Original Birth Certificate question?

Question

I want to start fresh. Please ignore anything that I or anyone else have asked in the past.

What value does an Original Birth Certificate have if the adoptive parents are open with the child about the adoption?

I may or may not have been adopted. How am I different if I see my original birth certificate? Am I a different person because I see my biological mother's name? I already know the date, place, and time of my birth. I know the doctor that delivered me.

I am asking these questions because I just can't understand why some people feel that it is discrimination. I am not saying that these people are right or wrong. I just don't understand them. PLEASE educate me if you feel that there is some piece of information that I am missing. It seems like people just state that it is discriminatory, but don't say how. What right is being infringed upon?

Please...no rants, raves, soapboxes. I will try to keep an open mind if you are willing to have patience.

Answer 1

Some use the OBC to help them in their search for their bio-family.

Answer 2

For me it's as simple as those who were not adopted are allowed to have their birth certificate and those who were adopted are not. I don't see why there should be a difference. Why should the fact that a group of adults made a decision about my life mean that the original documentation of my birth needs to be sealed away and forever hidden from me?

I do have mine - and receiving it gave me a connection to my beginnings.

Answer 3

I'm not an adoptee. But as an adoptive parent involved in an open adoption I would like to answer this question.

An OBC represents ownership of the truth. It's the document that confirms you exist and how you got here. It's VERY personal. And, something most people take for granted. My daughter has her OBC. But if she didn't I would fight to get it.

To me it's a basic human right. Adoption laws on OBC's need to get out of the dark ages of promoting shame and secrecy. It's such and old worn out stigma and definitely not how my daughter's life is defined.

Perhaps some adoptees have no interest in their OBC but I think they certainly deserve the choice to obtain it.

Answer 4

My amended birth certificate has my name, date of birth and my adoptive parents names. Period.  Nothing else.  

I have looked at my husbands, and both of my daughters.  It includes their weight, their height, their place of birth, my information and my husban's information, hospital, county, city and where we born.  

Statistics aside, it is a document that is about my birth.  My adoptive mother and father do not control my amended birth certificate.  I don't control my daughters' birth certificates.  Just like my husband's parents don't control his.  I don't want the psych evals on my natural mother.  Yes sadly I have been read those.  That is HIPPA covered information.  Yet I was told that information.  She didn't adjust well at the maternity home as per their standards. Heck I wouldn't have either.  That is why they chose to evaluate her. I don't want the homestudy information.  Heck I don't want information about the payment information that both sets of parents paid.  Now my adoptive mother is wanting the adoption finalization paperwork because she didn't remember signing that paperwork.  The agency never gave them a copy of it either.  They may now give that information but they didn't then to ANY adoptive parents. It records my first chapter to quote Darrell McDaniels.  Its my life, not my natural parents nor my adoptive parents.  In that is where the discrimination.  As a well known adoptive parent, Adam Pertman, said about his own adopted children, that he wanted a level playing field for his own children.  He wanted them to have their own OBCs.

Answer 5

Most people fighting for Equal Access for Adult Adoptees to their own Birth Certificate already know who their birth parents are.

The value of access to one's own birth certificate is to be an equal citizen under the law. ie. to be able to walk into the vital stats office, plonk down your $15 or however much 'normal' people do and get a copy of your true and factual record of birth.

Personally, if I use it to line my cats litter box with it that would be a value.  The value is having equal access to it as other citizens do.  Equal rights for Adult Adoptees.  To End the shame and stigma of adoption.

I'm not looking for a new mommy and daddy, I have perfectly good ones in my adoptive parents.   I'm not looking to use my own information to cause harm or havoc and no adoptee should be put under suspicion of any crime that has not been committed - this is exactly what sealed records do, they put adoptees in a suspicious class of people that can't be trusted.  I'm sure you don't think of your kids that way, do you?

Thanks for listening x

Answer 6

When you've been adopted you have everything you once knew ripped away from you at an age when you had no choice, and no say.

Some people walk away just fine emotionally from it, but most don't. Most (not all) have a strong NEED to know where they came from, who the came from, and the whys of their adoption.

It's very difficult to explain to someone that isnt adopted why you need to find out who you are, most don't understand, but they've also had their natural family around them their whole life. When you adopted, the little  things become very important, things that people who are not adopted can't begin to understand.When your adopted you can't even explain where you got your nose from, when most people can explain away I got my freckles from great aunt Helda.. you can't. There's always that unknown to you.

Original birth certificates are a huge step for someone whose searching for those answers. Think of it as a puzzle missing one piece... the very middle one. The OBC is that missing piece that can put the whole puzzle together to make the picture "right".

Answer 7

"Please...no rants, raves, soapboxes. I will try to keep an open mind if you are willing to have patience."

With all due respect...same to you.  

What exactly do you consider a rant, rave or soapbox?  People who are pasionate about wanting to know their history, and their true idenity?  People who have been denied their rights?  People who have to live with uncertainty because they don't know their family and medical history.

I want my OBC because I want to know where I came from, who I came from and what my future may hold.  I want it so I can actually answer questions when my doctor is taking a medical history from me.  I want that piece of paper to fill in the blanks that I have lived with for 34 years.  Maybe it will finally help me feel whole for once.

Answer 8

For me, my Birth Certificate is a symbol.  It's a connection to an event, a loss, something that for me was tragic, that occurred many years ago.  It was the first thing that happened to me in the world.  I was given up and given to others.

Whatever I think about those events, the Certificate represents a validation that they happened.  That I'm real and that I belong here.

