Category Archives: Rudy Owens Memoir

Phantom kinship exists for nearly all adoptees

Rudy Owens’ phantom kin: two of his biological cousins and one of his paternal biological grandfathers, on his biological father’s side (date of photo unknown, 1970s)

For no reason other than my curious mind, I went down the rabbit hole of phantom biological kinship today—May 18,2025.

I call it “phantom kinship” because most U.S. born—and nearly all intercountry— adoptees’ biological relations are outlawed. This legal denial of biological kin connections ensures this broken system continues and that it will never have a moral and legal reckoning, like what has happened, partially, in the United Kingdom and Australia.

As I explained in my book on my own story, illustrating the larger post-World War II adoption system, I have kin I barely know.

Two of my kin are half-siblings, on my biological father’s side of my biological family. I met one of them in fall 2014, which is the subject of the first chapter of my book.

I have not met my second half-sister, the younger of the pair. I would still like to meet her, as she is one of my closest biological relatives. I am not sure I will, based on how the oldest of two of them reacted to meeting me.

Naturally I think of my siblings, regardless of how I’m viewed by my paternal side of the family as a bastard—in its fullest sociological sense of being an agent of chaos, a form of contagion and harm.

On this day I randomly did some online sleuthing and quickly found where my still-unknown and youngest half-sister lives.

For people who are not adoptees, you will never understand this, and I will not try to explain it to you. Severed kinship is like a ghost limb—it exists, and yet it doesn’t exist. You think of it, and yet you will never know its meaning so long as the relationship is hidden or never made.

My deceased kin who never met me

During my research today, I also found other kin I had never met. They include two of my biological cousins on the paternal sides of my family.

They are the son and daughter of one of my deceased biological father’s also-deceased older sisters. I’m nearly 100 percent certain these “phantom cousins” never knew I existed. However, this older sister of my biological father knew about me.  The siblings, my “phantom cousins,” have died. They both had chronic diseases and passed away before the death of their mother (my aunt) in 2013.

One of the photos I found, of my now deceased “phantom cousins,” includes my biological grandfather. He too never knew I was born. I can’t confirm that, but from what I know, my secretive existence was mostly hidden from him too.

The first photo shared, at the top, is very old, of these brother and sister “phantom cousins,” with my biological grandfather. It probably was taken in the early or mid-1970s.

I never met this biological aunt, thought I met another biological aunt, a sister to her and my biological father.  That too is described in my book. And she is dead now too.

These sisters knew about me from family stories told about me. Most of these stories were lies, which solidified my “bastard” status after I met my bio-dad. It is a messy story, and I am not sharing the details to entertain or titillate readers who want cheap thrills from dark secrets about adoptees, just for selfish and puerile pleasure.

I mostly never show my severed-kin photos. As I continue to age, I am changing my tradition about sharing family photos of biological kin. The ones I shared here are long dead. My goal now is to educate the few who stumble upon them.

Rudy Owens’ biological grandfather (photo date, unknown), the father of Owens’ biological father, and the author, Rudy Owens, with photo of him from September 2024

I know how these two “phantom cousins” died. Their natural deaths would be red flags to anyone who by legal right knows their family health history.

I also wanted to share a photo of me, taken in 2024, in Helsinki Finland, next to my paternal grandfather on my biological father’s side.

I described what I could learn and wanted to share in my book too about him.

He was a small-town veterinarian, who raised his family in a Midwest state, not too far from where I grew up as well. His last child, my biological father, also grew up in that small town before he went to college and then a graduate dental program to become a dentist.

In 2007 I even visited inside of their old home, where he raised his family.  It’s in a small city, and the genealogists who were my tour guides that day knew a lot of stories about him and the secrets that only small towns can nurture, unspoken but widely shared in whispers. No one in my father’s biological family, that I am aware of, know I ever visited the town where this family lived for decades.

It’s my past too, but just as phantom kin, never fully known or recognized by my severed biological family.

Revealing more dishonesty after the second court-ordered release of my original birth record by Michigan’s health department

I published this video explaining how I Iearned that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services violated a court order by sending me an adulterated birth record copy in 2016, not the actual original version–an intentional act of deception. Click on image to see the video.

This weekend, I closely compared the July 2016 and November 2024 versions of my original birth certificate sent to me from the state of Michigan, each after protracted and time-consuming court processes that should never have occurred.

The “same records,” which should have been identical, were not. It turns out I was sent an incomplete original birth record in July 2016, and I can document that now with these official documents.

