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Floofy Mac's avatar

Every time this issue is brought up, I feel compelled to point out that -- along with millions of other adopted adults -- I am forced to live with a legally-sanctioned false birth certificate. When I was adopted, the legal record of my birth was altered to show that the adopters were actually my BIRTH parents. This happens to every adopted person and, in many cases, the original unaltered document is sealed away and the people most affected -- the adoptees -- are never allowed to see it again.

So, yes, birth certificates should NEVER be altered, except for clerical errors, but they routinely are. You're not alone in this.

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Mercy's avatar

Wow, excellent point and thank you for bringing this to our attention!

“One may exercise personal agency to request that others call one by a different name and opposite-sex language and to dress and style oneself as the opposite sex. And one may legally change one’s name for marriage, divorce, and other reasons, and these name changes may occur on driver’s licenses and other forms of identification. It is quite a different matter to demand the erasure of facts on the historical record of a birth certificate.”

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