Tag Archives: Original Birth Certificate

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.

The elegance and simplicity of equality in Vermont

Vermont Department of Health application for an adult adoptee to obtain their true birth records (page 1 of 2).

Today is the first day that adult adoptees born in Vermont, who are at least 18 years old, can access their original birth/vital record and not face legalized inequality by discriminatory statutes that single out adoptees as second-class people who do not receive equal treatment by law.

Well done to everyone who made this happen there. I salute all you did for adoptee rights and adoptees everywhere.

It is important to remember, even in the absence of any “landmark court case,” this inequality in most U.S. states violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Article VII.

I also appreciate what the public health employees in Vermont did in communicating this legal reform, passed in the 2022 legislative session.

This is how the Vermont Department of Health communicates equality by law to adoptees born in the state of Vermont, as of July 1, 2023.

What I see on the updated website for the Vermont Department of Health today is the simple elegance of equality for adoptees without harmful conditions, obstructions, discrimination, bias, and public health and human health harm. It is only today, July 1, 2023, that an adult adopted person born in Vermont who is 18 years old can access a document all non-adopted persons born in the USA can access without any discrimination.

Just think about that. And there are anywhere from 5 to 8 million adoptees in the United States, most of whom are still denied this legal right.

This was the result of concerted advocacy, and, again, I applaud all who led the efforts for long-denied reform. It’s important to remember that this law change restoring rights that were taken away, also by law, will not and does not erase decades of past harm.

The New England Adoptee Rights Coalition has noted, “Vermont was among the first 20 states to revoke an adopted person’s right to request and obtain a copy of their own unaltered, original birth certificate in 1946.”

However, the decades-overdue restoration of basic legal rights is a path that other states can follow.

Will Michigan follow Vermont?

The state I remain focused on is my birth state, Michigan, which denies the simplicity of basic legal equality to thousands and thousands of adoptees.

As of July 1, 2023, this is how one of a few Michigan adoption-related statutes looks like, creating a maze of confusion and nearly impossible barriers for any adoptee born in Michigan to ever obtain their original birth record, as a matter of law.

The so-called “progressive” governor, Gretchen Whitmer, continues to promote her chops supporting those who need a helping hand—except of course thousands of adoptees.

She has done nothing about this issue, and she is already in her fifth year in office, with no gesture, statement, or visible communication she cares about thousands of persons, many who are now aging and even dying, or that they will ever know their truth or even kin.

For comparison to Vermont’s reform, here is how inequality looks in Michigan. It is an absolute cluster.

I will keep trying to point out these issues in Michigan, which Vermont’s reform makes all the more glaring.

Vermont’s law gives me hope, when often what I feel is loneliness on the mountain top. And sometimes hope truly can be a wonderful thing.

Webinar recording available on petitioning courts for original birth records

Nearly 60 people joined a recent webinar on March 21, 2021, hosted by the adoptee advocacy group Adoptees United. I presented with fellow adoptees Greg Luce of Minnesota and Courtney Humbaugh of Georgia. Each of us highlighted our experience as adoptees denied basic legal and equal rights in accessing our adoption and vital records.

  • My introductory comments can be found at the start of the recording.
  • My comments about my court petition begin here (17:00 into the recording).
  • A copy of my presentation that I shared with attendees can be found here.

As a presenter, I wanted to provide a roadmap for others who face nearly insurmountable barriers in getting what should be provided to all persons as a basic human right. My memoir and critical study of the U.S. adoption system describes why the state-level denial of these records must be understood historically and sociologically as part of the historic mistreatment of adoptees and illegitimately born persons, like me.

In addition, I provided what I consider to be a strategic approach for channeling defiance to an unjust system that had impacted my life greatly. At the very least I hoped my words and example helped to motivate a few others. Many of my decisions in my life were profoundly influenced by words I heard from someone else, sharing a story about why they took action to do good things.

As I had shared earlier, access to vital records by adoptees is intrinsically an issue rooted in power relationships. Those relationships are communicated through symbols that are invested with far more meaning than what they appear to have on the surface. And anything invested with this much magical and symbolic power, such as one’s original birth record, is worth a lifelong fight, which I have had to undertake only because I was born as an adoptee.

