adoptee discrimination?

Imagine for a second that all the documents pertaining to your birth are falsified and you have NO way to get the complete original documents. Imagine someone telling you that you have no right to know your own heritage or original surname. Imagine that your own, factual, birth certificate is a state secret that may never be made available to the one person who should have it, YOU!

Sounds like discrimination to me.

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The biggest discrimination is records being sealed - forever.

No matter if an adoptee turns 18 - they still are not allowed their original birth certificate and papers pertaining to their adoption - because the state seals them away.

There is also an underlying discrimination that many adoptees face.

Society has deemed that an adoption means that the child no longer has a first family - the family that they are genetically linked to.

Sure there are some great adoptive parents who keep those links - but the majority don't.

Some go as far as making the adoptee feel guilty for wanting to search for their first family - purely out of a selfish need to pretend that the adoptee is born to them.

Adoptees come from somewhere else before they are adopted.

Relinquishment and adoption are performed by adults - the children have absolutely NO say in any of it. Then it's left completely up to the adults as to whether they decide to give their adoptee their truth - or hide it away.

That's discrimination.

Every child deserves to know where they came from.

It should not be up to the adults to decide if it's 'good' or 'bad' for them to know.

It's about the adoptee.

It's their information to have.

If a child had parents that tragically died in a car crash (for instance) - usually another family member would care for that child - they would be allowed to grieve - they would be told stories and shown loads of pictures of the parents that were lost.

In adoption - too many don't understand the complexities involved.

Adoption is about the child losing his/her parents.

That child should be allowed to grieve. Should be allowed to keep contact with first family. Shown pictures. Told stories.

No - this can't always happen - but to blatantly pretend that that child came from only within the adoptive family - is harmful to the adoptee.

Those adoptive parents that keep secrets and lie - do it mostly for their own needs and feelings.

Adoption is essentially a piece of paper handing over ownership of a child.

Just because there is a piece of paper - shouldn't wipe out the child's former existence.

There is government sanctioned discrimination every day. Adoptees don't have the same rights to information as everyone else. Our documents are falsified, and the real ones are tucked nice and far away where we have no real access to them. That and how often do you hear the assumption that adoptees were all the potential products of drug users, dumpster dumpers, (how often are we told that we should be grateful we weren't aborted) etc, and that somehow we are the product of bad and wrong people thus must be bad and wrong ourselves. I'm not saying all people feel this way, but they are out there, and its discrimination against both adoptees and their first families.

ETA, my abrother and I, like linny got to experience discrimination within the family. We weren't good enough because our skin didnt match, and we didn't have their blood running through our veins. I also remember crying all over my amom when I was young about not being invited to a birthday party because I had "dirty" blood.

I AM DISCRIMINATED AGINST BECAUSE I CANT HAVE MY BIRTH RECORDS OR KNOW WHO MY BIRTHPARENTS ARE WHEN EVERYBODY ELSE CAN HAVE THESE THINGS AND BEING DENIED OF BIRTH RECORDS PUTS ME IN GREAT DANGER I AM HOMELESS BECAUSE OF BEING DENIED MY BIRTH RECORDS THE BASIC PART OF ME PEOPLE HAVE DNEIED ME OF WHY CANT THE STUPID NON ADOPTEES SEE THAT

because all of our information is falsified. We have no legal access to our families, or our medical histories for that matter.

I have a family history of cancer, and was diagnosed with a breast sarcoma at the age of 34. I was discriminated against, because I was not permitted to know my family, therefore, did not know my genetic predispositions to cancer.

I was discriminated against my a fathers mother. Probably one of the very few negative things my a family ever did. My a sis (who was NOT adopted), received hundreds of dollars worth of presents on her birthday & for Christmas. I received a McDonald's coupon book. Oh, snap, Grandma.

I was discriminated against at school, because I got several failing grades on those stupid family tree reports.

edited for Meg: I am an adoptee from the "baby scoop era" 1950's-early 1970's. Almost all adoptions were closed then. Each state has different laws pertaining to the release of original birth certificates, or the release of identifying information.

And, just because some n moms think their relinquished child has all their identifying info, does NOT necessarily mean the child has it. A parents may have it, but can keep it from the child. Agencies may have told n moms their info would be given to the a p's, but that is NOT always the case. Besides, in most states, "open adoptions" are NOT legally enforceable.

Adoptees do not have access to their own birth certificates. They have access to an altered document that is NOT a certificate of live birth - i.e. it states that the adoptive parents created them, which is false. Their true records of birth are held under lock and key (in all but six states). All other American citizens have unrestricted access to their own birth records.

Adoptees do not have the right to know their own families (their original families). An adoptee may visit their adoption agency and be given anything from a stack of papers (with sections blacked out for "privacy", which wouldn't happen to any other citizen) to "oh, gee, there was a fire back in '83, we don't have your records". Any other citizen wanting information about themselves has unrestricted access to it.

Adoptees have to fight tooth and nail to get their own medical records. They have to prove that they have a valid reason for wanting to know their own family's hereditary medical information. And often, when an adoptee receives their family's medical information, it has been altered. This doesn't happen with any other American citizen.

There is an entire group of people (adoption agencies) who have unrestricted access to adoptee's truths (their medical histories, birth histories, adoption information, genealogical information, and any other records that were part of the adoption process) - and this group of people has the power to wield that information like a weapon - changing it at a whim, giving out false information, giving out parts of information, not giving out any at all just because they don't feel like it...this doesn't happen to any other American citizen either.

The adoption industry is unregulated. The rest of us have our information held at the courthouse, or a records office, where it is respected and the employees are trained and given certain guidelines as to how that information can be handled - whereas adoption agencies have full control, and can do whatever they please (within a WIDE range of possibilities...there is no "protocol" there). The rest of us can submit an application and be guaranteed of the result - whereas adoptees can expect to get jerked around and sent on a wild goose chase...just because other people, who have NO business withholding other people's families, have the ability to do whatever they darn well please.

Over a million adopted persons in the United States are denied access to their original birth certificates. All non-adopted persons in the United States have access to their birth certificates.

THIS IS DICRIMINATION.

ETA: It is a known fact that relinquishing mothers do not seal their children's birth certificates; State governments seal the birth certificates upon finalization of an adoption.

Discrimination against adopted persons must end so that ALL US citizens have access to their birth certificates.

ALL tax paying voting citizens in every jurisdiction of the USA deserve equal access to state-issued birth documents.

Acess to original birth certificate laws are successful (in the US): Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire and Oregon.

Access to original birth certificate laws are also successful in: Alberta, British Columbia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Newfoundland, Norway, New South Wales, New Zealand, Ontario, Scotland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Victoria Australia.

ETA: Whose comparing? Discrimination is Discrimination. Besides, "separate but equal" has been proven unconstitutional

Treating one group of people differently from others in a 'free society' simply because they were adopted as a child, is discrimination.

ETA: Meg, despite already having a copy (presumably obtained prior to the finalization of the adoption) if as an adult your son went to apply for a copy of his own birth certificate he would be denied a copy = discrimination.

Yeah that is a weird term to use. Why would someone discriminate against someone who is adopted? Although I could see circumstances such as in egg donation or surrogacy where the possible parents might not want my eggs because I don't know my family medical history but other than that there are no other situations I can think of where I would ever be discriminated against for being adopted. Now race on the other hand, that's another story entirely.

'Original' birth certificates are sealed... sealed meaning never existed.

The new birth certificate has the name of the parents on it. When you are adopted (I am) the state sees the adoptive parents as the *only* parents the child has ever had.