Tag Archives: Human Rights

Michigan Vital Records likely violates state adoption laws forcing extra court orders

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) has received my request I filed on August 13, 2023, for two additional copies of my original birth record.

To date the Vital Records office that handles these requests has not replied to me after more than three weeks after having cashed my check for the records on August 22, 0224.

However, it appears MDHHS and the Third Circuit Court of Detroit are coordinating my request, even though the court has no need to involved, as it issued me a court order already in June 2016 to force MDHHS to release copies of my original birth record. That court order has no time limit or other conditions for an adoptee to get additional future copies of their original birth certificate, as that statute is written.

Because this is an important policy issue impacting many adoptees in Michigan and other states, I am documenting this publicly.

I published my second video on this topic on August 27, 2024.

By doing this I am showing how Michigan’s public health office, MDHHS, manages vital records requests by adult adoptees, specifically those who have already secured a legal court order forcing the state to release a copy of an adoptee’s original birth certificate without any barrier such as requests for additional court orders for duplicate copies.

The Third Circuit Court in Detroit also has a unique role with adoptee birth record cases in Michigan because it handles adoptees’ request for court orders for the many thousands of adoptees born in Detroit, especially at Crittenton General Hospital.

This was one of the largest maternity hospitals and adoption mills in U.S. history that handled thousands of adoptions between 1933 and 1974, when it closed.

This court played a key role in my effort to get my birth record held improperly for decades, even after I had met my birth kin and my mother had sent in a signed consent form to release my birth certificate in 1989. The court sided with me in late June 2016 to compel MDHSS to unseal my original birth certificate 27 years after I found my birth parents.

I contacted the clerk at the court, after I had mailed in my request for two more copies of my original birth records, as a courtesy matter in case I might encounter delays “bureaucratic snafus” at MDHHS—an agency with a reputation for denying Michigan adoptees any assistance in managing record requests, intentionally. I knew MDHH might not issue additional copies of my birth record.

A clerk at the court told me by phone and through email correspondence that I would have to get another court order to get additional copies of my original vital record, even though this is not required by law. (See my video I published on this on August 15, 2024.)  

Yet, no provision exists in law requiring that.

MDHHS’s decision to not reply to my request for rush order service, I believe, is intentional to prevent legal accountability.

The law is clear, however.

The actions that MDHHS is taking now, through the court, is beyond the scope of state law, and they are denying basic legal rights to Michigan-born adoptees illegally by actions to me and others for what I have heard is now years.

The clerk I am working with is thoughtful, and I think their staff just want me to get my original birth record copies without grief. MDHHS, by forcing me to get another court order, is continuing to establish legal precedent for treatment of all Michigan born adoptees not defined in statute or even public communications. They seek additional power that is not written into law, and it  is a harmful legal precedent for this agency to enforce.

Also, MDHHS knows who I am. They have a file on me, and I know this because I’ve read emails where I have been discussed by their officials.

I published those public records in my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, and online. They also know I have now been covered multiple times by Michigan Radio discussing the injustice of current adoption laws in Michigan denying thousands of adoptees basic human rights.

Once I get news on my latest court order request I will publish more videos documenting what to date is continued denial of basic legal rights and a violation of state law by the state agency that holds vital records for Michigan adoptees.

‘Stateside’ interviews focus on Finland, adoptee rights, and our right to know our origins

Rudy Owens and his newly found Finnish relatives from September 2023

I want to thank Michigan Radio, “Stateside” host April Baer, producer Mercedes Mejia, and all of the Michigan Radio crew who help inform Michiganders about important issues.

I am especially appreciative of their news reporting and also generous consideration to host two interviews this past week on: adoptee rights legislative proposals in the Michigan Legislature, and another with me, as an author and advocate for adoptee rights as a Michigan-born adoptee.

As always, patience and professional persistence opened these doors (I started in November 2023), along with the timing of the legislative debates on this important policy issue for thousands of Michigan-born adoptees.

My March 20, 2024 interview with “Stateside” host April Baer broadly explored my recent two visits to Finland in September 2023 and in February 2024, to meet my biological family I only recently connected with last summer. I shared why such a visit to an ancestral home country, to meet long-lost biological kin, matters for adoptees, who are denied rights to their original birth certificates and family information like ethnicity by state law. (If you want to quickly find my interview segment, jump to the last 20 minutes of the podcast–you can get there quickly by dragging the mouse on the podcast recording player.)

“Stateside’s” March 19, 2024 interview on adoptee rights legislation before lawmakers included three members of the Michigan coalition that has been working to pass legislative reform in Michigan to restore rights to tens of thousands of Michigan-born adoptees. That interview featured Michigan Adoptee Rights Coalition members Valerie Lemieux, Erica Curry Van Ee, and Greg Luce. All are adoptees. The interview can heard found here.

Not every radio news magazine would provide more than 15 minutes of valuable airtime for each interview to discuss issues of adoption secrecy in Michigan, legislative reform efforts that were launched last fall, and the importance to all of us to know who we are and where we come from, all secured for all persons by law. But “Stateside” decided this issue merited time for a meaningful dialogue that examined many aspects of this human rights issue, including discussing arguments used by adoptee rights opponents.

Thank you, “Stateside”/Kiitos, “Stateside”!

See my stories about my visits to Finland to meet with my biological kin and what these stories mean to those denied our ancestry and birth records by law:

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

Adoptee rights and family medical history: this is obvious and let’s talk about it

We still don’t know to this day how many adoptees there are in the United States. That also means we don’t know how many of them are now at elevated risk of genetically-based medical conditions. But we do know that knowing one’s family medical history is a best medical practice. This is not rocket science here.

As an adoptee, I still am baffled why so few of my fellow adoptees speak the language of medical harm that is foundational to this system. Even adoptee rights activists I know who are really smart either don’t get this or refuse to talk about this.

I always have talked about it and I will continue to raise this issue, as I did in my book on how adoption also is a public health issue that causes harm. In chapter 8 of my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, I outlined the extensive research documenting the critical importance of knowing one’s family medical history: “Having access to family health history and information on other relatives—relatives who are genetically related—is considered by the nation’s foremost health experts to be necessary and beneficial for individual and population health. But as of 2018, there is no national campaign or policy initiative to promote giving hundreds of thousands of adoptees the ability to learn about their family medical health history.”

In my case, I’ve known my bio-family since 1989. This week I just learned that my family has a medical condition with genetic risk factors that mean I likely will be at risk. The right to know one’s family medical history is a basic human right that is denied to most adoptees by law. This must end. And if adoptees can’t even talk about it, shame on all of us.

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.