Tag Archives: Adoption Legislative Reform

An open letter to adoptees who oppose human rights for all adoptees

Detroit’s Crittenton General Hospital,shortly after it opened in 1933

Because my website highlights the history of Detroit’s now demolished Crittenton General Hospital, I am contacted by those who surrendered their infants for adoption there and those severed from their families by the adoption system. It was one of the largest adoption mills in the history of U.S. adoption, and I was among the thousands who was cast into the U.S. adoption system by being born and then relinquished in this maternity hospital in the city of Detroit. It was closed in 1974 and demolished a year later.

It is a story that needs greater attention, especially now in Michigan. The more people who engage the media about this, the more they can’t continue to ignore it, which they have done for decades. Facts about that facility can be found in my book and in my article about my birthplace.

On occasion, I will hear from adoptees born at Crittenton hospital, because of my website that many have found. Just before Thanksgiving, a person also born at Crittenton hospital in the 1960s, who was then adopted, contacted me by email. They are apparently following legislative issues in Michigan.

That person wrote to me to tell they opposed the reform. I think they mistakenly thought I was involved in legislative efforts now. As I have noted, my efforts advocating to restore legal rights to Michigan born adoptees have been ongoing for years (if not decades), and I am not affiliated with a new group that emerged this year.

I don’t know why this adoptee wanted me to know they opposed equal rights for adoptees in Michigan, my birth state. Reform could happen in my birth state if the state Legislature passes two bills without further legislative amendments and have both signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has never shared any public statement in support of adoptee rights that I am aware of.

Many adoptees in many legislative debates in different states have opposed state legislative reform and many have also been involved in advancing legislation that created a range of conditions short of legal equality that even permanently prevent some adoptees from ever having access to their original vital records.

One of the most cringeworthy spectacles I recently saw, in April 2023 during a committee hearing before California state lawmakers, was a self-identified adoptee and full-time contract lobbyist who shilled misinformation in support of a dangerously harmful bill still currently under review by the California State Assembly. He fits the classic definition of a “Quisling,” who turns against his own group, who are harmed and are denied legal rights, for his own personal interests.

So, instead of replying to the fellow Crittenton hospital adoptee from my birth era who wrote to me, I decided to publish an open letter to those adoptees who have opposed or who currently oppose adoptee rights and who work against other adoptees who champion reform—in Michigan and other states.

Here it is:

Your story is your story. You have a right to feel what you do and share your story. Go for it, and you are welcome to do that where you want and when you want. That is actually a basic legal right in this country. I’m sure you appreciate that right too, because such rights matter.

If you need to understand what human rights are, however, I would first suggest starting with the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. As for what anyone thinks and feels about them, those things are actually separate from actual human rights, intrinsic to all. Among those rights are equal treatment by law, for all persons. This is a human right. Period.

My book is available if you need information on the core principles of human rights. My book is fully footnoted to support individual research too. Based on what you said, you are in disagreement with millions of people to be treated equally by law. Therefore, it is not going to be a good use of my time to engage in a further dialogue with you. Finally, I also support your legal right to be treated equally by law too. And I’ve been fighting for decades to ensure you, as an adoptee, have your legal right to your original birth records restored in Michigan. Even for people who don’t want that right for me, I’ll fight for them. That’s because human rights are worth it.

Sincerely,
Rudy Owens, MA, MPH

Update on new legislation to end discrimination against Michigan-born adoptees

A coalition of adoptee rights groups in Michigan called the Michigan Adoptee Rights Coalition is working with a bipartisan group of Michigan state lawmakers to advance two adoptee rights reform bills in Michigan. The measures have cleared the state House of Representatives and were moved over to the state Senate just before the Michigan Legislature adjourned in mid-November 2023.

These legislative efforts, now being pushed by the coalition’s three partners (the Minneapolis-based Adoptee Rights Law Center and Michigan-based Adoptee Advocates of Michigan and Michigan Adoptee Collaborative), follow years of advocacy by countless Michigan-born adoptees, on behalf of probably tens of thousands of persons born and relinquished to adoption there in the years before and since World War II.