Background:

My delays in getting copies of original birth certificate happened only because I was surrendered at birth as an adoptee, denied basic legal and human rights in Michigan and as a citizen of the United States.

I’ve known my birth mother and my birth families since 1989, and my birth mother signed a consent form to release all of my vital records and sent that to what is called the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) in April 1989. The state health department and its vital records staff in 1989 released some records on file, but not my original birth certificate. Their documented practices of hiding my birth identity and birth information—and as I can now prove, again, deceiving me about that—continues to this day

My latest request for my original birth record was fulfilled 80 days after my rush order request for that record in August 2024. The delay and initial denial of my original birth record request had no statutory justification.

On October 4, 2024, MDHHS received a second court order issued on September 19, 2024, on top of the original court order sent in June 2016, and even then MDHHS refused to comply with the court order on October 7, 2024, with a denial letter.

(Note: Only one court order is ever needed for a Michigan-born adoptee to order one, two, or 10 birth certificates, as there is no law restricting the number that can be issued once a judge orders the health department and its staff to comply with the law with a single court order, if the court sides with the adoptee compelling the state to surrender the adoptee’s true record of birth.)

The court had to intervene personally, by its staff, to force MDHHS to release my original birth certificate, again. Those two copies finally arrived on November 4, 2024.

I am only providing a photo of part of the header section of my most recently released birth record copies to prevent bad actors from stealing identifying information.

Latest Two Birth Record Copies Had Many More Birth Facts:

This weekend, I paused and compared the two versions of my original birth record, as the last two months were too busy to focus on the records.

To my surprise, or should I say, not surprise, I saw that the most recent two original birth certificates I ordered and that arrived on November 4, 2024, had more data. The 2016 version left off critical information that the state was legally required to release to me almost nine years ago—by order of a state court.

The information was not innocuous, and the omission was not by accident.

The data were the most critical information aside from my birth and birth mother’s names—namely my health status and birth mother’s health status at the time I arrived in the world from my mother’s womb.

My 2016 original birth record copy, which I now confirmed is an incomplete record (in violation of a court order), did not contain these critical pieces of my birth that are placed on the birth records of all people in Michigan at the time I was born in the mid-1960s:

  • The length of my mother’s pregnancy.
  • My birth weight.
  • Information if my mother was checked for syphilis (this was likely a biased law against women).
  • Information about any complications with my mother’s pregnancy.
  • The types of surgical procedures, if any, during my mother’s delivery.
  • Any birth injury data to the infant.
  • Any congenital-related health issues to the infant.

Former State Registrar Glenn Copeland, who signed the first copy of my original birth record that was not a true and accurate copy, in violation of a court order.

In short, all of the pertinent birth and data about my health and my mom’s health at the time of my birth were intentionally omitted in the birth record copy signed by then-State Registrar Glenn Copeland as a “true and correct representation of birth facts,” and then sent to me. In short, the State Registrar in 2016, along with MDHHS, lied in signing an official vital record sent to me upon order of a Michigan court. And I have legal proof, with official state signatures, that what they sent was not in compliance with the court in 2016.

The second time I received my records, the health workers must have forgotten what they did not include the last time, because they apparently didn’t keep a record of the July 2016 birth certificate record they mailed to me. Otherwise, they would have adulterated two copies just sent to me this time, like they did in July 2016. (I say adulterated, because I can now compare two copies of the same “original” that are attested to by two separate State Registrars.)

(See my video describing MDDHS’s official act violating a Michigan court order.) 

A System Built on Lies and Deception Continues its Worst Ways

I am never surprised by the dishonesty and sheer audacity of public health systems and its officers at the highest level to cheat, lie to, and deceive adoptees when it comes to the most basic document all persons deserve, their original birth certificates. But as my case shows, our records are hidden and then adulterated by the public health staff ordered by a court to comply with state law.

I expect lies and dishonesty at every turn from anyone involved in the U.S. adoption system, based on the weight of carefully researched and published evidence and reporting to date, and my own decades of being lied to and deceived.

Yet, this latest example is still hurtful beyond measure.

The health and public health “professionals” who perpetrate this harm, repeatedly, do this on purpose.

They know what they do, and they do it with impunity. 

Sadly, I have yet to see any reports or coverage of any official accountability for this ongoing malfeasance. Sadly, media, lawmakers, policymakers, or oversight bodies like state auditors (I have contacted that office in Michigan) do not care about the harm, lies, and illegal activities like violating court orders issued in that state.

