Tag Archives: State Vital Records

Update to FAQs for Michigan adoptees seeking court orders for original birth records

I have updated my frequently visited “FAQS for court order requests in Michigan for original birth certificates” webpage.* I created this in 2018 for all Michigan-born adoptees and adoptee rights advocates, lawmakers, policymakers, and the media, explaining the process for securing an original birth certificate for adoptees, especially those born between 1945 and 1980. I hope these resources are helpful and provide information that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) will not share with tens of thousands of adoptees, as part of their concerted efforts to discriminate against this class of thousands of persons who were separated from their birth mothers and kin by this inequitable system.

In addition to updating links to MDHHS’s intentionally unhelpful web resources for adoptees, I  added this:

Will MDHHS ignore court orders to release an adoptee’s original birth certificate? [UPDATED NOV. 15, 2024]: Yes, MDHHS will ignore state law and will ignore court orders, based on my experiences requesting two additional copies of my original birth certificate in mid-August 2024. In my case, MDHHS took 80 days to release two copies of my original birth certificate after getting my order for rush service on Aug. 16, 2024. The process, as it occurred with denials and delays, violated not one but two court orders requiring MDHHS to release my vital record, as required by state law. I had to get a state court to intervene after I received a denial letter. The two birth certificates arrived on Nov. 4, 2024. (Note, I already had a standing court order from 2016 when I first won my legal fight for my vital record.) See my essay, video, and links to four other stories and videos documenting MDHHS’s actions that did not comply with state law and defied a Michigan state court and judge.

*Note, I have never made a penny from providing this resource to the public, outside of the incredibly modest sales I have of my book documenting the history of the U.S. adoption with a public health lens and how my story being separated from my biological family helps explain that system and the legal discrimination rooted in law harming millions of adoptees to this day.

If you aren’t counted, you don’t count

The upcoming 2020 Census will ask a question about some adoptees, who are younger and in a household with parents/guardians, and not count those who are older and are heads of households.

My guest column on the upcoming 2020 Census and how it will, again, fail to count all U.S. adoptees was published today (Aug. 17, 2019) in the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper. In my column I highlight how the last two national headcounts of all Americans failed to accurately count all U.S. adoptees. (You can also see a slightly different version of my column, with footnotes and references, on this page.)

I show how this failure to account for all adoptees represents part of a decades-long problem in how adoption and adoptees have been left out of official systems that should be counting them.

My book on the U.S. adoption system, You Don’t Know How Luck You Are, documents in greater detail how these glaring failures in our vital records and public-health systems are not accidental and should be seen as policy failures that should have long-provoked calls for reform, especially from the public-health community.

My piece makes one of the most basic points about politics and policy-making: If you aren’t counted, you don’t count. Unfortunately, the 2020 Census will again fail to acknowledge the presence of millions of adoptees, who still do not count by being denied equal treatment by law and by being denied unfettered access to their original vital records.