Committee hearing testimony on November 8, 2023, on HB 5148 and HB 5149 (snip of public video coverage)

The bills, House Bill 5148, sponsored by Rep. Kristian Grant (D-Grand Rapids), and House Bill 5149, sponsored by Rep. Pat Outman (R-Six Lakes), were introduced in the Legislature in late October 2023. The coalition working with the two lawmakers explains that the introduced legislation would, if not amended further, restore long-denied legal rights for adult adoptees to access their original birth records like all non-adopted Michiganders.

I encourage people to read the bills themselves (HB 5148 and HB 5149) to see how legislation would change current laws. Currently, it is nearly impossible for any adoptee in Michigan to secure a copy (in redacted form) of their original birth certificate (see my FAQs on that topic).

Most importantly, the legislation, if approved and then signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer–a Democrat who has not spoken publicly in any statement I can find in favor of adoptee rights–would end outdated laws in Michigan that deny tens of thousands of Michigan born adoptees equal treatment by law. I would be a beneficiary of this legislation, as would my sister, along with uncounted thousands of others separated from their families and kin by the state’s harmful, cruel adoption secrecy laws.

Committee hearing highlights human rights and new and worrisome anti-adoptee messaging

The House Families, Children, and Seniors Committee held its hearing on the bills on Nov. 8, 2023. The hearing is videotaped, and it can be seen by anyone with access to the internet. Testimony and discussion begin at minute 21:00. (Note: the video takes a long time to download; you will need to be patient.)

I was particularly impressed by one supporter of the bill, Ned Andree, a Michigan resident and a bi-racial and transracial adoptee.

Adoptee Ned Andree speaking in support of the two bills to restore adoptee rights on Nov. 8, 2023

Andree spoke eloquently to the committee in support of the bills. He testified about being adopted and being raised by white parents and seeking his truth for years. He told the committee he was born and relinquished in 1968, from a white mother and an African-born father, originally from Nigeria. Andre spoke of his costly effort find his birth parents, including spending $20,000 to fly to Nigeria to find his birth father, “only to have no success.” Andre also spoke of being denied his truth by the almost impossible barriers created by Michigan’s discriminatory laws denying him his truth. “The current law denies adult adoptees … a fundamental human right granted to non-adoptees.”

Filmmaker and Michigan-born adoptee spoke in support, and a birth mother who also testified in favor of the legislation and told her story of the harm of relinquishment.

Opponents also received prominent time before lawmakers.

Committee hearing testimony of Michigan Catholic Conference (MCC) lobbyist Rebecca Mastee who opposed the two bills on Nov. 8, 2023

Michigan Catholic Conference (MCC) lobbyist Rebecca Mastee came out against the bills with talking points heard in past legislative settings in other states, where opponents seek to enforce legal inequality to millions of persons by supporting outdated adoption secrecy laws. Mastee repeated unprovable talking points and outright lies regarding promised secrecy to birth mothers, when no such legal promises were ever made. Mastee concluded that such non-existing secrecy claims, that have never been documented by written documentation in legislative settings, require that the state continue to deny adult adopted persons equal treatment by law in accessing their birth records, as is the case in Michigan today. These talking points have been used repeatedly in most state legislative hearings I have seen by adoption industry promoters—and Catholic Charities in Michigan and other states were among the biggest adoption “businesses” that separated kin for decades.

Mastee, on behalf of the MCC, also used another false taking point of the alleged “stalking” of birth parents by adoptees as a rationale to deny tens of thousands of adoptees unobstructed access their birth certificate. She offered no facts or any credible evidence such harm can be proven by documented facts. In even more frightening language that is a foreshadowing of pro-adoption rhetoric to come likely for years, Mastee claimed that the bills would harm the flow of newborn infants to the now-expanding baby box supply chain in post-Roe America. (We learned during the hearing that the two bills do not prevent the erasure of new adoptees’ identities who are surrendered in metal dumpsters in Michigan, as allowed by current law, and without any regard to their basic human rights.)

