Members of the Michigan media and the general public are invited to an online conversation about what it means and what it looks like when an adopted person seeks a court order to get his or her own birth and adoption records.
Nineteen states, including Michigan, and the District of Columbia require a court order for an adopted person to obtain his or her own original birth record — or any record. How is it done? Who has been successful and what difficulties did they encounter? What was the cost in time, emotion, and money? And what exactly did they get?
When: Sunday, March 21, 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST
Who: The event is open to everyone, including adoptees, the media, and legal professionals
Cost: Free
How: Register here
The event will be hosted by Adoptees United and features three adult adoptees: Detroit native Rudy Owens, Georgia native Courtney Humbaugh, and D.C. native Gregory Luce, who runs the Adoptee Rights Law Center. Each went through the courts to win access to records withheld from them because they were relinquished from their birth families as adoptees.
Michigan is one of 19 states that currently denies rights to Michigan born adoptees to their true vital records entirely because of the status of their birth, denying thousands equal treatment by law. Owens, as an adoptee, was denied his birth records and family history, but was able to find all sides of his biological family in 1989, despite the state’s policies denying him information given to all non-adoptees born in Michigan. In 2018 he published a memoir, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, about his decades-long experience seeking his records, including his successful court petition in June 2016 that forced the state to give him a copy of his original birth certificate 27 years after his biological mother had signed a state consent form allowing the state to release all of his long-sealed records.
Luce, a Minneapolis-based adoptee rights attorney and adoptee rights advocate, will moderate an exploration of what we mean by “records,” including which records are easier or harder to get — whether birth records, court records, adoption agency records, or any others. Luce will also talk about his own five-year effort in the District of Columbia as well as court cases he handles today on behalf of Minnesota-born adopted people.
Questions will be taken from the audience throughout the talk, and links to available court forms in various states will also be provided during the online chat.
Owens will highlight his experience in Michigan, where it took him 27 years to secure the release of his original birth certificate, even after he had met my birth families and legally changed his name that incorporated his original birth name.
In his book examining the U.S. adoption system and how it continues to discriminate against millions of U.S. adoptees by limiting their legal access to their birth records, Owens writes: “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.”