New York State Senators Please VOTE NO on S4845-B

I am a New York State Adoptee living in Town of Tonawanda near Buffalo

Assembly District 140

Senate District 60



Tuesday June 20, 2017

Subject: VOTE NO on S4845-B


Dear New York State Senators:

After today’s New York State Assembly passing A5036-B with a vote of 120 Yes and 27 no, I urge you to listen to your adopted constituents. The Assembly certainly did not hear us.

Senate Bill S4845-B must NOT be passed into law. It is not about restoring adoptee civil rights to have access to our sealed birth certificate; this bill caters to the whims of a few scared mothers who inflict their pain onto adoptees who will pay the price of their ignorance. If passed into law, this will further erode the civil rights of New York State’s adopted citizens. No other group of people must ask parental permission and be subjected to a judge’s final say to do anything in life.

Signed relinquishment removes ALL parental rights. Why would you vote to give some parental rights back to parents of adopted adults? Children become autonomous adults at the age of majority.

Signed relinquishment does not remove parents’ names from their child’s birth certificate. After relinquishment, the child is in the custody of the adoption agency, the state, or foster parents, or prospective adoptive parents. If the child is never adopted and ages out of foster care, that child maintains the birth certificate for life – without the relinquishing parents’ consent or power to redact their names from the birth certificate.

A child’s name and parents’ names are only removed from the official birth record upon the final order of adoption, not relinquishment. It is at the finalization of adoption that the judge orders the name and birth certificate to be sealed and a new one issued to replace it.

If you didn’t know that, you should. You are our law makers and you should know that the mothers you might be trying to protect actually have no right to even ask if their child has actually been adopted and they have no right to seek out the adoptee during the first 18 years of the relinquished child’s life. The judge tells relinquishing mothers and fathers to stay away from the adoptee and the adoptive parents. That is why the records were sealed – to prevent the natural parents from interfering with the new family.

Yes, I know there is open adoption. But even in open adoption the records are sealed. That makes no sense.



In today’s society, we know that not all adoptees were born bastards, and those who were, do not deserve the stigma. Many of us were removed from married parents and then adopted. Many of us were adopted by their step parents. Some adoptees were adopted by their grandparents, or aunts and uncles, or older siblings. In these in-family adoptions, the birth records are still revoked and sealed and new birth certificates are created according to the order of adoption.

Orphans are also adopted. That means we, too, were born of married parents and then adopted.

But the New York State law that was passed in 1935 was meant to hide illegitimacy. What purpose does revoking and sealing the medical record of live birth and replacing it with a fictitious birth certificate do to legitimately-born children?

Why should adoptees, regardless of the circumstances of birth and adoption, be subjected to punitive laws that rob us of our natural born identities? These standards do not apply to non-adopted people. Altering facts presented on any other birth certificate would be perjury. But in adoption, it is acceptable. And expected.

This isn’t about natural parents who want to hide. This is about the civil rights of all adopted people to the truth of our births.

We ceased being under the control of our adoptive parents when we reached the age of majority. Now New York State’s badly-amended bill will force us to ask parental permission and be subjected to a judge’s decision over whether or not we can have our birth certificate? And the bill will give redaction power to the natural parents if they do not want to be known?

What other parent has the right to remove their name from their child’s birth certificate? None.


Once you see the evidence I present, I hope you will change your mind to VOTE NO on S04845B.


Doris Michol Sippel

Born January 7, 1956.

Adopted as Joan Mary Wheeler on January 14, 1957.

Legally reclaimed name of birth on June 13, 2017.