Though grotesque as a basic statement of denied equal rights to current and future adoptees, adoptee rights advocates must confront the new harmful normal that this is now an active talking point. We will likely hear again that adoptees can’t get their birth certificates because it would disrupt the medically harmful practice of newborn infant separation from vulnerable moms through these dangerous baby dumpsters. Luckily this malarky did not convince the state lawmakers the day of the hearing.

Another anti-adoptee rights opponent, lawyer Heath Lowry, of the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual violence, testified to oppose the bills. He used the canard of “sexual violence and rape” that has been shared repeatedly in adoptee rights discussions before lawmakers to claim victims of sexual violence would be traumatized to have contact with their child. The scare tactics were given without any evidence. He provided not one fact, no data, not even an anecdote. He claimed that the “consent of birth parents” had to be protected by the continued denial of vital records to thousands of adoptees born in Michigan. His testimony was forcefully tossed aside as baseless by a supporter of the bills who testified in support of the two measures (you can watch the testimonies here).

Fortunately, the committee strongly approved both bills (substitutes) before sending the bills to the full House for a vote.

The new substitute bills are here:

The House of Representatives on Nov. 9, 2023 voted on the substitute bills as follows:

HB 5148: Yeas 99, Nays 8, Excused 0, Not Voting 3
HB 5149: Yeas 99, Nays 8, Excused 0 Not Voting 3

All of the submitted testimony from adoptees, adoptee rights groups, birth mother groups, and other champions of equality urged lawmakers to support the legislation. All told, supporters provided 45 pages worth of materials in support. That was very impressive to read. You can find a downloadable copy of the testimony for the legislation on the Michigan Legislature’s website. A short hearing summary for Nov. 8, 2023 is here.

Final comments as a Michigan-born adoptee rights advocate

For the record, I have no affiliation with the groups in the coalition who are working with lawmakers, as I explained in this blog post from June 2023.

I have been advocating for adoptee rights in Michigan, my birth state, since the mid-1980s. I published a book on adoptee rights and the public health impacts of the U.S. adoption system in 2018, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are. It highlights the history of U.S. adoption and a major adoption mill in Michigan that was likely the country’s second biggest adoption promotion center in terms of babies separated from their mothers. It also highlights my experience being denied my vital records, for decades, and the harmful practices of the state’s health system managing vital records, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

‘No friends but the mountains’

The Kurds’ saying is also true for adoptees: “No friends but the mountains.”

I rarely do videos related to my book on my story as an adoptee and U.S. adoption history, or on larger adoptee rights issues.

Last week, I decided to make one. Find my video here.

I made it on the fly, in response to a now-stalled and wildly discriminatory bill against adoptees in the California Assembly, AB 1302.

I needed to express my realization and my personal and sobering assessment of the cold, hard, and inequitable reality that adoptees continue to face in the political sphere. In that place where laws, politics, power, and culture collide, adoption remains a reliably bipartisan issue championed by Democrats and Republicans in states and nationally. We saw that with this bill in a state with a rock-solid Democrat super majority in the state legislature and control of the Governor’s office.

Here is reality as I see it based on the outcomes and the events that unfolded: Adoptees have no friends but the mountains.

My video that I shared shortly after the California Judiciary approved an anti-adoptee bill with not one “no” vote and the committee controlled by Democrats by a nearly 3-1 margin.

I stand by this assessment because the facts point to this long-used Kurdish metaphor of being betrayed by all sides, which all of us can independently verify and see.

We do not have to like it, but confronting the underlying truth is critical to how one approaches solutions strategically. It is also relevant for what I see in my birth state of Michigan, where there is no effort by a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, or its Democratically controlled legislature to even acknowledge denied human and legal rights to thousands of adoptees like me who were born there.

What happened and where is this bill in the California Legislature:

Apparently this measure is now stalled because it did not advance on the legislative calendar for this year.

However, I cannot independently confirm this based on the bill’s tracking record, but this has been reported by the Adoptee Rights Law Center. That would mean the measure is still ready to be heard in 2024 by the Assembly Health Care Committee. I think we all need to see this communicated clearly by the California Legislature too.

Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) is the prime sponsor of AB 1302, which is one of the most anti-adoptee pieces of legislation proposed in a state legislature in years, based on its potential harm to likely tens of thousands of adoptees born in California.

