Petition: Adoptee Birth Records
A current draft of adoption guidelines in India has many in the adoption community concerned. One of the most troubling proposed practices deals with access to original birth records. As they’re written now, the guidelines state that in the case of abandoned children, the authorities cannot issue a birth certificate until the child is adopted so that the adoptive parents’ names appear on the certificate.
Adoptee rights advocates have composed a petition to India’s Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) asking for the following changes to adoption guidelines:
- That adoptees be provided with original birth certificates with the names of their biological parents.
- The right for adoptees to access birth files and adoption records, even if they were born to unwed mothers.
- The establishment of independent post adoption services.
Click here if you would like to sign the petition and let us know your thoughts on the issue by posting a comment to our blog.
It is ridiculous to deny an adoptee their basic human rights because of the status of their mother at birth. This is discrimination.
This also carries on the stigma attached to mothers and adoptees, creating yet another sub-class (on top of the odious “caste” system).
What about up-to-date medical information?
What about finding out about your siblings? Do they not the right to know about their genealogy – something that many others take for granted?
I am reunited with my son. He is absolutely appalled at the way I have been treated in the past. He is now fighting to open the records everywhere.
Everyone has the RIGHT to their own information – the UN says so!
(according to the “Rights of the Child” Convention which India signed up to!!)
India should be reminded of that.
I hope that in every countries, adoptees will have the right to access their natural rights to know about their birth parents.