Oregon Court Of Appeals Upholds Adoptee Rights In Doe V. Oregon Portland, Oregon, December 30, 1999 -- Yesterday a three-judge panel of the Oregon Court of Appeals unanimously upheld Oregon's landmark Measure 58 Adoptee Rights Law, which restores the right of Oregon's adult adoptees to receive unaltered copies of their original birth certificates in the same manner as non-adopted citizens. The court also ordered an immediate lifting of the stay that had placed Measure 58 on hold for over a year since Oregonians overwhelmingly passed the measure in a voter referendum. In December 1998, seven anonymous birthmothers, organized and supported by special interest lobbyists, sued to stop the law from going into force. Yesterday's ruling sets an important precedent for the end of forty years of legal discrimination against adoptees by the state government. We hope to see an end soon to the legal stalling tactics being used to postpone the will of the people, legislature and courts of the State of Oregon. Bastard Nation would like to acknowledge the work of Helen Hill, Measure 58's Chief Petitioner; Thomas E. McDermott III and Roy Pulvers, counsel for a group of adoptee rights advocates in the case; Attorney General Hardy Myers, David Schuman and other members of the Oregon Attorney General's Office; and OARA (the Oregon Adoption Rights Association) and its president, Delores Teller, for their tireless defense of Measure 58. This decision demolishes the arguments of a number of special interest groups including, particularly, the National Council for Adoption, a Washington, DC-based group representing only approximately one hundred private, fee-earning adoption service providers generally opposed to measures to promote greater transparency and accountability in adoption. Such groups have long argued against records access reform with a series of varied and opportunistic arguments, the latest of which contended that birthmothers were given a contractual promise of perpetual anonymity from their relinquished offspring and that these women required specifically tailored privacy protections far beyond those normally provided to citizens at large. The court yesterday ruled that no such contract existed, that people acting as agents for the state may not make promises of the kind alleged by the plaintiffs, and that birthparents have no fundamental right to privacy or anonymity from those they relinquished. In conjunction with lower court ruling in the present case as well as recent rulings in Tennessee, this case validates with the force of law what Bastard Nation and other supporters of adoptee rights have long asserted in their advocacy activities. Bastard Nation believes that the opposition will continue to defy the trend of reform now occurring at the state level, shifting from expensive and probably futile court actions to more subtle manipulations of the political process. For example, adoption service provider lobbies have recently sought to conceal sealed records provisions in bills now before the U.S. Congress to ratify the much-needed Hague Convention in Respect of Inter-country Adoption. These insidious provisions would, for the first time in U.S. history, impose federal restrictions on the release of virtually all identifying and non-identifying information to inter-country adoptees and their families, as well as subject them to criminal sanctions for attempting to access such information. Bastard Nation, an incorporated national grass-roots organization which advocates for the civil and human rights of adult citizens who were adopted as children, will continue to work toward an unconditional end to sealed records laws nationwide. Its "Who's Next? Fund" provides support for grass-roots legislative and initiative efforts as well as legal defense against anti-adoptee lawsuits prompted by well-funded special interest groups such as the one against M58 in OR. More information on the "Who's Next? Fund" may be obtained at http://www.plumsite.com/whosnext/ or by calling 415-704-3166. With this victory in our back pocket, we can only ask, "WHO'S NEXT?" Bastard
Nation * * * (This feature appeared in the Winter 99/00 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.) Copyright 1999 Bastard Nation |