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 November 8, less than a month after the bills were introduced, both bills were voted favorable out of the Committee on Families, Children, and Seniors. The next day, the House passed both bills, 99-8, and it was transmitted to the Senate. The Michigan legislature, for all intents and purposes, is now in recess so we will have to wait until next year to seal the deal.
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We support HB5148 a “clean bill” that allows all Michigan-born adoptees, their descendants or legal representatives to obtain the adoptee’s original birth certificate without restrictions or conditions upon request at the age of 18, The bill contains a voluntarily optional Contact Preference Form which allows biological parents to record if the would like contact, but does not control the release of the OBC.
We support HB5149 which eliminates current court and Central Adoption Registry control over the release of the OBC. It retains biological parent denial of identifying information requests already on file, BUT that request does not restrict OBC access. No release vetoes can be filed after July 1, 2024.
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Yesterday I did a few legislative updates, and it really struck me while doing them–as if I didn’t already know this–that hardly anyone cares about adult adoptees or adoptee civil rights–especially those who have the “authority” to fix things legally such as policy and lawmakers. When compared to the speed which Safe Haven Baby Box legislation passes, records access for adults, even with the successes of the last couple of years, runs a very poor second.
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The outrage is that we must respect the righs of the adoptive parents and the birth parents. What about the rights of the adut adoptee being conditional on the whims of other people?
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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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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