Equal Access Letter in Print

Pass the New Jersey Adoptees' Birthright Bill (A-752).

New Jersey's adopted citizens are discriminated against and denied the simple human right to look at their own birth certificates -- a right all others take for granted.The time has more than come to rectify this miscarriage of justice.


The multibillion-dollar adoption industry perpetrates the myth that mothers who relinquished were promised anonymity from their children. Mothers, however, support the human civil rights of adopted children.


For the very small minority who do not seek contact, just say no. If that doesn't work, there are sufficient laws to protect anyone from unwanted contact. Adoptees and their original families need no special, additional "protection" from one another. What they need is equality and a return of their civil rights that have been denied to them since the 1940s.


How can we promote adoption and tell mothers that placing a child for adoption is a loving act if we continue to discriminate against adoptees and their mothers and treat them as second-class and suspect people? How can we tell any mother that it is in her child's best interest to be denied knowing the truth and any chance of knowing his or her medical history? How can we expect mothers to agree to never know their child is well?


New Jersey, get on track. Stop discriminating against people for having been adopted. Let these adults decide who they want in their lives and who they don't. Family genealogy and interactions between adults -- or not -- are personal choices, and should not be legal issues.

Mirah Riben

Also at