation, HB 7, ohio HB 7, open records
