Legislative push to get open records in the state of California. Visit the CA Open 2001 website for details. The Act empowers the U.S. government to participate in this regulatory framework and provides specific protections for the rights of American adoptees placed on countries other than their country of birth. A Bastard Nation legislative team has been working since the summer of 1999 to ensure that the rights of intercountry adoptees are upheld and respected by the U.S. government. We were successful.
Individual states remain free to design their own policies concerning records under their control.
Earlier versions of the legislation tried to permanently seal federal adoption records and force the states to seal their records as well. See our International Pages for a history of Bastard Nation's involvement the Hague Convention. Bastard Nation's political adviser, Albert Wei, worked in close collaboration with Fred Greenman, the American Adoption Congress's legislative counsel and now a Bastard Nation member, and Maureen Hogan of AdoptAmerica Advocates throughout the drafting and lobbying process. To read the bill go to thomas.loc.gov and search for HR2909. On May 15th, Alabama, which in 1991 was the last state in the U.S. to deny adoptees access to their own records, became the first to open them unconditionally by legislative action.