Adoptees Are Human Beings, Not Talking Points for the Abortion Debate.

Since receiving confirmation of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade- Tweets, memes and TikTok videos challenging anti choicers to “adopt all the unwanted babies” are going more viral than ever.

Many have gone so far as to jokingly suggest that Amy Coney Barrett herself be the one to assume the responsibility.

As an adoptee—despite being fiercely pro choice myself—those jokes never sat right, especially when cracked in my presence. But, I always uncomfortably laughed along, unable to pinpoint why. Since, I’ve come to understand—and hope to explain—it’s because those jokes are actually made at the direct expense of my community. 

What’s going on?

Adoption is perceived by most as a singular act. But, for adoptees, adoption is not a singular event at all. The process of adoption is a legal act made on our behalf—a forever binding contract we enter into, despite our inability to consent—that determines the full trajectory of our lives, and profoundly affects us in ways most non adopted people would be shocked to realize.

“It’s as if the child appeared out of thin air rather than having been born at all. ”

The process of adoption is a legal erasure of the events that led up to it. When an adoption occurs, the child’s birth certificate and any identifying information regarding their biological families are sealed, including accurate and updated family medical history. The child is issued an “amended” birth certificate with adopting parents’ names in place of their birth givers’. The adoptee’s access to those original documents is restricted or denied, depending on the state where the adoption occurred. 

The truthful identities of adoptees become state secrets to which they often have no legal access, stripping them of a fundamental right that non adopted US citizens have and are free to take for granted. 

On paper, it’s officially stated that the child was born to their adoptive parents. In theory—given that is an emphatic lie—it’s as if the child appeared out of thin air rather than having been born at all. 

In certain states it’s not automatic, but an option left up to the adopting parents. Adoption facilitators encourage adopting parents to do so, to ensure them the peace of mind that the child is really “theirs.” That’s an obscene amount of power; to give biological strangers the legal right to set the process of altering a child’s identity in motion before that child is even in their care

Now, think about the people who support uterus owners losing their right to bodily autonomy with that much power over the very children they believed should be forcibly born. If that thought doesn’t chill your bones, it should.

Harm.

We know it’s unethical to create more children who will need to be adopted.Though, I’d argue that promoting the idea that those kids be pawned off on forced birth zealots is just as unethical. They are the problem. To even jokingly suggest they are also the solution—that they are qualified to raise the offspring of the very uterus owners that their fundamental beliefs dehumanize—is flawed, sinister logic that harms adoptees of all ages. Furthermore, we deserve better than to be reduced to talking points and weaponized by both sides of the abortion argument. 

So, how did this trend amongst the pro choice crowd start, and why does it continue? 

From what I’ve observed, the pro choice folks suggesting that anti choicers adopt assume that they don’t or won’t. Whenever the idea is posed, it’s almost always framed as a means of shutting them down or showing them up. A sort of, “put your money where your mouth is,” moment if you will.

“The effects of this attachment disruption can last a lifetime and the risk of addiction, suicide and other mental health disasters drastically increase in the adopted population.”

But, not only do savior complex driven fundamentalists adopt in massive numbers—notoriously for the purpose of recruiting as many children as possible into their God-serving army, the most behemoth private adoption agencies in the US are religious based. Having their identities erased and altered in order to be more effectively assimilated into purity culture is a reality for hundreds of thousands of adoptees. 

Much of society is resistant to accept the fact that separating a child from their gestational parent at any age, including infancy—is intensely traumatic from the perspective of the child. The effects of this attachment disruption can last a lifetime and the risk of addiction, suicide and other mental health disasters drastically increase in the adopted population. Those risks further increase for adoptees whose identities intersect with other marginalized groups like being adopted internationally, transracially, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, disabled, etc.

Pro life zealots who adopt are the most unwilling to accept this, as they have deluded themselves into believing that God called them to “save” these children from the “sinful” life they would have had. It’s even common for church congregations to crowdsource funds to adopt, despite the most overwhelmingly common reason parents relinquish their children is out of financial insecurity and not a lack of love or desire to parent them. Fundraising to separate babies from their struggling parents rather than using those funds to keep families together is far from the good Christian flex they insist it is. 

Mothers.

My upbringing was nowhere near as rough or religiously extreme as other adoptees’ stories I’ve heard—many of whom report being dragged to reproductive healthcare clinic protests and utilized as sign holding props. But my adoptive mother was a member of the same misogynistic society that stigmatizes young, unwed birth mothers while simultaneously mistaking the desire of infertile married couples to become parents for a guarantee that their parenting will be flawless once they do. The same society who made my mother feel unworthy of parenting me and that only valued her for her “sacrifice.” The same society that saw me—a human child—as a “gift” to be freely given to my “more deserving” adoptive parents, and routinely reminded me how “lucky” I was that they were willing to take me in. 

I was not given the forum to grieve or even ask questions about my biological family. I developed PTSD from the initial separation from my biological mother, which went untreated and unacknowledged. Compliments of the fairy tale narrative encouraged an avoidant parenting approach, my inherent trauma and the special needs I needed met because of it were perceived not to exist. 

My adoptive mother died not long after my seventeenth birthday. In all those years she was my mother, we never had even a moment of authentic connection. Our relationship was founded on the lie that I was not born, but had appeared out of thin air to be her infant savior. There was no trust, safety or bonding because living in a fantasy doesn’t permit those things.

She wasn’t a bad person. I think all that I actually know about her is that she was desperate enough for a child not to be capable of thinking critically about her actions, and that when I did not extinguish her desire to have her own child, the reality of it was too painful for her to face. 

That said, I don’t quite know how to explain the pain of being raised by someone who only saw my lifegiver as a vessel to provide her with a baby, nor the anger of having my family and identity ripped away only to be constantly reminded that I was a failure of a void filler. And then abandoned again before we even had a chance to fix us. The longing for a chance to be loved by a mother the way every child deserves. 

Where now?

My story is full of melancholy, but I can look back and hold onto the hope that me and my mother may have been able to resolve things if she were here today, and know that in her own way, she cared for me.

The children that end up adopted into true extremist families don’t have that. All they know is being exploited, abused and commodified. And that is nothing to joke about or encourage.

“Right now, we’re in a crisis.”

Myself and thousands of adoptees advocate for system reform and do our best to educate others about adoptee struggles across all social media platforms. Whenever we see non adoptees suggest that anti choicers should be required to adopt children, we show up in the comment sections in large numbers to inform them that we want no part in it. Occasionally, our message is acknowledged and noted but their videos remain up collecting likes at the expense of our dignity. Most often, we are ignored or met with forceful invalidation. 

I’ve come to see that most people only acknowledge adoptees when infantilizing us by only equating our existences with Hallmark movie oriented adoption stories. Because of this, I don’t think that adult adoptees showing up with feelings and input of our own even registers in the minds of most people. 

My community of adoptees and birth parents have experienced so much loss that, on a scale of one to ten, our levels of emotional pain rarely dip below an eight. Right now, we’re in a crisis. We’re watching in horror as our own personal nightmares become the inevitable realities of so many, and not enough people are listening to our concerns about just how bad it’s going to get. 

Forced birthers will never stop dehumanizing and using adoptees as poster children to push their agenda. My request is that my fellow pro choicers don’t turn around and retort by doing the same thing. When engaging with forced birthers in debate, simply tell them that adoption is not a solution to abortion. And please, tell them to listen to adoptee voices.