The New York Adoptee Rights Coalition issued the following press statement after the signing of S3419 on November 14, 2019
GOVERNOR CUOMO MAKES HISTORY, SIGNS BILL ENDING 83 YEARS OF SECRECY OVER NEW YORK ADOPTEES’ OWN BIRTH RECORDS
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday signed a bill that ends 83 years of iron-clad secrecy over the birth certificates of adult adopted persons. The bill, sponsored by Assemblyman David I. Weprin in the Assembly and Senator Velmanette Montgomery in the Senate, becomes effective in January 2020 and will restore a right that New York adoptees once had: the right as adults to request and receive their own pre-adoption birth records.
“This will change countless lives and push other states to do what is right and what is equal,” said Annette O’Connell, the spokesperson for the New York Adoptee Rights Coalition, which spearheaded efforts to pass the historic legislation. “This happened because state and national organizations like Bastard Nation, Adoptee Rights Law Center, and the Adoptive and Foster Family Coalition of New York came together as a coalition to assure that the bottom line of equality was always the only line being pursued.”
Adoptees have been advocating for equal rights legislation across the country for more than 50 years, going back to Florence Fisher, a New York adoptee considered one of the founders of the adoptee rights movement in the early 1970s.
“Where you came from informs who you are, and every New Yorker deserves access to the same birth records— it’s a basic human right,” Governor Cuomo said in a released statement. “For too many years, adoptees have been wrongly denied access to this information and I am proud to sign this legislation into law and correct this inequity once and for all.”
With Governor Cuomo’s signature, New York becomes the tenth state to recognize or restore the right of adult adoptees to obtain a copy of their own original birth certificates.
“For more than 80 years New York adoptees endured a humiliating, frustrating, costly, and rarely successful process when they requested their own vital records,” said Marley Greiner, Executive Chair of Bastard Nation, one of the oldest and largest adoptee rights organizations in the United States. “The enactment of S3419 reverses that discrimination and repeals a Depression-era law that had prevented adults from possessing their own original birth certificates.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people were born and adopted in New York and tens of millions of families are linked to those adoptees or to adoption in some way,” said Gregory D. Luce, an attorney and founder of the Adoptee Rights Law Center.
“It’s hard to underestimate what this bill signals and what the leadership of Governor Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, Senator Montgomery, and Assembly Member Weprin will mean for equal rights legislation in other parts of the country. New York got it right. It has made it equal for adopted people in that state. It has set the bar for 40 other states and the District of Columbia to follow.”
Press Inquiries
Annette O’Connell
Spokesperson
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
[email protected]
I am thrilled and overjoyed at this momentous news! I was born in Florida but adopted in New York, where my adoption was finalized in court six months later (grey-market private adoption through an attorney). It’s my understanding that adoptees in my circumstance will at least be given the information on our OBCs, if not the document itself. I am eager to know if NY has any additional information beyond what my Florida OBC has provided.
No one ever gets their ORIGINAL birth certificate, you always get a COPY, the state has to keep the original
Yes, of course.
Great job. So excited.
This is great!
I have waited 70 years and 1 month to hear this news. I can’t wait to see my Original Birth Certificate and eagerly await instructions on how to obtain a copy!!
Thanks!
Hank Bernstein (Adopted Name Henry E. Bernstein)
Jeffrey Dorf (Birth Name)
I want to say thank you to everybody who is worked all these years to finally get this law passed for us bless all of you and thank you Governor Cuomo.
I am so happy this legislation has passed and anxiously await further news about when the OBC will be available and how we can obtain it. Thank you New York State for finally letting adult adoptees have this information for themselves!
I just tried to submit my application for my OBC only to find that there is no provision for people adopted in NY but born out of state. It was my understanding that adoptees in my position would not be overlooked and that we would at least be given the information on our OBCs, if not the document itself. Can anyone advise me as to the proper procedure I should follow? Thank you!
Hello, Rence,
There seems to be yet another adoptee myth-amongst the far roo many others-that says adoptees not born in the state of adoption have some procedure between themselves and the birth state about OBCs. It just simply is not true.
So, let me share a bit of my own OBC story. I was born in OH (1945) and abandoned and later adopted (as was my younger sister born in 1947) in NE by our parents who left us at as dog pound. My felonious parents took our brother with them, heading east to OH. Intelligent felons take care not to carry about incriminating documents just as we non-felons don’t carry our own ABCs or OBCs around, nor do we carry our children’s. I was about 2 1/2 and my sister was probably about 8 months old in 1948. My sister has no memory that she can recall and does not know she is adopted even at her 72 years of age. NE has no ID OBC for her any more than they have my OH OBC.
We don’t go around sharing birth certificates like the old saw about you show me yours and I’ll show your mine, so I had no clue about my place (the ABC notes Dept of Vital Statistics State of Nebraska with the statement that I was “born within the continental limits of the United States” on it. the ABC got me into elementary, secondary and post-secondary education and the US Navy so I never thought anything of it-except of course the name I never consented to have taken the place of my birth name or to the names of adopters listed as ‘parents’ rather than my real parents.
All of this changed when in 1982 the US Passport Agency denied my application for a passport citing that no correct birth certificate was submitted with the passport. It took three weeks to find a bureaucrat who could explain what they meant-that there was no village/town/city/county/providence/territory/country listed. So despite the ‘great seal of the state of Nebraska’ embossed on the certificate it was not legitimate…
It was an eye-opener which suddenly explained why Nebraskan bureaucrats were oh so certain that I would never obtain my OBC and never know who were parents -or anything else for that matter: I can’t have what they don’t have. (NB: Nebraska’s adoption laws are far mor draconian than NYS’ ever were..)
