Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience
© 2017 Rudy Owens. All rights reserved.
Sometimes, you need to make a stand and stay in the fight because it is the right thing to do. Anything that really matters in life has never been given freely. What matters the most is earned and gained through perseverance, struggle, determination, collaboration, and effort.
—Rudy Owens, Statement on his Court Order Request for his Original Birth Certificate, 2016
The first day I began writing this story, I knew I had to complete an unfinished chapter in my adopted life. For me, nothing could be more symbolic of completing this lifelong journey than holding the true and correct record of my birth in my hands. That is when this odyssey would finally end.
When the state seized control of my identity—after I was legally severed from my ancestors and birth family—and surrendered me to an adoption agency and then placed me in a foster home, it wrongly claimed my birth certificate was a sealed record. But the original record of birth is not, and never has been, a top-secret record.
The state never had the legal and moral right to hold my past from me or the right to prevent my birth families from knowing about me. My true birth certificate shows the world that I exist as someone with a past. It shows I have an identity that I alone own. This document is and always has been mine by birthright.
Return to: Chapter 13: Battling Michigan for Records
Return to the start: Chapter 1: Meeting my Half-Sister