Rejected under Illinois’ new adoptee birth certificate “access” law? Not allowed to register in the IARMIE?
Now that Illinois’ disastrous HB 5428 has been signed into law, (it’s now known as PA 96-0895) simply by looking at the new law it becomes clear, some untold number of adoptees will have their requests for their original birth certificates, or attempts to register with the registry rejected by the state. Yet the state appears to have no interest in hearing from or about those so intentionally left behind.
No provision has been made to track those rejections nor build statistics how many requests are being turned down. (Let alone offer those rejected any form of redress.)
Until now.
Mary Lynn Fuller (of Illinois Open) is beginning to compile some of the stories of those the state of Illinois is rejecting access to their Original Birth Certificates (OBCs) to or refusing to register in the IARMIE (Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange.) She’s attempting to build some basic statistics on just how many are being turned away and what their circumstances are.
She can be contacted via email- mlfuller65@comcast.net.
If you can help spread the word about Mary Lynn’s effort to do this basic data collection, please share her effort far and wide within your social networks.
This is terribly important work, as many legislators believe they just ‘restored’ adoptees civil rights and believe the new law has ‘fixed’ the situation. Tragically, nothing could be farther from the truth. But without the data to show what those turned away are experiencing, those rejected will be left to suffer this injustice as if it were nothing more than a ‘personal problem’.
These rejections are not ‘personal problems.’ They are the result of a systemic flaw, inherently built into the new law, and precisely what many of us who have been blogging about the legislative wrangling in Illinois for years now warned was about to happen before the law passed.
Bastardette has added her take on Mary Lynn’s effort here:
Attention Illinois Original Birth Certificate Rejects! Act Now!
As Bastardette put it:
You can read Mary’s latest blog about Illinois here. Note that although Mary is a grandmother, and her first mother is dead, she is not yet old enough and thus responsible enough to qualify for her own birth certificate–despite what Feigenholtz says to to the contrary on her own webpage.
Representative Sara Feigenholtz, who sponsored and pushed the bill can say “Today, we’re opening a new chapter in adoption history in Illinois where we can finally say that all families are created equal” ’til she’s blue in the face.
Even the most straightforward reading of the law makes it clear enough, today Illinois families and adoptees remain locked behind multiple doors of state constructed unequal treatment.
What’s important at this point, is to bring together and compile the stories of those who AS A CLASS OF PEOPLE are left to endure that inequality, and bring their plight to light.
Rather than remaining voiceless, each trapped by the legislation’s fatal flaw, adoptee rights advocates both in Illinois and across the country are trying to ensure that PA 96-0895 is not the end of the road in Illinois as this new law merely creates a whole new set of problems, problems we warned were inherent to it before it passed. None of us are giving up.
We don’t view this latest version of the mess in Illinois as any kind of “end point” nor do we consider the matter “settled.” If anything, we foresee that for a class of adoptees and their families, this is merely another chapter, and the problems therein are only just beginning.
Proving that, though, becomes a matter of individuals being willing to speak out. Of data collection. And of not giving up.
We recognize there’s a long haul ahead of us, all the more so in that once legislators pass a bill, they use their work on it as an excuse to refuse to revisit the “issue” for years to come.
As they refuse to track the consequences of the law, it falls to the directly affected to do so.
With the evidence of PA 96-0895‘s failures in hand, we will continue to push for nothing less than genuine equality for adopted people and their families in Illinois.
Because when it comes to genuinely restoring human, civil, and identity rights, no one should be left behind or forgotten.
UPDATE: One final, important addition, BastardGrannyAnnie, also an IL Bastard and also involved in Illinois Open’s fight against this broken law has her own story to tell, and some massive news. Please read across to her piece:
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October 4th, 2010 at 9:16 am
The text of the law makes one wonder how many “in charge” actually studied it or just showed support because some others in Chicago were. We don’t have to live with this nightmare forever and I for one have started seeing what can be done. I’d prefer to not go into detail at this time. One of the things that I’m doing is compiling statistics because I feel it important to make them known. We knew that some would be left behind because of not being born prior to 1/1/46 but now I’m learning that more than just myself are being rejected because of flaws in the text of the law.
Just what happened that some situations were not covered in the text? My guess is that the bill was rushed through too quickly. Perhaps it was more important to Rep. Feigenholtz to push the bill through than to stop and think about how many might be left behind.
So far those I’ve heard from indicates there could be many different situations that were not covered in the law. Or were they meant to be but the right wording was not inserted in the text? Are Vital Statistic and Registry employees confused? Whatever the problem it must be fixed. Please contact me if you have received a reject letter for an OBC or to register with IARMIE.