I don't know what will, for you, seem like a rant, and I don't mean to be doing so, but let me give you an analogy.  Some people strongly object to burning (or otherwise defacing) the American flag.  When I look at it, I see a colored piece of cloth.  The flag isn't freedom.  It's not democracy.  It's not the people who have lived and died to protect this country.  It's a piece of cloth.  But to others, it's much more than that.  It isn't those things, but it stands for those things.  Burning it represents burning those things they value most.  I might not agree with their assessment of the event of flag-burning, but I understand why it upsets them.

The Certificate isn't my identity.  It isn't peace.  It isn't belonging.  It doesn't, by itself, make me a real person.  But it stands for all of that for me.  I don't expect everyone to feel the same way.  But I do hope they will understand that that's what it is for me.

I know the names and the information on my Certificate.  But I still have never SEEN it.  I have never held it.  I don't see it in black and white.  And that is significant for me.  And since everyone else has access to theirs, whether they feel this way or not, I should be given access to mine.

I hope that helps.

Answer 9

You ask why is it discrimination.  The reason is because non-adoptees can have the completely true birth certificates, but only adoptees cannot.  It doesn't change who you are or anything like that, but it symbolizes being equal in the eyes of the law by being able to have access to the very same documents as people who aren't adopted.

It does infringe upon the Constitutional right to privacy from government intrusion (Roe v Wade) as the state is holding back a personal document that all others can access, unless the person is adopted.

Answer 10

What is wrong is that the birth certificate is YOURS. It has your name on it, your details on it, and the state has no right to withhold that information from you. The birth certificate contains important details such as parents medical information that could be beneficial to the adoptee as an adult.

Answer 11

I'm not an adoptee.  But as a citizen, if there is a legal governmental document that has information about me, even if I know the jist of what is written on that document, I still believe I should have access to have a copy of that document so I can see and read with my own eyes what is on that document.

While original birth certificates is mainly what is being fought for first, the same goes with adoption decrees that get sealed.

To say that I would have no right to see that document that has my name on it, when anyone else who wasn't in the perfectly ordinary circumstance of being adopted can see that document without special permission is absolutely upsetting.

But that's just my opinion when trying to imagine what I might feel had I been an adoptee.

Answer 12

Original Birth Certificate you can go city can call a adopted law

Answer 13

An original birth certificate has the true facts of our birth.  My mothers name and my fathers name.  It is my heritage, my history, it is the key to finding out who I really am.

We don't become a "different person" because we see our biological mothers name, we are different people because we don't know our mothers name.  We are denied the simplest truth, who gave birth to us.  Whose womb did I spend 9 months in?  I think that is something unique and personal and I have the right to now.

My original birth certificate is mine.  It should not be kept from me along with my medical history.

Why do you keep saying that you may or may not have been adopted?  I think that it is obvious that you are not adopted.  If you were you would understand.  

Adoptees wanting their OBC's is not a threat to adoptive parents.  We still love our families.  We just want to know who we are.  Why is that so hard to understand?

Answer 14

I am an adoptive mother in an open adoption.  I appreciate reading your concern about the original birth certificate.  These are things that I  know my daughter will want to see.  Her OBC is in her baby book beside her new birth certificate that was created when the adoption was final.  My daughter, at age 2, is already starting to understand that she is adopted and how special that is because we chose her.  Also, she hears that her birthmom loves her so much that she gave her to us to love and care for.  We wish her birthmom would stay in touch because I know there will come a time when she will have questions that only the birthmom will be able to answer.  I am not threatened by my daughter's knowledge about her adoption and her birth parents (only have info on the mom).  I think adoptive children who have access to all genetic records are more confident and less wary of their birth circumstances.  

If there is anything you (or other adoptees) can suggest to help my daughter understand and accept her adoption please let me know.  

Thank you, again, for your openness.

Answer 15

Even though you're all for Phil's answer, I'll add my two cents.   My husband was adopted and I am a birthmom whose baby was re-named, so this is a topic that is dear to me as well.

My husband was born in Wyoming.  His birth certificate states that his adoptive parents are his parents, and it also states that he was born in X-town (I used X to protect our identity, I know it's cheesy, but oh well).  I believe he was born in Y-town.  He doesn't really know, or care to know.  He's happy going along with X-town.  Now as it was 1972, and a 'different era', his aparents know very little about his biological family.  That's just how it's always been.  But say my husband wants to find out his biological history someday, say for the sake of our kids, if nothing else?  Well, anything and everything that's been changed from his OBC makes it just that much more difficult to find out who his family is, since in essence, he doesn't even know who HE is.

An adoptee here once worded it this way and it really helped me understand- as non-adoptees, we really don't realize how much we really do know about our histories and take that for granted- even if you haven't sat around and had a conversation including "Uncle Joey is a banker, he had lung cancer, he lived in El Paso for a while in the 80's, (whatever...)"... you do pick it up in bits and pieces as you just live life.  Adoptees do not have this valuable background information- really, it's huge.  This is one thing that I totally get about adoptees being a little testy.  I no longer take for granted all the little bits and pieces I know and still hear about myself and my family, that I know others do not ever get to know.  

The other reason this is important is that even though I thought I had an open adoption with the adoptive parents that I relinquished my daughter to just 7 years ago, I'm fairly positive they've now closed that.  This is especially bothersome to me because I know they renamed her (soon after her birth).  Surely she has a new birth certificate.  So now if they don't choose to re-open the adoption, I don't know how she'll ever get information about me or this part of her biological family.  I'm also certain she'll never know anything from her biological dad, so it was/is really important to me that I stay in contact with them and/or her.  At this point, all she has is what her adoptive parents tell her- which could be nothing.  Should she want to find me in the future, it will be much more difficult not knowing where she was born or who I am.  We live across the country from each other- if she doesn't have her OBC and/or if her adoptive parents choose not to share what they know about me, she may never, ever have that information.  This is especially important in matters of health records, if nothing else.  

Hope this helps~