A long-awaited unrestricted equal rights bill for adult adoptees has been introduced in the California Senate.
Long anticipated but finally introduced in the California Senate yesterday, SB1274 is an incredibly simple bill with a powerful promise. The bill strikes out discriminatory provisions in current California law and simply adds:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the State Registrar shall provide to an adopted person who is 18 years of age or older and who was born in this state, or to a direct line descendant of a deceased adopted person, a copy of the adopted person’s original birth certificate and any evidence of the adoption previously filed with the State Registrar.
Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman is the primary sponsor, and the bill is awaiting committee referral, though it is expected to be referred to the Senate Health Committee. We’ll have more details as things develop, including committee assignment and things you can do to help.
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This is wonderful news! Thanks to everyone who has been working on adoptee rights in California behind the scenes.
As a CA adoptee at birth, I am emotional by this great news: thrilled and hopeful. Born and still in progressive CA, which passed marriage equality, abortion rights, and many more basic human rights, I struggle with why, after some 85 years of regressive legislation, we have not managed to allow adult adoptees access to our OBCs, still treating us as second class citizens.
Through DNA, and New York’s recent open access (signed by Gov Cuomo), I was found by 4 wonderful, welcoming maternal half siblings, and learned my BM was herself adopted,. The NY open access legislation enabled us to know HER birth sur/name, and build the maternal line of our bio trees. My paternal side is still vacant, however.
All CALIFORNIA adoptees deserve equal rights and equal access, too. I am allowing myself to be hopeful that Sen Eggman’s SB 1274 will be the one that opens doors for us!
I know I am “speaking to the choir” on this platform, but needed to let this out! Yes, lEllet’s get to work!
So happy to see this finally being addressed!
Being born in 1949, when things done involving children weren’t always legal, I can’t even get a passport! I’ve been told I “don’t exist”. It’s very hurtful, not to mention frustrating, because things were done that were beyond my control. All parties involved are now long dead, and yet I’m still be held hostage by bureaucracy!
Thank you for bringing this to the forefront!