Last month we celebrated our daughter's 40th birthday with over 100 people, including her birth mother. Lola has known her birth mom and siblings, aunts, uncle, a grandfather, cousins, niece and nephews for several years now. Many of her natal family attended her wedding in 2001.
Lola has peace of mind knowing her relatives. She has a copy of her hospital record of live birth from the old Canton Hospital. What our daughter and thousands of New York adopted adults do not have is their original birth certificate (OBC). Ontario, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Alabama, Kansas and Alaska adoptees can access their OBCs. The latter two states never did seal the records.
As a grandmother, I don't have a lot of years left to fight for open records. How sweet it would be if more of the younger generation would take an active role in overturning archaic (since the 1930s) laws that deny a minority group their birthright.
Talking about adoption, birthparents, abandonment, race, and China with my kids. That's not all we talk about -- but reading this blog, you'll think it's all we do!!!!!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Adoptees should have their birth certificates
Glad to see an adoptive mother take this position in the Watertown Daily Times:
What's to say but thanks? from this grandmother who has been fighting for reform since the Seventies...?
ReplyDeletelorraine