It is also critical to remember that an original birth certificate is a document that continues to be withheld from millions of U.S. adoptees. This denial of equal treatment by law has and remains in violation the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and equally the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

My book also explains this struggle as a hero’s journey that too few adoptees can do for reasons too long to explain in one post. You can order my book on that issue, which describes how the state of Michigan denied me my birth record for decades until I finally took the state’s adoption bureaucracy to court and won my right to what was always mine as a human right.

“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,” I wrote in my memoir. “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.”

I would encourage adoptees, policy-makers, and journalists to visit the website of Adoptees United. The organization continues to host events that focus on issues it works on supporting the rights of adoptees in the United states as it works on changing laws and policies that deny rights to adopted persons.

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. 

 

 

 

A Guide to Michigan Adoptees Seeking Court Orders for Original Birth Certificates

For the past several years, fellow Michigan adoptees who were born after World War II have contacted me seeking help. They want what they are entitled to as a birthright and under core human rights principles of international law: their original birth certificates (OBCs), held in secret, by the state of Michigan.

The number of queries I received from adoptees increased in the last year, since I won a nearly three-decade-old contest with the state to give me my original birth certificate and published my story about that victory on my website.

Because of these requests, I am publishing a short guide that may help some of the thousands of fellow adoptees born in Michigan deprived of their equal rights by Michigan’s discriminatory and harmful adoption laws. To navigate this system, adoptees will need to deal with state courts and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). That agency overseas the state’s public health bureaucracy and has ultimate authority for adoptees’ official vital records—including their original birth documents.

This guide provides practical advice and logistical assistance. You also will need to review the FAQs I have published on my website for my book on adoption. Also consult tips published by Bastard Nation’s Shea Grimm (dated but still relevant) on accessing your adoption records. This is not Michigan specific, however.

Michigan Adoptees Born Between 1945 and 1980

This guide focuses on Michigan adoptees born between May 28, 1945 and September 12, 1980. I was born during this time. According to the state’s website, “For those adoptions that occurred between May 28, 1945 and September 12, 1980, the release of the original birth certificate is contingent upon a court order.” As an adoptee seeking your OBC, that means you are almost certainly going to court, and it will not be easy. More on that shortly.

This 35-year span defined by law was not an accident. These were the boom years for adoption, when single women who became pregnant were pressured by society and many powerful medical, social work, and religious groups to give up millions of infants through the late 1970s. Thus the law intentionally harms the biggest pool of adopted citizens from the state by restricting their right to know who they are and their family ancestry and medical history.

Getting a Court Order: An Uphill Slog through a Hostile Environment

In terms of bureaucratic realities that define getting a vital record, those born before May 28, 1945 or after September 12, 1980 will face the greatest, most time consuming, and costliest legal barriers. Read this summary of state law, published on the Adoptee Rights Law Center website. The law is designed almost entirely to keep adoptees, particularly those born between 1945 and 1980, from ever knowing their identity and acquiring their original vital records. And if you survive the gauntlet of the mostly unresponsive state bureaucracy, you still face the opaque and poorly explained court petition process. (See this webinar I participated in on April 21, 2021, on how that works in Michigan.)

Rudy Owens highlights at a book reading the legal system that erases an adoptee’s identity and creates a new one, with two birth certificates.

Michigan’s Communications to Adoptees Seeking an OBC:

The state provides a short summary, which does not address how to navigate court order requests for adoptions that occurred between May 28, 1945 and September 12, 1980.

Key Points for Michigan Adoptees to Consider Before Beginning Court Advocacy for OBCs:

1. Current laws in Michigan, and the way its laws and vital records systems function today, are intended to prevent most Michigan adoptees from getting their original birth documents—forever. Remember that always. I will say that again: Remember that always. The political and legal systems governing adoption laws cause real harm to adoptees and deny them their basic human rights. You must be realistic how this plays out statewide and nationally. The laws vary by state. You cannot afford ignorance of the system or the players who control it. You must educate yourself about this reality. Know your friends and especially your opponents in your effort to achieve equal rights and your OBC.

2. No one will help you who works for the MDHHS, the state’s public health agency that controls your birth records. You can ask them for help, but you will not get it. The agency has an adversarial relationship with adoptees. In fact, you must be prepared to fight them, even once you get your court order—if you get one. They may even attempt to delay the release of your original birth certificate once presented with a judge’s ruling. This happened to me. See my FAQs also.

