Your [Un]Original Birth Certificate

The Act that came with a single promise - an original birth certificate

The Adult Adoption Information Act – part 2 of 4.

To those in support and those vehemently against, the Adult Adoption Information Act represented the same thing: A crack in the edifice of secrecy that is the hallmark of closed stranger adoption.

It came with a single promise. Access to your original birth certificate.

And it appeared to run a red pen through an adopted person’s legally fictive birth certificate that declares their adopters as birth parents. No matter what the 1955 Adoption Act said (and still says), it became more difficult to pretend adopted people were as if born to strangers.

But it also came, (as I wrote here) with a whiff of dishonesty, causing adopted people to be further treated as a different class of persons who must be restricted beyond the law. This extends to the forms that must be completed when applying for a copy of a birth certificate.

For clarity, I assume a birth certificate records an actual birth, as opposed to an adoptive “birth” certificate which records a statutory process.

Non-adopted people order a copy of their birth certificate, while adopted people must request a copy of theirs:

The distinction matters because, despite the central promise of the Adult Adoption Information Act, adopted people do not have an inalienable right to their birth certificate.

When I ask the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) how many adopted people have been denied their birth certificate for any reason, the department refuses on the grounds of substantial collation or research.

Rescoping the request to include numbers and reasons for only the last five years, they responded that of 2401 requests, 84 were denied.

Unable to provide data on denials, they say they include:

“The customer” not nominating a counsellor (here for more on counsellors).

Completing the form incorrectly.

Thinking they were adopted but were not.

Or seeking someone else’s pre-adoptive birth certificate.

The right of a mother to veto her information was not included in the list, because an adopted person who meets all criteria will still receive their “original” birth certificate.

The DIA’s ‘Life and Identity Services’ (cue the irony) team leader said: “The adoptive person’s surname on their original birth certificate will be typed as ‘Veto lodged with the date veto lodged’.”

There are currently 136 active vetoes. The idea that a mother with her intact genealogy can deny that same information to the now-adult child she ostensibly chose not to parent is anathema to many adopted persons.

Returning to the form to request a copy of a birth certificate. The adopted person must provide the details of their adopters, described as “mother/father’s surname”.

There’s a requirement to provide counselling details including the counsellor’s contact details.

The crazymaking continues in the Name at birth section: “Note: this is not your name before you were adopted.”

You must be over twenty to make this request. But your identity must also be verified by a referee over sixteen, and that person must state they have seen government-issued photo identification.

In contrast, when ordering their birth certificate, the non-adopted self-identify. They only need to tick a box that says, “I was born in New Zealand.”

All non-adopted are trusted to declare that the information they provide about themselves is true and correct.

The DIA says non-adopted people are not denied their birth certificates because they are public records and can, therefore, be ordered by anyone, provided they can supply the minimum information required.

Meanwhile, adopted individuals must also complete an additional General Identity Declaration. This leads with the subheading “Warning”:

It is an offence punishable by imprisonment and/or a fine up to $10,000 for making a false statement to obtain a certificate, printout or source document or to provide any means of identification knowing that it is false or is suspected to be forged or falsified [my italics].

Naturally, they do not mean the falsified adoptive “birth” certificate.

But why mention a printout or source document at all?

A birth printout or source document holds all the information transferred to everyone’s birth certificate.

While the non-adopted pay $25 for their source document, the law requires an adopted person:

To be dead.

Their adopters, and natural parents must also be dead.

Or 120 years have passed since the adopted person’s birth.

Luckily, there is one more option: The District Court.

An adopted person must go to court and prove a special reason to access this primary record of birth. But there is no legal definition of what a special reason might be. It’s up to the judge on the day. We will explore special reasons in a future post.

Meanwhile, an array of staff at multiple government departments can access an adopted person’s records.

Even a marriage celebrant: For the purpose of investigating forbidden degrees of relationship.

Forbidden degrees or how or why a celebrant might suspect such a relationship is not mentioned in the celebrant training manual published by the DIA.

The birth certificate a celebrant requires as evidence of identity is the legally fictive one that does not reveal adoptive status. One celebrant said: “How would we know? All that would be way above our paygrade. We are cheaper than the wedding cake.”

Comparing the forms provokes that old sense of infantilisation, our identities so unstable we cannot be trusted to self-identify. That realisation that you are the subject of something classified or covert, as though every adopted person represents a state secret.

This single form reveals the state's disenfranchising power and the bureaucratic somersaults all adopted adults must perform to prove themselves legitimate citizens.

The idea that the Department of Internal Affairs believes adopted people require additional layers of regulation is unsupported by data or evidence. It is a kind of pre-crime restriction, as if criminality and human adoption go together.

Ultimately, after many false starts, I did go to court: His Honour Judge PJ Callinicos decided my reasons were special enough.

Among a folio of records was my birth printout (the image above)

That truly original source document:

It holds my original name and place of birth.

It has the name of the person who registered my birth: Elsie King, a teenage ‘nurse aid’ with a holiday job at Salvation Army.

Beneath the heading “Mother,” is my mother’s name and place of birth.

But under the heading “Father,” scrawled in ink pen, are the full details of my adopters, dated six months after my birth.

A wilfully falsified source document.

Australian journalist Tim Barless describes it as a cardinal document from which all other forms of identification are derived: “It is the only opportunity a state has to tell its citizens the truth.”

Unless the citizen is adopted.

Then we are forever caught between our ornamental and fictive identities.

While I live as though the person I might have been exists in real time, she is not objectively present. She was made anonymous and lost a few days after her birth, along with her mother, her father, her entire family, her culture, heritage, and her country. She ceased to exist.

While this person, this Barbara, was never born. She exists only on paper, a construct of the state. It is this fragmentation that defines so many of us.

Paid subscribers can request a fully footnoted version of this column.

Next: A Masterful Act of Gaslighting: the Adult Adoption Information Act - part 3/4.

Coming up: As If The Child Came From My Own Body …what the adopters said - part 4/4 on the Adult Adoption Information Act.