Birth certificate access is civil rights issue | NewsOK.com

Birth certificate access is civil rights issue | NewsOK.com

The OK Legislative Adoption Review Task Force was comprised mainly of "professionals" who make their living in adoption. The meetings were open to the public and after sitting through two years of meetings, hearing argument after argument about what should be "acceptable" expenses and fees that can be charged in adoption, adult adoptees were given the last thirty minutes of the last meeting to speak about adoptee rights. It points out so well that adoption is a business, complete with supply/demand principles, with adoptees being prime commodity.

OK is far from an "open records" state, like our neighbor to the north, KS, but Judges are given latitude to grant adoptee access to their adoption record/obc with "good cause" shown. The language the legislators added to their current adoption bill, HB 1748, actually strips adoptee's right to obtain their obc even more than in current law. It mentions that Judges can grant access to adoptees only if they balance "adoptee rights with birth parent privacy". State after state is finding that birth parents were never promised, nor asked for, perpetual anonymity under the law.

Even more disconcerting, is the fact that we were made aware during these meetings that the OK Department of Health is finding that, in some cases, the targeted adoptive parents in an "open adoption" are being listed as the child's parents on the original birth certificate, even before an adoption is finalized and an amended birth certificate is created. This is a grave human rights violation, because when that adoptee becomes an adult, they will not even have a factual original birth certificate to request.

Adoption agencies are not being held accountable. Mothers they "counsel" will do whatever they are encouraged to do. They trust what they are told from the "professionals" will be in the best interest of their child.

Adoption is wrought with "conflict of interest" issues that fail the very individual it professes to be serving.