This measure is sponsored and championed by an anti-abortion, right-leaning state lawmaker, Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale). He is an adoptive parent of two children, and his anti-abortion voting record aligns with the wider GOP efforts to promote adoption as the so-called “policy alternative” to abortion.

As we’ve seen since the U.S. Supreme Court’s anti-women decision the 2022 Dobbs decision, this view is gaining momentum, to the detriment of adoptees and women and their rights to bodily autonomy.

In his deliberately dishonest presentation of what the bill would do, Lackey was joined by the proverbial “anti-adoptee” Quisling. I use that term for a person who is adopted and who supports legislation that harms the collective group of millions of adoptees. In this case it was a seasoned corporate lobbyist named Lance Hastings, who fulfilled the obligatory role of a Quisling we see whenever adoptees are sold out without regard to their inherent legal and human rights. “Quisling” is the appropriate word because the facts bear it out.

Both Lackey and the Quisling presented what I call false statements and framing comments that no one called out for what they were.

Before the hearing, adoptees and adoptee rights advocates, however, provided lawmakers ample documentation to call out such falsehoods. From what I saw, no comments were uttered by lawmakers who had that information.

Afterwards, Bastard Nation, which staunchly opposed this regressive and discriminatory measure, wrote a devastating analysis of everything wrong with this harmful proposed bill. That analysis noted: “AB1302 bill would not have flown 50 years ago much less today. It goes against current adoption culture, best practice standards, and the success of the adoptee rights and justice movement/OBC access. [Fourteen] states already unseal [original birth certificates] with no restrictions or conditions for the adoptees to which they belong.” Also go here to see the nightmare that AB 1302 would lead to if passed as written; the infographic is by Adoptee Rights Law, and is brilliant. Also see Adoptee Rights Law summary here.

The legislative kabuki during the bill hearing proved the hardest to watch and internalize. I say kabuki because that best describes the bill hearing for this toxic measure and how publicly disengaged logical allies were at the bill’s hearing on April 18, 2023, with the Assembly Judiciary Committee. (See the full hearing recording here, starting at around 37:00, with the CalOpens testimony against starting at 46:00.) The logical allies, many assume, would be California’s elected Democrats on the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

This committee has eight Democrats and three Republicans.

At no time did Democrats state facts provided to them by multiple adoptee rights advocates in advance that no adoptee rights group supported the measure or were consulted. At no time did Democrats state the most basic fact of all: that this bill and existing law deny all adoptees in California equal treatment by law.

Zip.

Nothing.

Silence.

And no on in that room needed anyone to tell them millions of adoptees, including all of those born in California, are denied equality by law.

That is the 800-pound gorilla that not one of them had the cojones to confront. Even worse, this Democrat-dominated committee recorded not one “no” vote.

Worse, it’s impossible to even tell during the roll call from the legislative video what the abstaining votes said when asked to publicly cast their vote. It sounded like mumbles so they would not heard, as they apparently cowered with their muffled public votes.

This is a copy of the California Assembly Judiciary vote on April 18, 2023, when no Democrats voted against a measure that passed with eight yes votes and three abstentions, which if passed into law would further deprive basic legal rights from thousands of California-born adoptees.

Adoptees can learn from the Kurds: they have no friends but the mountains

According to the legislative record, which is published however, eight committee members voted for it, and three “abstained.”

That’s called cowardice, because it is. I believe that is a factual statement too.

In short, adoptees were abandoned again by legislative silence and performance gestures.

The worst of the lies and talking point shared repeatedly in most legislative hearings, that a birth mother was promised confidentiality, was not corrected, even after a lawyer invited to the presenter table for reasons I still don’t understand openly lied to committee members that a so-called “presumed promise” of confidentiality to women coerced into surrendering their children to adoption existed.

For the record, no such legal promise has ever been made or documented in any court or legislative setting.

Bastard Nation in its submitted response on this bill addressed this canard that never, ever dies: “There is no evidence in any state that records were sealed to ‘protect’ the reputation or ‘privacy’ of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. In the over 60 years of the adoptee rights struggle, not one single document has been presented anywhere that shows that birthparents were promised or guaranteed anonymity by the state or anyone else. If they were made on the sly, they were made by individuals who had no legal authority to do so.”