As for adoptees, we’re on our own, and we continue to have no friends but the mountains.

(Author’s note: I updated this essay on January 11, 2025, with a link and image to my new video explaining the intentional deception by MDHHS when it sent me an incomplete original birth record in July 2016, violating a court order that I receive a true, original, and complete copy of what has always been mine as a basic human right, despite state laws still denying me access to my original identity vital record.)

Countless adoptees could have slowly ticking health issues and are intentionally robbed of life-saving information

The Finnish population, thanks to genetic health research, has had specific health problems identified with genetic markers, helping the country plan population measures to help all residents of Finnish heritage.

One year ago yesterday, my bio-uncle, twin brother of my bio-mom, died of heart conditions. It was not a surprise, and his mortality outcome at the end of December 2023 was entirely predictable because he was half ethnically Finnish.

Such health risks that my bio-uncle had are very well-documented among Finns at the population level and among tens and tens of thousands of Finnish-Americans because of genetic risk factors. My deceased birth mother’s slightly younger cousin, who is 100 percent Finnish, lost her father to a heart attack while he was in his 40s, and he was also 100 percent Finnish from another Finnish family line. She also just had a heart procedure for her problem heart. That is the genetic health landscape for many Finnish Americans.

Though I remain mostly healthy at my age, I still carry those risks in my genes because I’m one-quarter Finnish. My Finnish kin in Finland have shared with me there are heart issues in our genetic line we share.

Knowing such information is considered a best tool to promote individual and public health, yet U.S. public health and health professionals still refuse to help end adoption secrecy or support any adoptee rights group in state policy debates to reform harmful laws denying family health history to adoptees. These barriers deny this potentially life-saving information from literally millions of people only because of their status as adoptees in the United States.

U.S. public health and its many professionals do not care about adoptees’ wellbeing  

On January 13, 2024, and shortly after my uncle’s death just before the end of 2023, I published an essay, “Adoptee rights is also a moral issue to ensure equal rights to good health, yet public health and health professionals ignore this intentionally,” about this issue and how public health and nearly all disease-focused health groups and medical professionals do nothing to help address issues for adoptees whose medical health history remains hidden from them by discriminatory state laws.

I wrote: “These groups and experts have never cared, based on facts showing no documented efforts to support adoptees, even in public relations messaging. There is no public evidence visible anywhere they will reverse course and advocate to change laws helping adoptees. Their failure is palpable.

“Collectively, this represents a complete moral and collective professional failure of these systems to improve the health of individuals and population health. Because those harmed are adoptees, this failure remains an acceptable form of collateral damage to ensure the U.S. adoption system remains a broadly accepted and beloved institution, that continues to be supported by the medical and public health professionals at all levels.”

I did a search of the American Public Health Association website on December 29, 2024 to see if it had information published about “adoptees,” and my search yielded no information.

I even wrote to the American Public Health Associations publication, in January 2024, with a letter to the editor of its flagship publication, “The Nation’s Health,” to raise this issue. I was greeted with silence after repeated follow ups for a response. After I flagged their silence on social media and wrote another essay on April 7, 2024, where I read my letter on a video, I suddenly received an email reply that amounted to a bureaucratic blow off.

In short, they found ways to ignore my letter and then blow off my submission with a hallow reply that normally one hears from indifferent and low-level bureaucrats. I decided to reply about the harm such indifference causes. I told the publication’s staffer:

“You intentionally chose the path where there was no leadership and absolutely no evidence of needed moral courage to help support overdue reform and end adoption secrecy laws.

 “It is fitting that this is all now encapsulated in the memory of the death of my birth kin and the people who don’t care what this means to ordinary people denied health and basic rights.

 “Congratulations for what you and your peers willingly choose to be by your chosen actions. Remember, it is always a choice. And in life, we are always remembered by our deeds, not the words.”

Nothing has changed as 2024 ends

The experiences associated with the meaning of my close biological relative’s genetically related and sad death once again come to mind as 2024 is about to end, and adoptees still do not count to public health and health professionals.

Not one thing has changed nationally since my bio-uncle died at the state level in 2024 to restore rights to adoptees, with the exception of laws passed a year earlier.

Adoptees are acceptable and—I argue—necessary collateral damage for this system that these professionals helped to grow, legitimize, and support for decades.

