Unseal the Record
(March 12, 2009) Editor:
I’d like to respond to Carolyn Coke’s letter regarding current adoption practices (“Mailbox,” March 5). Coke missed my point completely. I am not surprised at all, as it is her job to sell the public on the “sunny, rainbow-filled” aspects of adoption.
It’s very clear from her letter that adoptees drop off her radar once they are adopted. We’re simply commodities in which adoption agencies and lawyers profit from our losses. There are no birth parents lobbying for privacy, Ms. Coke. That is a myth created by adoption agencies, such as yours, to justify the civil rights violations of sealing original birth certificates of adoptees and falsifying them with amended ones.
Children are only born once! Sealing away birth records is immoral. I strongly suggest that the California Department of Social Services work to immediately stop the sealing of original birth certificates of adoptees and unseal the ones already sealed.
Stop selling the public this beautiful picture of adoption. Adoption is a loss of the child’s original family. It is a traumatic experience for every single child that endures it. The sealing of an adoptees’ birth records is yet another disenfranchising from the non-adopted majority that we, adoptees, are expected to accept with gratefulness. I’m not grateful.
I want what every non-adopted citizen in this country has: my original birth certificate. It’s that simple.
Mara Rigge, Trinidad
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FOUR Comments
Comment / By joy / March 12, 2009, 5:40 p.m.
Thank you for writing this wonderful letter.
Comment / By Gaye Sherman Tannenbaum / March 12, 2009, 5:50 p.m.
Mara - Once again you’ve exposed the industry’s manipulations. Ms. Coke said she was sympathetic to your plight but spent the rest of her letter promoting adoption and ignoring adoptee rights to their own original birth records. “I feel your pain” and “thank you for opening the dialogue” are meaningless gestures.
Comment / By Mara / March 13, 2009, 6:56 p.m.
The 2009 Adoptee Rights Protest is July 21st in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Check out this link for more info: www.youtube.com/user/AdopteeRightsPhilly
Comment / By Mara / March 14, 2009, 7:50 a.m.
If you agree that adult adoptees should have equal access to their birth records as non-adoptees, please sign the petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/release-original-birth-certificates-for-adoptees