3. The Michigan Central Adoption Registry is a mostly unaccountable bureaucracy of one employee (Connie Stevens; stevensc2@michigan.gov) with no regulatory oversight. Do not contact it. Its website states it “is accessed by the court or agency; individual adopted persons do not contact the Registry.” This office does not answer phone calls, but may return one. Expect no help, even if you deserve it and need it.

4. The media may not be sympathetic to you, unless you have some emotional and tear-jerking reunion story. Overall, the media has a tepid interest in adoptee rights and in the past has viewed them in a discriminatory way—sometimes portraying them as uppity bastards who are not thankful they were taken in by loving families, etc. See the adoptee rights group Bastard Nation’s essay on this harmful stereotype. You can try to enlist the media, but do not assume the media will be a natural ally in the court of public opinion. That said, you should engage them, and you may find an ally in their ranks. Always try, and try again.

5. Remember, this takes time. You must give yourself anywhere from three months and much longer. You need to file your paperwork, advocate and push a court to set up a date, have your court date, and then submit, hopefully, your court order to Michigan Vital Records for your original birth certificate (OBC). You are running a marathon, not an 800-meter race. Stay focused on the end goal, always.

6. Rely on yourself. This is a personal journey. Most of us will do it alone. Most of us are not wildly rich and cannot afford to hire people to do unpleasant and tedious advocacy work. I encourage you not to seek help from any so-called confidential intermediaries or social workers. There are some true legal advocates out there who work on cases. I suggest contacting the Adoptee Rights Law Center for possible tips if you really have a strong case needing litigation.

Starting Your Court Order Request:

Adoptees in the donut hole years need to find the court of jurisdiction for adoption records requests. For Wayne County/Detroit, where I was born, it is the Family-Juvenile Division of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan. Its address and contact information is:
Third Judicial Circuit Court, Family Division
Attention: Post Adoptions
1025 E. Forest Avenue
Detroit, MI 48207-1098
Tel: (313) 224-5261; direct line: (313) 833-0032

Circuit courts likely have jurisdiction for issuing court orders for an adoptee. Find your court of jurisdiction here. This may be the hardest detail to figure out. The Third Judicial Circuit Court covers anyone born in Detroit, and adoptees there number in the thousands because that was home to Crittenton General Hospital, one of the nation’s largest maternity hospitals that facilitated adoptions for more than 30 years.

Download or request the instructions from the court in your jurisdiction, or contact that court for additional information. The instructions from the Family-Juvenile Division of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan are found online. Make a copy for your records.

Here are the instructions for Wayne County adoptees seeking to set up a court date and to petition a judge. Before you send your request in, make a copy of everything. Send your request certified mail. Make a cover letter listing everything you are sending and be courteous and professional. Show the court and judge that you are a professional and have your case in order. Show them you know the law and your rights.

You will need to send the following:

  • A $20 filing fee (as of 2016)
  • A copy of your photo identification
  • A copy of your adoptive birth certificate.
  • A completed Release of Information Authorization Adult Adoptee (Form FIA 1920). Include in the comments area on this form that you are requesting your original birth certificate (it’s a short box that says “additional comments”—make your pitch about your rights to your record).
  • A completed Request by Adult Adoptee for Identifying Information (Form FIA 1925).
  • A Form PCA 327 Petition For Adoption Information and Order (note, this is not listed in required forms, and this was added as a last-minute requirement before my court date—so it won’t hurt to do it now).
  • If the birth certificate you are requesting is for a deceased, direct descendant, proof of the relationship and death are required (ie: death certificate, birth certificate, etc.).
  • Also, the above forms should be completed with the information regarding the adoptee.
  • Provide a written statement, no longer than a page, making your case why you deserve your birth record. This is your story, so only you can write it. Note, this is not required, but STRONGLY encouraged.

Please visit this page to review the FAQs for court order requests and hearings. Go here for information published by MDHHS regarding that state’s adoption legislation and state forms to petition MDHHS for highly restricted vital records of adoptees born in Michigan.

(Last updated July 18, 2023)