From a friend. She's Ecuadorian and moved to the US in high school. (Before some of you ask or insinuate things, she is a US citizen). Her husband is American and white. Her children are adopted and Black.
Her thoughts:
Yesterday social media was chaotic and explosive. I read posts, responded to some, and processed.
Two take aways for me from what I saw yesterday:
One, faith has no bearing on where people stand on this. Neither celebration nor lament were monopoly of Christians, no matter what people want to believe.
Two, there are many people who want to tell themselves that “no more babies killed!” is all there is to this decision so they can sleep at night.
But the truth is that this decision is not black and white, cut and dry, done and over. And if you don’t understand all the anger and lament on social media yesterday, then you’re probably one of those people who thinks it is.
I don’t need to say much on this: enough was said yesterday for anyone who is responsible to educate themselves, no matter how uncomfortable, on the other consequences to this decision, beyond making abortion illegal.
How it will affect poor women of color disproportionately financially, emotionally, physically, and criminally; how it will further stress a foster system already in crisis; how it opens the door for other changes that can continue to further the gap between those who have and those who don’t, and how the worst affected will be many of the babies it sought to protect in the womb.
It’s so much more complicated than “no more babies killed.”
But there is one issue in this conversation that I feel I have to weigh on even if my opinion makes me very unpopular.
As an adoptive mother it enrages me to read people discussing adoption as the panacea or the “loving solution” for the situation. Saying things like “now we need to make adoption affordable” or stating that women can “always put their babies up for adoption” or making it sound as if adopting a child out of the system, while low in cost, is without its issues.
I have what would be considered a nearly “perfect” situation in the adoption world. My kids were adopted as infants, so they have always been with us. They were medically healthy. While they were transracially adopted, they live with a parent who is also a person of color and who can help guide them through the experience of being non-white in this country. Our family can afford to engage a therapist who is a specialist in adoption trauma. We have access to adoption education and have read extensively about adoption issues since before we met our children. We know to listen to adoptees. We have done the best we could “by the book” and, if you know my kids, you may describe them as happy children. And yet…adoption is ALWAYS addition by subtraction. And this subtraction brings with it pain. No matter how “perfect” it may seem.
I have held my “well-adjusted” daughter while she cried missing a birth mother she doesn’t remember. I have answered hard questions from my confused son about a birth father who is not in the picture and why. They have a wound that I cannot understand and cannot fix. And I count myself blessed that they trust Matt and me enough to make us a part of it and not hide it from us, because we listen and make space for their hurt.
Am I glad their birthmother didn’t choose abortion? Of course, I am. But she could have. And, without giving away her story, I can imagine she considered it.
Because adoption, the removal of children to foster care, and abortion are cousins born from the same family: poverty, hopelessness, lack of resources, lack of support, lack of access to healthcare, lack of access to basic structures like housing, lack of education, shame.
Is that true in every case? Of course not, but enough to make us pause. Adoption/foster care, and abortion overly affect women of color. The number of Black children in foster care is disproportionate compared to the general population. When we adopted our kids through a private agency, they told us there were 40 couples waiting for every white infant placed with them. And before you encourage those white couples to adopt them Black babies, please know that transracial adoption is complicated and hard and, the more I listen to the stories of adult transracial adoptees, the more I realize how few people do it well, particularly those who don’t understand race or racism. But that’s a conversation for another day. The bottom line is: don’t think love is enough. It’s not.
Both systems are bandages, not solutions, and we should be fighting to abolish both the need to adopt and the need to abort by going to the roots of the problem and creating policies that make both as unnecessary as possible, while realizing that, logically, we cannot eradicate either completely.
I love my children like any parent, but I would have been infinitely happy for them if their birthmother had had the support she needed to parent them instead of feeling the need to place them. I love them enough to realize it would have saved them so much pain and trauma and to want that for them.
