Bastard Nation is a North American adoptee rights organization. It seeks to establish the right of adoptees to access their own original birth certificates, the sealed records typical of a closed adoption, a common type of adoption in the United States. The group has been successful in getting several states in the United States to approve legislation to open sealed records, for example in Oregon by Ballot Measure 58, described in the book Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation & Ballot Initiative 58 by E. Wayne Carp (2004). They have members throughout the United States, Canada and the world. The name is a reference to the fact that most adopted children were born illegitimate, hence are literally bastards. The term bastard is employed both for shock value, and in an effort to reclaim the term for common usage (as was done by the organization Queer Nation with the word queer).
