We made history last week. The New York Senate Health Committee voted S3419 out of committee with a recommendation for Senate passage. This was the first time an adoptee rights bill was even considered in committee in the Senate. Our leaders and representatives have been walking the halls lobbying and speaking with your staff for months. We need YOUR help now to get us across the finish line.
S3419 is now before the full Senate. Please take two minutes to email the Senators who do not already co-sponsor S3419. Let them know how important this bill is to you. If you are a constituent, mention that also.
A sample letter can be found below, but we always recommend making it personal.
Dear Senator:
I ask that you vote YES on S3419 when it comes to the Senate floor for debate and vote. The Senate Health Committee voted S3419 unanimously out of committee last week. It is a bipartisan bill that represents the first time a genuine adoptee rights bill has been considered in committee, let alone recommended for passage in the Senate. S3419 is a direct result of the Department of Health workgroup formed after Governor Cuomo’s 2017 veto of a badly regressive bill. It has now gained the support of thousands of adoptees, birthparents, and adoptive parents plus the support of dozens of organizations, more than ninety New York Assembly members, and twenty of your own Senate colleagues.
Please help make history. Vote yes on S3419 so New York can finally get it right and again make it equal. Let me know your position on S3419.
Respectfully,
[Your Name]
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This is the letter I sent to all of the Senators. Feel free to copy and reuse any of it.
Dear Senators,
In 1968 I was born in Manhattan and adopted through the Louise Wise Agency. Like many other LW adoptees of that era, my parents, and subsequently myself, were lied to about the circumstances of my birth. It took me 26 years of dogged searching to finally find both of of my biological parents and learn the truth.
My birthmother died before I found her. She was 50, and died one day before my birthday. She never had other children. She could not take one more year of that day. Perhaps if I would have been able to find her sooner, I could have told her I was okay, I loved her, I understood. Perhaps I could have helped her live just a little longer.
The complex emotional issues aside, the basic health information I have learned from finding my birthparents is life changing for me and my children. There is no valid humane reason for denying adoptees access to our truth, our stories, our DNA, our health history. Times have changed. Birthparents can choose not to reunite if a surrendered child finds them after birth certificates are unsealed. But their privacy or fear or shame is not a valid excuse for denying us the very basic human right of knowing who we come from.
From the deepest parts of my being, I ask you to vote YES os S3419.
Before we were adopted, we were born. Recognizing that truth and legitimizing our existence is long overdue.
Sincerely,
Mindy Stern
As an adoptee It should be my right to have my birth certificate, I’m sure that you have yours. Please vote Yes
It makes sense to do this, people have a right to know where they came from and how they fit into the human race. Also, on a practical basis, they will have a medical (family) history. It also will help to give many a chance to receive an inheritance. These are just a few things all the rest of us already have, let give to those less fortunate, for reasons that were never in their control.
Thank you for sharing this information. I just shared the following note with the New York senators listed above:
I have woken up every day for the past 56 years, eight months and 15 days without knowing my name.
You can change that by supporting S3419 when it comes up on the Senate floor for debate.
S3419 will give adoptees like myself born in New York a certified copy of our birth certificates. This legislation will, for the first time in my life, give me the opportunity to find out who I am – and who my birth parents are. It may give me the opportunity to finally be able to complete an accurate medical history when I go to the physician rather than crossing through the entire section and marking “unknown.” It will allow me, for the first time, to know where my people are from.
S3419 will not give me license to do anything other than to know. It will answer questions I have had for as long as I can remember. It will allow me to know my name, and the names of my parents – something I suspect each of you know with certainty every day that you rise.
I am not a constituent. I live in Michigan and will not have the opportunity to vote or any of you. But you have the opportunity to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do by supporting S3419.
Please, give me my name.