Raison d’etre

Only six states in America allow adopted persons unfettered access to their own birth-certificates.

Approximately six million adults in the United States are denied access to the most basic facts of their own lives.

Spurious arguments have been used to justify the discrimantory  practice of  sealing birth certificates from the very person whose birth is recorded.

 The sealing of one’s birth certificate, as if they very act of being born was such a crime as to make the record of it unfit for release creates a culture of shame and illegitmacy that plagues the adoptee until the end of their days.  It is such an invasive belief that the adoptee does not have the same right to exist as the general population that it is not often even recognized, after all an adoptee who speaks up is often told they were lucky not to be aborted.  The subtext being that adoptees don’t deserve to be alive, much less have an opinion.

It is our hope that in highlighting some of disturbing messages delievered to the adoptee on a regular basis, will bring this ugly subtext to light.  In doing so, will strengthen the case for the repealing of these discrimantory practices reversing the notion that state sponsored shaming has a place in public policy