There is a time-sensitive, urgent call to action going out from both the Adoptee Rights Law Center and the New York State Adoptee Equality (Facebook page) organization. They need constituents to contact Governor Cuomo’s office and ask him to Veto A5036B. This bill “discriminates against adult adoptees and continues to punish them by keeping their birth certificates a secret.”

Specific instructions on how to contact the Governor, including sample scripts, can be found at This Is Personal: Veto A5036B. When you are there, you can choose the social media platform which you prefer and the links will automatically populate with a message that you can personalize and edit to suit your story.

Add your own personal connection to adoption and edit the message before posting it, but make sure you include Governor Cuomo and the hashtag #VetoA5036B. It does not matter where you live or what you do. What matters is your own connection to adoption, whether you are an adoptee, mother, father, spouse, sibling, grandparent, aunt, uncle, descendant, or friend.

One of the members in our online community stated very eloquently just why access to original birth certificates is so crucial to the millions of adult adoptees who are in this fight:

I am missing 15 months of my life. I have no idea who fed me my first solid foods, saw me crawl, learn to walk, was my first birthday celebrated at all? No idea. I’m in NY and I have tried and been told I have no right to not only my birth certificate but I have no right to any foster care records. All I have gotten is a one page fill in the blanks page about my birthparents. Height, weight, hair color, religion, occupation, circumstances of adoption (2 sentences) and even some of those are left blank on the form and my first mom can’t fill in the blanks because she was told I’d be adopted right away. No one will tell me where I was or who I was with. I was told it is sealed and I don’t have the right to access it… yet, it is my story, my life. Please please everyone, support adoptees rights to their own history, to their story. For many, they need this to feel whole and complete.

Where ever you post on social media, please use the hashtag #VetoA5036B for a cohesive message. For the full story, go to This is Personal: Veto A5036B and read more.