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Truth, Not Lies
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Truth, Not Lies
The Need for Honest Birth Certificates
Sale price
£16.46
Regular price
£21.95
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Identifiscation: the process of government-sanctioned
confiscation and obfuscation, or erasure, of all or part
of one’s natural identity without the person’s informed consent
Most people assume that birth certificates are straightforward documents outlining the truth about a person’s origins and birth. What Penny Zagarelou-Mackieson deftly reveals is the minefield of issues around birth certificates, with political interests usurping truth.
Everyone agrees that a birth certificate is an important legal document of universal concern as it is a person’s primary means of identification throughout their entire life, with intergenerational significance for the identities of their children.
But for those who are adopted, donor-conceived, or born of surrogacy, birth certificates are not statements of truth but a means of deception, designed to keep secrets and hide a child’s origins: identifiscation.
Penny outlines the history of birth certificates since their introduction in 1838 and shows how truth has often played second fiddle to invested interests. In recent times, this has only increased as in surrogacy arrangements, a new practice promoting secrecy is in place, denying the biological and genetic origins of a child, including the erasure of birth mothers.
Birth certificates are being falsified when governments recognise so-called ‘transition’ through self-ID and a change of gender identity. Rather than documents of truth, Penny shows that birth certificates are widely malleable, often denying a person knowing the truth about their natural family and even the identity of the mother who gave birth to them.
This book is a crucial read for people genuinely concerned about human rights and identity, and for those who believe we all have the right to know the truth, not lies, about ourselves.
Dr Penny Zagarelou-Mackieson is a Greek-Australian social worker, author, and founding partner of Neville Mackieson Consulting. Penny’s social work career spans all three levels of government in the state of Victoria, and includes many years working in the child and family services sector. More recently, Penny’s work has shifted to the community services/not-for-profit sector more broadly. Penny completed PhD research in 2019, which explored Permanent Care Orders (a widely used alternative to adoption) for children in the child protection and out-of-home care system. Penny worked with the Victorian Government’s intercountry adoption program for 12 years until the end of 2013 after which she served for five years as a Board Member and Chair of VANISH Inc., a community-based organisation which provides search and support services to people separated from their families through adoption. Penny was adopted as a newborn in 1963 in the context of the forced mother-child separation and forced adoption policies and practices prevalent across Australia from the 1950s through to the 1980s. In 2016, Penny took an Ancestry DNA test which inadvertently revealed that she had been misidentified in the hospital before being placed with her adoptive parents. The process of this discovery and how she dealt with the aftermath is the topic of Penny’s previous book, Greek, Actually (2023). Penny successfully sought de-adoption (that is, termination of her Adoption Order) and legal integration of her original Greek name in 2022. Penny lives with her husband of 37 years and their son in inner Melbourne.
- ISBN-13
- 9781922964465
- Publisher
- Spinifex Press
- Imprint
- Spinifex Press
- Publication date
- 4 August 2026
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 262
- Dimensions
- 229 x 152 mm
- Language
- English
