Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights – Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

The Work Continues

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on March 30, 2023

Friends of GAAR,

SB64 gained great exposure and momentum in Georgia’s 2023 legislative session. We got through the Senate Children & Families committee, the full Senate, and House Judicial committee unanimously and everyone’s effort brought us the farthest it’s ever gone in Georgia!

We appreciate the support from every Georgia General Assembly member who voted for the bill! We appreciate Senator Randy (and Theresa) Robertson and Representative Beth Camp advocating and championing SB64. We appreciate each one of you for calling, emailing, and speaking with your Senators and Representatives. We appreciate all of the organizations who stood behind us and supported the bill this session. And we appreciate the GAAR board members who have worked tirelessly preparing for this effort.

One very important point to understand is that SB 64 is not dead. It is still alive and will start back in the House rules committee to be scheduled for the House floor next January. Although we wanted SB 64 so incredibly badly to have passed the House and gone onto Governor Kemp’s desk for signature this year, we have another chance to pass a clean adoption reform bill in Georgia!

In 2024, we will be even stronger and will have more time to educate and rally all of the legislators. We ask that all of you please join us to continue to fight for adoptee rights and help get us to the finish line. We can’t do it without you!

If you would like to serve in a greater capacity in 2024 for GAAR, please email us at info@gaallianceforadopteerights.org

Our work is not finished until all adult adoptees in Georgia can obtain their original birth certificate upon request. Period.

THANK YOU!!

About Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

The Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights is a coalition of state and national organizations with a singular focus: restoring the unrestricted right of all Georgia adult adoptees to obtain their own original birth certificates (OBC) upon request.

SB 64 Unanimously Passes House Judicial Committee

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on March 16, 2023

In a unanimous vote on March 14th, the House Judicial Committee, gave a “do-pass” to SB64. It now will move on to the House floor.

Senator Randy Robertson presented the bill to the committee. He was joined by Jamie Weiss, co-chair of Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights, who provided testimony and responded to questions from Representative Kelley and Representative Crawford relating to the bill.

Jamie Weiss testifies before the House Judiciary Committee alongside Senator Randy Robertson.

As Senator Robertson was wrapping up, he said, “We (the Georgia Assembly) don’t often have a compassionate bill like this to vote on in the Senate or House.” He asked for the committee to vote in favor of un-doing an old wrong and giving adult adoptees equal rights to obtain their original birth certificate.

The bill also passed through the House Rules Committee and will be presented by Representative Beth Camp to the full House on Monday, March 20, 2023.

We’re Halfway There!

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on March 8, 2023

Senate bill 64 passed unanimously in the Georgia Senate on March 6th (crossover day), with a 54-0 vote. The bill restores the right for adopted persons (18 years+) to obtain their original birth certificate.

Senator Randy Robertson (R-Cataula) presented the clean bill to the full Senate and there was no opposition and no questions presented. (Except about where the Senator’s eccentric shoes originated from!)

Senator Robertson was a champion for this bill in the senate and garnered 18 co-sponsors from the initial introduction. On the Senate floor Senator Robertson said, “All I want to do is give these people (adopted persons) the same opportunity as us in knowing who they are.”

The bill will now crossover to the House of Representatives and when it passes there, the bill would be enacted at the time of the Governor’s signature.

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights will keep you posted with sponsor and committee information, as well as any call-to-actions.

SB64 presented at 50:30

About Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

SB64 Passes Out of Committee

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on March 1, 2023

The Senate Children and Families Committee voted unanimously in favor of passing Georgia SB64 out of committee! Many thanks to bill sponsor, Senator Randy Robertson, and co-sponsor, Senator Bo Hatchett for their dedication to restoring adoptee rights. We would also like to thank Chairwoman Kay Kirkpatrick and the members of the committee for their willingness to learn about the importance of SB64.

SB64 now moves to the Rules Committee for consideration to be scheduled for a vote before the full Senate Committee. The bill must pass and crossover to the House no later than March 6, 2023.