In the end, misinformation and kabuki prevailed.

Adoptees were abandoned by their likely but no-show “friends,” and the bill advanced.

Though this bill appears to be on hold until 2024—which I still can’t verify on the Legislature’s website—adoptees will have to confront their reality in other states and with the public.

The Kurds know betrayal well having endured countless acts of harm from nations in their historic homelands, as well as from the United States.

Right now, they have no allies.

They have no “friends” willing to correct lies and misinformation when it counts and where it counts.

They are utterly on their own, as they always have been the last half-century of working tirelessly to end legal discrimination, rooted in my view in their illegitimate status.

So that is why I made my video, as a reminder of lived truth, which the historically persecuted Kurdish people have experienced since they were denied a nation state by conniving colonial powers after WWI. They have a saying, uttered at each violent, tragic betrayal by all nations, repeatedly since that time: “No friends but the mountains.”

‘Picking a target’ in 2023 for adoptee rights advocacy

It’s now 2023. A new year has begun, and for thousands of Michigan-born adoptees like me, none are any closer to having their legal rights restored to their original birth certificates.

So this year, I am going to put the spotlight on this state’s leaders, especially Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who are failing to right a massive wrong that denies basic human rights to people only because of the status at birth.

Go here to read my full article, analyzing failures in Michigan’s agency responsible for overseeing vital records and leadership by all branches of state government.

My article also analyzes the sometimes complex and even messy world associated with issue advocacy, including the mostly ignored world of adoptee rights.

Here’s my list of tips (also found in my longer article) for adoptee rights advocates in Michigan, or their allies (all allies are welcome, too):

If you live in Michigan, make noise. Be that annoying tsetse fly for Gov. Whitmer and state lawmakers who cannot be ignored until your bites are so painful that you are acknowledged. To that end, here are friendly resource on tips for advocates with limited resources, from Saul Alinsky.
You can develop relations with lawmakers and request personal meetings if you are going to Lansing. You can also share information with your local media, if they still exist, in the form of letters to the editor or on social media calling attention to denied legal rights. Social media may be helpful if you are good in that space. With Twitter turning into a large mess, I am not sure what platform may be the most effective now.
If you are more of a “power broker” kind of person, who knows “the game” (meaning you have “connections to those in power), a more effective way to make change is to engage Gov. Whitmer.
If you are not able to engage Gov. Whitmer, the most powerful power broker of all is a governor’s chief of staff. Gov. Whitmer’s Chief of Staff is, as of Jan. 2, 2022, JoAnne Huls. Because chiefs of staff try to be invisible to public and only to speak with deal-makers, the other best possible person for real access is a governor’s communications director, who manages a governor’s “brand.” Bobby Leddy is Gov. Whitmer’s communications director, and he is active on Twitter and can be “pinged” and equally “annoyed” with persistent, fact-based activity about adoptee rights concerns.
In addition to copying Leddy on Twitter, consider using this account to get Gov. Whitmer’s staff’s attention: Press@Michigan.gov. They will care if you are a state voter, in the way they won’t care about someone like me, who is not a voter in the state.
The best way to promote reform is by telling stories of the injustices you have encountered. Make it personal and say what happened and what it means to you. Name names and make it personal. It has to be personal. This was very helpful with stunning legal reform in Vermont being implemented in 2023.
My personal preference is to advocate for lasting legal reform the way New York state adoptee rights advocates and Vermont adoptee rights advocates have won legislative reforms. Those are two great success stories. Use the links to learn more about their lasting victories.

Remember, lasting change, good or bad, is always won by a group of committed warriors, in the truest sense. True warriors are those go into any “conflict” with the outcomes already decided in their minds with a clear strategy for victory.

Each of us can make a difference. Choose your battles and always remain focused on the larger goal. For me that remains permanent and lasting legal reform to end the injustice of outdated, harmful adoption laws that hide a person’s truth and deny them their original records.

And for adoptees who are working for change, I appreciate everything you can do this year if you have the time, energy, and good will. Good luck and make 2023 a great one!