I knew the state was not going to help me, so I began taking one step after another to find my OBC, contacting 44 states by phone and correspondence individually with only a date of birth and my father’s surname to provide. That was not enough to get me what I needed, but most of the states did at least search for the surname and the DOB .. I was batting far less than zero and it was the bottom of the 9th with 3 on the bases -none in my favor. But I had learned earlier in life that all it takes when you are in a conundrum is for one person to actually listen to you and to understand why you are requesting something. That one person can make the difference between getting the boot or finding at least some of your original identity. For me it was a woman in OH’s vital statistics department who coached me through finding the city in OH which was my place of birth… Once I could give her that, she was able to tell me how to procede. I petitioned the court with documents and language which showed just cause why I should be given what others were denied and the judge agreed with my reasoning. Within 2 weeks of submission of that petition, I had that piece of paper with names and other information on it. I now understand that he judge actually had no choice because I was NOT an OH ADOPTEE, I was an non-adoptee applying for my birth information as any other non-adoptee does.
When the bureaucrats of NE discovered I had obtained the every document they swore a gazillion times that I was not ever supposed to have, never mind to see, they threatened me with a lawsuit saying I had violated their laws. I laughed and reminded them that the document in question was property of the State of Ohio and as such it is OH that calls the shots-NOT Nebraska. I now have my sister’s ID OBC (certified) and my brother’s and mother’s (She was first generation to be born of immigrant parents from Hungary in the US, as is my aunt, her sister)
It was not until 2010 that I found a paternal uncle -the first person who knew my birth name and knew me as a very young child. The next year we reunited and he shared some photos with me and some of my early history and that of my parents. It was a short honey moon, sadly. Whether adoptee or not, most humans demand that you conform to their beliefs and customs. I was rejected as I am by most of either side of the family with whom I share DNA.
The new law in NYS does not take effect until 15 January 2020, giving time for the Department of Health to set up the procedure for you to obtain your birth certificate. I doubt that that the there is no provision for those who were not born in NYS to receive an OBC. If you know which state you were born in and your birth name/date you should contact that state (vital statistics or health department – or DHHS) to find someone to advise you. I would suggest waiting for forthcoming registration information. It may shed some light on people like us born in one place and adopted in another.
I hope my narrative helps, if only to let you know that you are not alone with this conundrum. I wish you good fortune and hope that you will find a way to have your OBC and whatever ‘truth’ it may contain.
Thank you for sharing your rather remarkable story with me. I’m very glad you prevailed and found your birth family, despite the fact that it didn’t turn out to be a satisfactory experience. At least you know who they are and a bit of your own story.
I have to disagree with what you said in the first paragraph, however. There WAS a procedure for me to follow, in order to obtain my OBC from the state of Florida, where I was born. And in fact, I now have it. I couldn’t have done it without knowing my birth parents’ names, though. So I was fortunate that by the time I applied for my OBC, I had already figured out, through DNA testing at Ancestry and a lot of digging, who my birth parents were. I had to fill out an application requesting my OBC, and send that, along with copies of death certificates for my birth parents and my adoptive parents and a nominal check, to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville, FL. I had my OBC several weeks later.
I am just hoping that New York State might have some other paperwork in my adoption file containing information I don’t have as yet. I read on this page, when the bill passed in both legislative chambers in NYS, that adoptees adopted in NY but not born there would still be provided for in terms of access to information. Fingers crossed!
Oops, meant to say, too, that had my birth parents or my adoptive parents still been alive, I would have had to send a notarized affidavit from each one, granting permission for me to have my OBC.
Can you imagine the indignity of being an adult and having to ask my elderly parents and/or birth parents I had never even met for permission to have a copy of a document that every single individual should have, by right?
There will be a way for you to receive if born in NYS. We need to give them time to make the forms. But It will be around the first of the New Year.
I wasn’t born in NYS. That’s the issue. I was born in Florida but adopted on NYS.
If adopt took place in NYS you should be able to get it.
Hope you’re right! Thanks!
https://adopteerightslaw.com/florida-obc/ from our friend Greg Luce… FL Adoptees born in FL have no access … just as I have no access in NE… just remember your status in NYS is as an adoptee -but not born there; your status in FL is as a non-adoptee. You might wan to send Greg an email and ask for his counsel. Good luck, again!
Renee,
The new bill does cover adoptees who were born in other states if their adoption was finalized in NY State. If NY State does not have the info that would normally be on the OBC, then the agency associated with your adoption in the state where you were born must provide it. So we have to wait until NY State comes out with the request form that adoptees need to use to request a copy of their OBC. As Bridget said in her response to you, they need time to get the process in place and create the request form.
Thank you.
What if there was no agency? Mine was a private adoption handled by a lawyer.
I do think NYS must have my info, though, ,because my final adoption papers included my original name. I can only assume they would have gotten that name from my OBC.
Please put out advisory information on obtaining the OBC as soon as available! I’ve waited 70 years and the clock is ticking- I want it in my hands ASAP !
Renee
My adoption was handled privately although I was born at a Catholic home for unwed mothers. My Adoptive parents gave me my “papers” on my 21st birthday. From that I knew my mothers name and my own name at birth.
Many many years later and long ago when I started my search, before DNA and the internet, I remembered something a friends mother told me that adoptions in NYS were handled through the birth mothers home county. With help from the local library, I found her HS yearbooks there. The local Newspaper had several newspaper clippings in their own library that gave me enough information to find both of my birth parents.
Even though I was born in an other part of NY State the adoption was handled in my birth mothers home county, which happened to be the very same town were I was raised.
I wish you well in your search.