Members and supporters of Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights are pictured with Senator Randy Robertson and his wife, Theresa, following the “do pass” vote by the Children and Families Committee.

About Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

Show Your Support

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on February 16, 2023

We are overwhelmed by all of the enthusiasm for our adoptee rights bill in Georgia! We are so thankful that people and organizations from the whole adoption constellation have come together to support Senate Bill 64. It is not only adoptees that recognize the need to have these rights restored, but also parents, adoption professionals, physicians, lawyers, legislators, and friends!

We are expecting SB64 to be considered in committee next week and will update when there is a definite date and time.

If you have not already, be sure to add your e-mail address to our mailing list. All official action alerts and updates will be shared directly by us on our social media pages and through our e-mail list.

In the meantime, grab one or both of these graphics to update your profile picture and header to show your support for SB64 and the restoration of rights to adopted people.

About Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

2023 Legislative Session

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on February 7, 2023

The Georgia Assembly is in session and Senate Bill (SB) 64 is active!

SB64 will restore a right that has been restricted since 1961: the right for all Georgia-born adult adoptees to obtain their own original birth certificate upon request. Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights has worked with bill author, Jim Outman, and the bill sponsor, Senator Randy Robertson (R-Cataula) to assure a “clean” and unrestricted bill.

If you are a Georgia-born adoptee or birth parent, be sure that you sign up for our e-mail list to receive action notices and the latest news regarding the bill.

About Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

DNA Testing vs Birth Records: Which One Provides More Privacy?

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on September 20, 2022

For decades, adoptees have been denied the right to their own birth records, and as a result, denied the opportunity to learn about their origins. Many false claims about birth parent privacy or anonymity have been made as reasons to continue to deny equal rights to adult adopted persons. However, in the last decade, the availability and affordability of consumer DNA testing through sites such as Ancestry and 23 and Me, has opened up new avenues for adoptees from states with sealed records to find out where they came from. But, using DNA testing in an attempt to discover one’s origins is not without issues, one of which being the lack of privacy.

If you have never taken a consumer DNA, let me explain how it works. First, you purchase a kit from one of the consumer DNA testing sites and upon receipt, spit into the tube, and mail it off to be tested. Then you wait. It usually takes the lab a few weeks to perform it’s analysis. Once complete, your results are uploaded to the site and you will be notified that your results are available! At that point, you may be filled with excitement or anxiety as you click to link to find out what your DNA has to say, especially if you are an adoptee with so many unknowns.

Many people are aware that once they log in they will find out what percentage Colombian, or Irish, or Japanese they may be, but not everyone is aware that in addition to identifying your ethnicity mix, you are also matched with DNA relatives who have also taken a DNA test through that same company. (There are also platforms that allow DNA results from various companies to be compared, such as GEDMatch, if that is desired.) For most people, when they view their list of DNA matches, they will see some combination of 2nd-4th cousins listed. It is less common to log on and find that you’ve immediately been matched to a 1st cousin, sibling, or better yet… a parent! (Although this would be like hitting the jackpot for most adoptees.) Without being directly linked to a parent and having little to no knowledge of your origins, how do you use these DNA matches to find out where you belong in the family tree?

Well, you have to start shaking the branches and ringing the phone lines. You will need to contact some of your matches and hope you can get some of them to respond with helpful information. Even though some of them want to help they do not have the information you need, so they aren’t really sure where you belong. They may then begin to call their sister or aunt, or another cousin, or grandma asking about any information that they might have on a baby from the family that was placed for adoption. If that person doesn’t know either or has vague memories of something like this happening, they may call another cousin or uncle or brother. Before you know it, the whole family may be in on trying to discover where in the world you came from and who gave up a baby! This is obviously not a very private or personal way to attempt to learn your biological origins, but this is what is forced upon adoptees when states refuse to allow adoptees their own records.

