On August 13, 2024, I submitted a request to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), with a $62 check, to obtain duplicate copies of my original birth record.
I had to wait 27 years for the vital record to be provided to me in July 2016, after I had provided a signed consent form by my birth mother to release my vital records in 1989. The state and MDHHS only released it after a protracted legal battle that ended with a circuit court in Detroit ordering the state to release my original record of birth.
I am very aware of how this historically anti-adoptee state public health and health agency will likely respond to me as an adoptee. I am simply requesting records provided to all persons but adoptees as a matter of courteous government service with minimal state fees. But I expect this will not be courteous or in compliance with statute. MDHHS has a record of hostile behavior to Michigan-born adoptees, which I have documented now for years.
So I am documenting the process by video and other means to provide a public record of my activity. My goal is to highlight issues of denied legal rights to all adoptees and the discriminatory treatment millions of them face through basic civil processes that should be fulfilled as a basic government service: providing a vital record.
MDHHS provides no public information stating only one copy of a record can be released.
• www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/faq/adoption/can-the-adult-adoptee-obtain-a-copy-of-the-original-birth-certificate
• www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/adult-child-serv/adoption/adoption-faqs
There are several relevant Michigan statutes that set out adoption laws relevant to issues facing adoptees of my generation: 710, 333, 368. None establishes any conditions to deny the release of more than one original birth certificate to someone such as myself who provided a court order already. In fact, the statute states here, § 333.2882 does simply state, the original birth certificate is accessible “upon a court order.” I met this condition with the order already sent to MDHHS in June 2016, forcing it to send me a copy of my original birth certificate. I re-sent MDHHS on August 13, 2024, what I sent earlier in June 2016 and a copy of my vital record it sent me in July 2016 to prove it has already released the record before.
I have already learned from one of my trusted public contacts familiar with state adoption processes that I can expect MDHHS to reject my request, even though there is no law that would allow that.
I will provide additional videos later to document the outcome of what could be another useless fight that only signals that adoptees remain second-class humans subjected to decades-long legal discrimination entirely because of their adoptee status.
See my website for more details about Michigan’s nearly impossible barriers for adoptees to access their original vital records.