The BASTARDIZED states of Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota (July 1 2024), New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Vermont are the only U.S. states where adult adoptees have unrestricted access to their own original birth records!
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The Bastard Nation Executive Committee expresses our solidarity with Black Lives Matter and with those in the US and around the world protesting police violence and systemic racism. We support all peaceful protest. We support free expression and the right to address and demand redress from the government. We support self-determination, self- ownership, and autonomy. We support human dignity and civil and human rights. Bastard Nation condemns racism, the abrogation of free speech, civil rights, police repression, police brutality, state secrets, and state-based violence.
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Use our timeline for amusement and education. Imagine the fun you’ll have telling your state legislators that your records were sealed before Pearl Harbor was bombed; Babe Ruth retired and Jackie Robinson broke the color line; school segregation was illegal; Social Security and the CIA existed; Watergate, Elizabeth was Queen; Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were assassinated….and before most of those lawmakers were born.
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The long-lost documentary Measure Rights: is now online. Measurable Rights The fight for open records in Oregon is the story of Helen Hill and Bastard Nation, who used Oregon’s Ballot Measure 58 to open sealed …
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Fed up with Safe Haven Baby Boxes? Let Boxers know. Join us on Stop Safe Haven Baby Drop Boxes today. Open to anyone in and out of AdoptionLand who finds anonymously abandoning a baby by …
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If you are tired of forced birthers exploiting adoptees to push their agenda, please check out #NotYourAbortee #NotYourPosterChild on Facebook The page is run by adoptees to smash abortion abolitionist conflation of abortion and adoption
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Bastard Swag Boutique. Your one-stop shop for everything Bastard! Proceeds benefit Bastard Nation.
Continue readingIf you are new to Bastard Nation or to adoptee rights, start with The Basic Bastard to get up to speed.
Continue readingEasy to read, easy to print, easy to distribute. Bastard Nation policy statements for activists, legislators, and the press.
Continue readingThese papers cover related issues more in depth and can be printed out for use in local public education or legislative campaigns.
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On July 1, 2023, Vermont and South Dakota became the latest states to unseal without condition or restriction, the Original Birth Certificates of their state-born adoptees. And there’s more to come!
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Minnesota’s long history of sealed records and complicated, confusing, convoluted “rules,” including an incomprehensible intermediary system that made it nearly impossible for adoptees to obtain their Original Birth Certificates, ended Wednesday when Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz signed SF2995 an omnibus health bill that contained OBC access provisions. Those provisions came from the earlier stand-alone SF279 stuck in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee for carryover to the next session. The Minnesota Coalition for Adoption Reform (MCAR) and the Adoptee Rights Law Center directed by Minneapolis attorney Gregory Luce, negotiated with legislative leaders to get the provisions added and onto the floor of both Houses which passed the bill on May 22, 2023, the last day of the session. (Senate: 34-32; House 69-64)
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AB1302 is clearly adopteephobic, discriminatory, and frankly bigoted– and it clearly was written with no adoptee input. It has no support from any adoptee rights, adoption reform, or child welfare organization in the country. If this bill were about any other marginalized group and written without any input from them–African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, women, queers, trans, Jews, Muslims, disabled, it would never see the light of day.
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AB 1302 would create a clumsy, cumbersome, and unduly burdensome TRIPLE notification procedure in the hands of the Department of Health. While no fiscal note is yet attached to the bill, I can imagine the cost in millions will fall on adoptees and other voters in California.
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SB64 should have passed the House. The bill was a shoo-in. It had no organized opposition. Even traditional opponents agreed to remain neutral. The bill zipped through the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee unanimously. But then something happened. A small group of politicians found the right of their own state’s adopted people to obtain their own Original Birth Certificates “troublesome.” and “problematic,” or something worse. I don’t know their objections (I can guess) or who they are, though it is likely that House Speaker Jon Burns was among them. Did at least some of them have “a little something” to hide? Whatever was going on, they decided to keep Class Bastard Georgia in line. If SB64 isn’t heard and doesn’t exist on the agenda then adoptees don’t.
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I really have no idea what the purpose of this bill is or why it has been brought forward, but it is clearly adopteephobic, discriminatory, and frankly bigoted– and it clearly was written with no adoptee input. It has no support from any adoptee rights, adoption reform, or child welfare organization in the country. If this bill were about any other marginalized group and written without any input from them–African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, women, queers, trans, Jews, Muslims, disabled, it would never see the light of day.
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Bastard Nation is a proud partner organization in the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition, along with the Adoptee Rights Law Center and the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York. Plus strategic partner Reclaim the Records
Bastard Nation is a proud partner in the Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition, along with Equality for Adoption, Gladney Adoptees for Rights and Equality, and the Adoptee Rights Law Center. Plus strategic partner Reclaim the Records