Adoptees’ access to their original birth certificates

Adoptees are entitled to their original birth certificates as a human right. Mine was withheld from me for decades, and likely illegally, by the State of Michigan, even after I found my biological kin. (I have intentionally hidden information in this copy.)

My book on the U.S. adoption experience, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, uses my personal story as an adoptee to explore how the former rights of U.S. born adoptees have been restricted and, in many cases, annulled over decades through lawmaking at the state level. My discussion of this larger issue, as part of a wider analysis of human rights and the loss of those rights by U.S. adoptees, is mostly found in chapter 7 of my book: “Legalized Discrimination Against Adoptees: The Demon Behind the Problem.”

Some of the best published resources explaining this history can be found on my recommended reading list, which includes the works of historian E. Wayne Carp and law professor Elizabeth Samuels, among other unbiased and carefully researched works that dispel many of the false myths about adoptees and the history of adoption in the United States.  

Another trusted source I reference in my book, in my writings, and on my website is the Adoptee Rights Law Center, run by Gregory Luce, a Minneapolis-based attorney and fellow adoptee, who also shares my birth year and status as a Crittenton kid. I have never met Luce, but I have communicated with him over the years on a sporadic basis regarding shared areas of advocacy interest regarding legal reform, which he works on nationally. He has proven to be a highly trusted source of fact-based information that informs the public and key stakeholders.

Luce has just published several resources I want to recommend to the larger adoptee and research, media, and policy-making community who deal with adoption law and the restriction of rights to adoptees. Luce plans to publish more resources later on original birth certificates and other records restricted from adoptees. The more factual information can be shared, versus myths and propaganda by the pro-adoption interest groups that still dominate the public discourse on adoption issues, the more likely advocates can achieve long-overdue reform.

• FAQ: Original Birth Certificates (published December 2020): Luce writes “this FAQ relates to original birth certificates of adopted people born in the United States. FAQs on additional issues, including those related to intercountry adoptees, are forthcoming.”
• A video documenting the erosion and loss of human and legal rights by adoptees to access their original birth certificates (published December 2020).
• Original Birth Certificates Map, available on the Adoptee Rights Law website (updated continually). This map explains and show what states restrict access, provide compromised access, and provide access to original birth certificates for adoptees — an invaluable way to understand how legalized discrimination still denies millions basic legal rights given to non-adoptees.