All I wanted for Christmas was my civil rights back. (That didn’t happen.)

California’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 multibillion-dollar adoption industry perpetrates the myth that mothers who relinquished their children were promised anonymity. This is a lie. 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.

California, 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-or not-between adults are personal choices, and should not be legal issues.

Amended birth certificates (issued to all adoptees) are falsified “legal” documents listing the adoptive parents as the biological parents. This is discrimination against people, who as children, were adopted without their consent and without legal representation.

I cannot trace my lineage, thanks to the State of California. I don’t even know my ethnicity, thanks to the State of California. I pay my taxes, yet I am treated like a second-class citizen in the State of California.-Mara Rigge

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