Adoptees and more than two dozen state and national organizations oppose Florida’s HB357, a badly flawed anti-equality bill
When Something is Nothing and Nothing is Something
Florida’s HB357 creates an inequitable two-class system of OBC access that requires a forty year period to pass after an adoption before most adoptees can obtain original birth certificates upon request.
The History of Florida OBC Access
The new report covers the beginning of Florida adoption law in 1885 and provides a more than 100-year timeline showing how Florida adoptees had unrestricted access to their own original birth certificates until June 30, 1977.
What’s at Stake: Florida
If proposed legislation in Florida does not preserve a clean and unrestricted right to an OBC, then it will strip away rights from those who have already held them for decades.
Let’s Do Some New York Math
I preface this by saying, “My God, New York legislators, did you not even think to determine the financial impact of this terrible bill?”
New York’s Bad Bill
With questions about New York’s not-an-OBC access bill, I thought I’d set out what the bill actually does—or actually fails to do for adoptee rights.
Bastards in the Room
It is through the emptiness of an answer that we sometimes obtain the truth.
And Then There Were Four
With legislative sessions winding down, four states are still active with OBC access bills. Three bills are clean. One, in North Carolina, is simply bizarre.
What’s the Adoption Institute Up To?
With its newly announced OBC2020 “organized advocacy campaign,” why won’t the Donaldson Adoption Institute commit to unrestricted OBC access for all adult adoptees, unequivocally and without compromise?
The Nutso World of New York Adoptee Rights
Not only does New York purport to seal adoption records and OBCs forever, but it also relies upon an archaic, punitive, and expensive court process to access anything remotely identifying.