If the concern for adoptees and biological parents is privacy, then allowing an adopted person the right to directly obtain their own birth record is the key. With this scenario, the only contact required is between the adopted person and the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH).

Giving equal rights to adult adopted persons means more privacy, not less. It is that simple. Or as my kids would say, “Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!”

GAAR Featured on “What Next?” Podcast

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on January 26, 2022

Committee member and adoptee, Jamie Weiss, recently joined Greg Luce, founder of Adoptees United, for the new podcast called “What Next?”. It is a podcast dedicated to adoptee rights and updates on the legislative efforts at both the state and federal levels. In Episode #2, Jamie talks about some of her personal experience with being adopted in Georgia and trying to obtain her original birth certificate along with the work that the Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights is doing currently.

You can find the podcast at this link below or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.
https://adopteesunited.org/whatnext

About Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights

The Mother’s Experience

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on November 8, 2021

I called the agency a few months later and they told me I was in a “semi” open adoption. I had never heard that term before. I was shocked. I didn’t want anonymity.

The Myth of the Promise

Georgia Alliance for Adoptee Rights on October 27, 2021

One of the most common myths in open records legislation is that “birth records can not be opened to adoptees because birth parents were promised privacy or anonymity.”

However, that’s just not true. It’s a MYTH.

In Georgia, the Surrender of Parental Rights form has been used since the Adoption Act of 1977 went into effect on January 1, 1978. Adoption agencies, attorneys, churches, and states have been using the exact same document since.¹ (Prior to 1978 in Georgia, birth mothers did not have to sign any official surrender documents.)

Take this surrender document (pictured below) signed by a birth mother in early 1979. This mother is agreeing to surrender her child to the Georgia State Department of Human Resources, Division of Children and Family Services. In the document, she agrees to surrender the child to the State, not interfere in the management of the child’s life, and relinquish all rights and claims to the child. Nowhere in the document does it state that anonymity is promised or even an option for birth parents. It does not assure the birth parent secrecy from the child, potential adoptive parents, or society in any way. If anyone at any time made an implication of such, they did so without any legal standing.

The Surrender of Parental Rights also did not guarantee that the child would be adopted. The child could have remained in foster care until they reached the age of majority or been cared for under a legal guardianship instead of an adoption. It is not until the finalization of an adoption that a child’s original birth certificate would be sealed and replaced with an amended post-adoption birth certificate. Up until the point of adoption, the original birth certificate containing the birth parent(s) name(s) was available the same as for any other person born in Georgia.

Additionally, when an adoptee requests information from the Georgia Adoption Reunion Registry (a service to birth parents, adopted persons, adoptive parents and siblings who are affected by adoptions finalized in Georgia) they will give the adoptee the name of the birth parent if they are deceased and locate the obituary for them. Adoptees can also request a death certificate from the state for a deceased birth parent. So if the State of Georgia promised birth mothers anonymity, then why is a state-contracted organization giving out the birth parents’ names?

In Georgia, the only way for adopted persons to obtain their original birth certificate and any birth records is to hire an attorney to petition the State for their sealed documents. It costs adoptees thousands of dollars and a lot of time. Even upon doing so, there is no guarantee that the records will be given to them as it is up to each individual judge. Some are successful in their pursuit and the judge orders their records to be opened and provided to them. If the State of Georgia promised anonymity to birth parents, then the State would not be able to provide birth certificates and records upon petition without consent from those they promised anonymity to. But the fact is, anonymity was never promised to birth parents. Rather, it was forced upon them by the sealing of records.

We need laws that exist based on facts and not the myths that have long endured. It is time for the State of Georgia to remove the undue burden placed upon adopted persons to obtain their original birth certificate allowing them to acquire it via the same method and fee as all other persons born in Georgia.

1. In 2018, the right to withdraw surrender was changed from 10 days to 4 days.

Additional Resources:
Current GA Surrender of Rights Form (2021)

Surrender-of-Rights-Legal-Parent_07213