Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Birth Certificate Access

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

It’s unjust but true – if you are an adoptee in the US you may not have the same right to access your birth certificate that someone who wasn’t adopted does. The quest to access a birth certificate can be a legal rigamarole that may or may not work.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and this is short stuff.

So let's stop wasting time and begin speaking now. Yes, we are going to talk about adoption birth certificate access. And where did we get this? Where do we get some of this from? I believe we found out how stuff works, but they were published it from the conversation. We're working largely from an article by Andrea Ross. Right. And this is all about the thorny matter of whether or not, not really whether or not, but the idea that a grown up, or maybe sometimes not even grown up adopted person might want to gain access to their original birth certificate. And in many states in the

United States, those are sealed and you are not allowed to unless you jump through a lot of hoops. Which is really interesting. You'd think access to birth certificates would be the most boring thing you can think of, but I saw it described as a basic human right to know your genuine identity. And that's a really good point. I'm sure it's so easy for somebody like me on the outside to just be like, well, sure, do that or don't do that. It's big of a deal. And then to put yourself in somebody's shoes is going through that who wants to know who their biological parents are and is not allowed as being prevented from doing that by the state. I can't imagine anything more frustrating than that really. Yeah, I got some thoughts, but we'll pepper those in.

As it stands now, there are 10 states in the United States that offer complete access to their original birth certificates. In 18 states, I believe that you need a court order. Is that right? Yeah, in 18 states, what happens is they put your original birth certificate under seal and they issue you a supplemental birth certificate that doesn't have your biological parents' names on it, has your adoptive parents' names. And in those states, if you successfully petition the court, they will unseal your original birth certificate and then you can find out who your biological parents are. Right. And then in 23 states, there, you can get a redacted version, which I don't even see the point of that. No. And then in 12 other states, they have

restrictions that allow for access. And this is the one I really don't understand. It's just between, if you were born between certain time frames. Yeah. So the best that I can come up with for that is that there were laws passed that named those dates that are still on the books, that are now affecting people today. Gotcha. But those dates have been outlived. So now there's people who have access to their birth certificate, whereas other people who were born after a different date don't, which makes it arbitrary and an easy law to overturn. Okay. All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll talk about kind of where this came from and how the culture is shifted over the years right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking,

this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird.

It got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So amending birth certificates started, I think I'm saying birth, but this started in the 1940s, originally to kind of keep parents from interfering with the

adoptive family of the child. And there has been a big swing over the last 70 years since then, as far as what the norms are. Like things have really changed over the years in terms of how adoptions go down. Yeah, because Andrew Ross points out that there's a lot of people who think that the off the books reason for sealing birth certificates was also to protect the identity of unwed mothers. Because back in that time, if you were outed as an unwed mother who had had what they considered illegitimate child that you put up for adoption, it could probably make it hard for you to get a job. You might lose friends. Your neighbors might shun you. It was a big deal. And so yeah, she's saying like, we've really come a long way

since then. So if that's really the reason why we were sealing birth certificates to begin with, it doesn't make any sense anymore. Yeah. And there's a lot of states that have come around since then. Obviously, we mentioned those 10 that now allow complete access. But as we speak, there are other states that are kind of in the midst of enacting new policy changes. I know Tennessee and Connecticut and Rhode Island all have in the last few years kind of put legislation forward that favor access for, I keep saying kids, but I guess usually you have to be over 18, right? Yeah. That's another thing too. There are some, so clearly there's a big patchwork of laws, right? And depending on what state you live in, you might have, like you said, unfettered access or no access at all.

But then there's a bunch of states that have laws that say when you turn 18, you can get your original birth certificate if you ask for it. Yeah. And adoption is different across the board in all states anyway. So when I was going through it, I just remember being shocked at sort of every state has its own set of rules and laws, which obviously a lot of people feel that's how it should be states just choosing the way they want to do things. But there is no sort of straight ahead way that you can say this is how adoption works. So it doesn't surprise me that there's no straightforward reason or way that people can determine or get their hands on their original birth certificate. Right. So yeah. And like you said, there are some changes on the horizon.

Like I think Tennessee said that they said a parent, a birth parent is no longer allowed to veto their biological child's right to access their original birth certificate, which is a feature in a lot of states as well, where you can be granted access if you petitioned a court, but your biological parent has the right to say, nope, they can't. I don't want that released. And usually it goes the other way too. The biological child can also revoke or veto the release of their own birth certificate to their biological parents. Yeah. I mean, it is a thorny issue when you start looking at kind of both sides, because you certainly feel like it's a right to be able to know where you came from. And it's certainly made a lot easier these days with

DNA testing if that's something that someone can afford to do. But you also think about, you know, the right of a biological mom to retain their privacy. Because if they had an adoption plan to begin with it, one of the reasons may have or one of the things that went along with that may have been like, listen, this is why I'm doing this. I don't want to be contacted. I don't want to have a relationship. And you know, I guess at the end of the day, even if they live in a state where they can make contact, the biological parents can still say, well, no, I don't want a relationship. Yeah, they can, for sure. So to kind of like take a middle ground for some of these states that don't have unfettered access to original birth certificates, they've created

something called confidential intermediary services. And it's basically like Tinder, but for adoptions or biological families, right? So one family member can say, hey, I really want to get in touch with my biological parents. Can you see if you can put me in touch with them? That service will contact the biological parents and the biological parents will either swipe left or right. Right. Here's what I didn't see mentioned anywhere that I can't quite wrap my head around is that these days it's, I think it's very uncommon for adoptive parents to not share this information. And to say like, no, I'm not going to let you know who this was. That's a very old school sort of way adoptions used to go. So I'm kind of wondering how much this

matters in these modern times where generally parents are pretty open about saying like, hey, this is who your biological parents were. If you ever want to get in touch with them, we can try and do that one day. Yeah. So Andrea Ross cites one statistic. I'm not sure if it's in the United States in general, or if it's in New Hampshire, but less than one percent, actually less than three quarters of a percent of birth parents said that they don't want to be contacted by their biological child ever. Yeah. I want to know more about that because that just says in states like New Hampshire. Right. But it seems like a very narrow sort of study. Well, states offering unrestricted access. So yeah, I don't know. I guess it's kind of unclear. Yeah.

Well, it gives, so if you have unrestricted access to your birth certificate, I think the state, some states give the biological parent the right to say, please like check the box. Like, I don't want to be contacted ever kind of thing. So like the kid might be able to see who the biological parent is, but they will also get a message saying like, don't bother. They don't want to be contacted. Yeah. It's, you know, this is something I'm going to face one day as a parent of an adopted child. And I think they say that girls usually are more interested in this earlier than boys. And that like in the teenage years, typically girls might be a little more interested in making that connection. And boys, it's like sometimes in their adult life. But, you know,

this is something we're going to face. And we're always, it's always that thing where you're going to do, we're going to do the right thing and be like, all right, if that, if now is the time, we'll try. But there's always that risk that biological mom or and or dad is just going to say, no, thank you. And then, you know, that's just something you got to go through as a family. It's tough, tough stuff. And that's one of the tough parts about adoption. Yeah, but you guys are a strong family. You can do it. Yeah. And, you know, I would love for there to be relationships one day, but that's something that, you know, you can't force on somebody. No, definitely not. One way or the other, for sure. I think that's a good thing to remember. And to end this episode

on, what do you think? I totally agree. Well, then short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.