Mormon and fundamentalist women who feel they were pressured by their churches, progressives who believe adoption is a classist institution that takes the children of the young and poor and gives them to the wealthier and better-educated, and adoptive parents who have had traumatic experiences with corrupt adoption agencies.
September 7, 2013
Anti-adoption activists.
"This coalition makes bedfellows of people who would ordinarily have nothing to do with each other..."
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23 comments:
First, adoption is certainly not a perfect practice, but it is far better than murder.
Second, I have never worked with an open adoption child where that did not cause problems. Small sample size, and I just see kids who are having some struggles, but still, all the open adoptions I have experience with were problematic.
Trey
"progressives who believe adoption is a classist institution that takes the children of the young and poor and gives them to the wealthier and better-educated"
We should definitely nip them in the bud. For the unfortunate ones whose mothers were too poor and too stupid to make the right choice, we should leave them languish in foster care passing around like a football from one home to another until they are eighteen and can live on the street on their own.
Poor Steve Jobs. Wonder how much better his life would have been without those "wealthier and better educated" adoptive parents.
I was taken aback by the writer's glossing of "crisis pregnancy centers" as "anti-choice organizations." I can deal (just) with "pro-choice" and "anti-abortion" as names for the sides here. But "anti-choice" bespeaks the ideologue.
You get away from man-woman-child, it really does become a mess.
We haven't done any of the hard work resolving biological rights and duties of parents in the context of gay marriage. You always have one biological mom and one biological dad. Can they sign away their rights? Can they sign away their duties?
Can a man who donates his sperm sign away his paternity? Or is he on the hook?
Can an unwilling father renounce his paternity? Why not?
Autonomy advocates have jack shit to say about this. Abortion advocates are so busy litigating kill-rights for moms that they are flustered when confronted with men who don't want to be dads. Feminists resort to name-calling and shaming tactics.
If we're giving women absolute control over human reproduction, then you can't hold men liable for fatherhood.
If contract is our guide, then men have to agree to be fathers.
If biology is our guide, and we want to hold men responsible for fatherhood, then we should also hold women responsible for motherhood.
Double standards are dangerous, particularly double standards that are put in place by unelected judges.
reproductive justice? seriously? i just don't have the words.
MDT,
The whole "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life" thing has been happening for a while and it is simply basic politics.
The pro-abortion people (see what I did there) saw the success in the use of the term "partial-birth abortion" by pro-lifers and the effect it had on people's view of the subject. They wish to copy this success.
Simply put being pro-life sounds good but being anti-choice sounds bad.
I suppose the alternative is for pro-lifers to start using the term "anti-life" to describe the abortion supporters (this would also allow them to use pictures of Darkseid).
Screw the kids! It's all about the moms. Always.
Nina Easton, a writer for Forbes wrote an op-ed Mother's day piece to ask people to quit saying that adoption is abandonment. I believe Nina has biological as well as adoptive children.
It made me think because we really support abortion in this country, and now SHAME women who decide to carry a baby to term and give it up for adoption in hopes of a better life for the baby.
I put myself in the shoes of that girl, and I thought, yeah, no one I told would see me as a hero for giving my baby up for adoption, they would shame me and say, "how could you do that?" Killing it in utero? No problem.
Such a strange world we live in.
"progressives who believe adoption is a classist institution that takes the children of the young and poor and gives them to the wealthier and better-educated"
Why would anyone right in the head actually think this is a problem? I'm the result of this and can definitely tell you that I have a far better life because of it.
I generally support adoption as it now stands. The only real problem I see is that records should not be sealed against grown adopted children. Knowing your family history is often psychologically important. At times knowing ones family medical history is important. Also knowing the family prevents accidental sibling marriages.
After living a screwed up life because of screwed up and dysfunctional adoptive parents - I finally told my adoptive mother that I wish my birth mother had aborted me instead.
Second, I have never worked with an open adoption child where that did not cause problems. Small sample size, and I just see kids who are having some struggles, but still, all the open adoptions I have experience with were problematic.
*WOW* just *WOW! Kids are the problem because "adults" are such perfect caregivers!
Me and my sister were adopted because my adoptive mother was whoring around before marriage and was therefore sterile from STD's and had to have her reproductive organs removed in her early 30's.
My adoptive father never accepted me as his son, beat me, and did not engage with me after sixth grade.
I've been told I'm no good for all my life, and we were only trotted out for family pictures and to present the resemblance of a wholesome Cleaver family image - then the behind the scenes BS kept on!
YES! YES! It's all screwed up! It is time to limit and license breeding - and perform forced abortions otherwise!
Adopted - and hate it!
Keep abortion safe, legal, and forced where a breeding license has not been obtained!
I read that article a few days ago. Silly. They had to find a woman who gave birth in the 80's and someone who decided to give up four (4!) kids and then sometime after that decided she was coerced into doing it.
Seriously, we aren't dealing with children. What a paternal and sexist way to treat women: "Can't give up a baby, because you might not really mean it you silly little girl."
I am sort of apposed to abortion, but I think that most of the people who get abortions should get them and should not reproduce. The adopted kids in my family have turned out to be crazy assholes just like their biological parents. Eugenics makes a lot more sense to me now.
I suppose the alternative is for pro-lifers to start using the term "anti-life" to describe the abortion supporters (this would also allow them to use pictures of Darkseid).
