May 11, 2011

Governor Chris Christie

P.O. Box 001

The State House

Trenton, NJ 08625-0001

RE: Please Veto A1406: Adoptees’ Birthright Bill

Dear Gov. Christie:

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America, opposes A1406: The Adoptees’ Birthright bill, which passed the General Assembly earlier this week. Please veto this bill.

A1406 will permit some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates (OBC) Others, through compromise language and a misnamed “contact preference form,” permits “birthparents” to remove their names from the document. An adoptee “vetoed” under this provision will instead receive only a mutilated false certificate with the name and address of the “birthparent(s)” bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services.

Bastard Nation rejects the special privilege of any parent to remove their name from the birth certificate of their own adult offspring or in any other way hinder the release of the true and accurate original birth certificate to the adoptee. No such third party privilege exists to keep the not-adopted from receiving their birth certificates. The adopted and not-adopted should enjoy due process and be treated equal under law.

Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to their own birth certificates: Oregon through state-wide ballot initiative, and Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. Kansas and Alaska never sealed records. Why should New Jersey buck the tide and pass a bill that continues to treat adoptee access to their own birth certificates as a privilege, not a right–a right that the not-adopted enjoy without a second thought? Please veto A1406 and tell the legislature to return with a new clean bill that restores the right of access to all the state’s adopted citizens. Thank you.

Yours truly,

Marley E. Greiner, Executive Chair