In short, the groups that claim to help individuals and the wider population, including all at-risk groups that adoptees clearly are, remain comfortable with their massive cognitive dissonance. Nothing has changed.

NOTE: For more history and background on denied family health history to millions of adoptees and the role of public health, medical, social work, and other professionals who created the modern American adoption system, including the legitimization of mass family separation by adoption by state public health agencies, you can order my book, “You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are,” published in 2018.

On Christmas Day 2024 I celebrate the moms and infants separated at my birthplace

A shot take of Crittenton General Hospital in 1965 shows future adoptees in the care of nurses. Note, the cut line information has some inaccuracies from the source (photo courtesy of Patricia Ibbotson’s Detroit’s Hospitals, Healers, and Helpers, and the collection from the Detroit Public Library).

It is Christmas Day, December 25, 2024. The day, as most of us know, celebrates the birth of Jesus, who Christians say is the “son of God.”

I’m listening to Christmas carols, celebrating the “messiah’s” birth in a manger. The words praise the holy mother and child.

For me, I cannot help but think of vulnerable mothers and their babies, who in the United States have experienced the “miracle” of a child’s birth far differently from the joyful moments I was raised to celebrate growing up as the adopted son of a failed minister and a very devout Christian mom, who eventually raised me as a single parent.

Those vulnerable young moms, unlike the “blessed virgin Mary,” were coerced for decades to surrender their newborn infants to the U.S. adoption system.

I’m just one small statistical blip among millions of us who lost our families shortly after birth to feed a system of family separation that needs to be massively reformed.

So, today, I honor those mothers and children, whose stories are hidden, from my birthplace, Detroit’s now long-demolished Crittenton General Hospital, one of the largest maternity hospitals ever in the United Stated that saw thousands of infants separated from their mothers shortly after birth.

For all of you, and your families, I wish you the spirit of the holidays. May you find grace and acceptance.

Know that your stories and your denied justice are remembered and will never be forgotten by those of us who know the true history of our births.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services ignores two court orders to release adoptee’s original birth record

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and its Vital Records office is illegally denying an adult adoptee (me) two extra copies of their original birth record after the agency received a court order on Oct. 4, 2024 to release two copies.

See my video that I published the day I received this denial by mail on October 15, 2024.

MDHHS has a long and very well-documented record of treating Michigan-born adoptees unprofessionally, and in my case, outside of the boundaries allowed by law. This fits a pattern I have experienced for years. I dealt with similar efforts to withhold my legal vital record in 2016.

MDHHS denial letter in violation of state law sent to Rudy Owens on October 7, 2024

The denial letter is signed by State Registrar Jeffrey Duncan. It is also dated October 7, 2024, three days after the agency received my latest court order from the Third Circuit Court of Detroit ordering this agency to release two copies of my original birth certificate that it was also compelled to release already by a separate court order order received by MDHHS in June 2016.

The second court order was not legally required by law–repeat, not required by law. The letter did not cite a statute because no such statute exists for this action. So as of October 4, 2024, it possesses two standing and lawful courts orders now to release two copies of my original birth record. It received all my required documents on August 16, 2024 (I have legal proof of that) and even cashed my check paying for my two records (I have that cashed check too, August 20, 2024).

A section of the latest court order requiring MDHHS to release two copies of Rudy Owens’ original birth certificate

They have my request, my money, extensive records proving my identify, my birth mother’s consent form to release my records from April 1989, and two court orders compelling them to obey the law.

Withholding my extra copies of my original birth record–I already have an original copy I obtained in July 2016–is an attempt to avoid their lawfully prescribed duties. This should be of concern to the media, the Michigan Attorney General, and thousands of adoptees already treated without any basic courtesy by MDHHS staff. I will be providing updates later.

I’ve alerted the media, adoptee rights organizations, and state lawmakers. Also, I have never forgotten who I am and always will be: the “Bastard from Detroit.”

One of the state’s most powerful state bureaucracies continues to act like I am deserving of being treated as a non-human, which historically is how bastards like me have been abused and harmed for centuries in the USA and in countless societies globally. Today’s harm is systemic denial of legal equality, and in Michigan and MDHHS’s case, failure to obey the law.

See my first video that I posted when I filed by request for two extra copies of my original birth certificate and my video made after I filed a request for a redundant court order that is not required by law for MDHHS to release my vital record it must do by law already. I posted this video the day I filed my request that was just illegally denied by MDHHS on October 7, 2024.