That gave me the giggles. Here is Darkseid, in all his anti-life glory.
I have known many adopted kids and they are all wonderful, normal people. I've also known people who have had horrible childhoods because of their irresponsible and selfish parents. But we've got a chance to change because we're here, living.
Your story may not have such a happy beginning
"progressives who believe adoption is a classist institution that takes the children of the young and poor and gives them to the wealthier and better-educated"
These progressives need to grapple with Justice Harry Blackmun, who saw the poor as a cancer on our society.
To be sure, welfare funds are limited, and welfare must be spread perhaps as best meets the community's concept of its needs. But the cost of a nontherapeutic abortion is far less than the cost of maternity care and delivery, and holds no comparison whatsoever with the welfare costs that will burden the State for the new indigents and their support in the long, long years ahead.
Yes, he is doing a cost/benefits analysis on babies. Abortion cheap! Baby expensive!
And poor babies are defined as useless and worthless. Future welfare recipients. Remove them and we improve our society.
But the Supreme Court refuses to find an unenumerated right to free abortions paid for by the state. And Harry Blackmun warns us all about what will happen.
And so the cancer of poverty will continue to grow.
He is singling out poor people and arguing the Supreme Court needs to eliminate them. Let's give the poor taxpayer dollars so they will abort their own children.
Harry Blackmun is the meanest liberal in the universe. He wants to give welfare to the poor. But is it free food? No. Free shelter? No. He's Santa Claus, but the only gift in his bag is a free abortion.
Not to be outdone, Justice Ginsburg calls the handicapped "anomalies" and justifies late-term abortion so that we can remove the handicapped from our society. Footnote 3. She infamously referenced eugenics in an interview with the New York Times.
Here is Emily Bazelon attempting to explain why she didn't pounce on the gaffe. (Michael Kinsley once defined a gaffe as a politician saying what she actually thinks).
What's amazing is that Ginsburg still seems oblivious to the evil in her comment. She expounds on what she said, but does nothing to contradict the charge that she is a eugenicist.
At the time, there was a concern about too many people inhabiting our planet. There was an organization called Zero Population Growth. In the press, there were articles about the danger of crowding our planet. So there was at the time of Roe v. Wade considerable concern about overpopulation.
Why does this discussion immediately turn to abortion? Don't members of the "adoption triad" deserve enough respect to have the discussion remain about them?
Modern Western adoption is a whacked out system. What other culture comes up with the idea of giving its children to perfect strangers, just because those strangers were vetted by the state? Can we not come up with a way to help young women raise their own children, to encourage families to step in and help their daughters as mothers? And by "we" I mean society, not the state. Mothers and children deserve better.
Adoption is about loss - painful, wrenching loss. Birth mothers and children are marked by it forever, and it's time that was made known. Bravo to adoption activists for standing up and saying that out loud.
Tari, some people may not want to abort, but also do not want to raise a child. When friends were trying to adopt only to have the mothers change their mind after the birth, they focused only on older mothers who didn't want more children, who understood their limitations for more, but didn't want to abort.
Richard, I feel very sorry for you, but what makes you think your bio family would have been much better?
I have friends who were adopted and raised by wonderful people. Included in there are people who adopted handicapped (physical and downs syndrome) because they said, "if we had our own kids, who is to say they might not have a disability." They are adored. Lucky kids.
Catherine,
If someone truly wants to hand their child off to strangers, and isn't pressured by family and society to do so, then so be it - that 1 in a million woman is welcome to the experience. But a very large number of women who gave up their children were pressured into doing so and felt that they had no other choice. That's shameful, and as long as it still goes on somewhere, it's great that people stand up and say so.
Saying that a woman can be a mother because she can give birth is like saying I can be a musician because I can own a guitar.
Tari,
While I think you do have a point, I don't think the authors of the article agree with your point.
"They want, among other things, a ban on adoption agencies offering monetary support to pregnant women." Sure... let's make life harder for a poor woman who is considering adoption. We don't want to ban WIC welfare that would help after the child was born, and they certainly won't ban abortion assistance money that various groups will provide, but God forbid a pregnant woman receive financial assistance if she's making a choice *I* don't approve of.
"They want to see laws put in place guaranteeing that “open” adoptions (where birthparents have some level of contact with their children) stay open." This I have some sympathy for, but frankly this should fall cleanly under current contract law.
"They want women to have more time after birth to decide whether to terminate their parental rights." This is pretty much determined by the individual agencies and the mother. But what form would this take? "Termination of parental rights is not binding for a child under 1 month"? Yes... let's make infant adoption more complicated, keeping infants in limbo as long as we can get away with, it's not like the woman hasn't had a few months to think about this.
The underlying theme that most of us have picked up on... is why do these groups (or perhaps just this author) hate children so much? In addition, the infantilization of the women in this article would probably be more offensive if it weren't so blatant.
I think I might have found this discussion before, but didn't bother commenting due to feeling that my opinion would be most unwelcome, but whatever.
@Birches; you read it wrong. I only relinquished ONE child, I have four children total. And yes, it was the 1987, but they found ME to talk to because I am one of the few completely public birth mother activists. Oh and I have one of the most widely read adoption websites around.I think people like to use the word expert or something?
And for a realistic "what us horrible anti-adoption folks want".. more reading: http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2013/11/you-can-call-me-anti-adoption-if-you-must/
Cheers,
Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy
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