Adoption is not the ideal situation even if it is necessary. Just like abortion. Please stop throwing it around carelessly. I am advocating in my space, but as an adoptive mother my experience is not the one we should be centering here. So if you are not an adoptee, and come to try to speak your knowledge of adoption, imma tell you to sit down and listen to those most affected here.
Her thoughts:
Yesterday social media was chaotic and explosive. I read posts, responded to some, and processed.
Two take aways for me from what I saw yesterday:
One, faith has no bearing on where people stand on this. Neither celebration nor lament were monopoly of Christians, no matter what people want to believe.
Two, there are many people who want to tell themselves that “no more babies killed!” is all there is to this decision so they can sleep at night.
But the truth is that this decision is not black and white, cut and dry, done and over. And if you don’t understand all the anger and lament on social media yesterday, then you’re probably one of those people who thinks it is.
I don’t need to say much on this: enough was said yesterday for anyone who is responsible to educate themselves, no matter how uncomfortable, on the other consequences to this decision, beyond making abortion illegal.
How it will affect poor women of color disproportionately financially, emotionally, physically, and criminally; how it will further stress a foster system already in crisis; how it opens the door for other changes that can continue to further the gap between those who have and those who don’t, and how the worst affected will be many of the babies it sought to protect in the womb.
It’s so much more complicated than “no more babies killed.”
But there is one issue in this conversation that I feel I have to weigh on even if my opinion makes me very unpopular.
As an adoptive mother it enrages me to read people discussing adoption as the panacea or the “loving solution” for the situation. Saying things like “now we need to make adoption affordable” or stating that women can “always put their babies up for adoption” or making it sound as if adopting a child out of the system, while low in cost, is without its issues.
I have what would be considered a nearly “perfect” situation in the adoption world. My kids were adopted as infants, so they have always been with us. They were medically healthy. While they were transracially adopted, they live with a parent who is also a person of color and who can help guide them through the experience of being non-white in this country. Our family can afford to engage a therapist who is a specialist in adoption trauma. We have access to adoption education and have read extensively about adoption issues since before we met our children. We know to listen to adoptees. We have done the best we could “by the book” and, if you know my kids, you may describe them as happy children. And yet…adoption is ALWAYS addition by subtraction. And this subtraction brings with it pain. No matter how “perfect” it may seem.
I have held my “well-adjusted” daughter while she cried missing a birth mother she doesn’t remember. I have answered hard questions from my confused son about a birth father who is not in the picture and why. They have a wound that I cannot understand and cannot fix. And I count myself blessed that they trust Matt and me enough to make us a part of it and not hide it from us, because we listen and make space for their hurt.
Am I glad their birthmother didn’t choose abortion? Of course, I am. But she could have. And, without giving away her story, I can imagine she considered it.
Because adoption, the removal of children to foster care, and abortion are cousins born from the same family: poverty, hopelessness, lack of resources, lack of support, lack of access to healthcare, lack of access to basic structures like housing, lack of education, shame.
Is that true in every case? Of course not, but enough to make us pause. Adoption/foster care, and abortion overly affect women of color. The number of Black children in foster care is disproportionate compared to the general population. When we adopted our kids through a private agency, they told us there were 40 couples waiting for every white infant placed with them. And before you encourage those white couples to adopt them Black babies, please know that transracial adoption is complicated and hard and, the more I listen to the stories of adult transracial adoptees, the more I realize how few people do it well, particularly those who don’t understand race or racism. But that’s a conversation for another day. The bottom line is: don’t think love is enough. It’s not.
Both systems are bandages, not solutions, and we should be fighting to abolish both the need to adopt and the need to abort by going to the roots of the problem and creating policies that make both as unnecessary as possible, while realizing that, logically, we cannot eradicate either completely.
I love my children like any parent, but I would have been infinitely happy for them if their birthmother had had the support she needed to parent them instead of feeling the need to place them. I love them enough to realize it would have saved them so much pain and trauma and to want that for them.
Adoption is not the ideal situation even if it is necessary. Just like abortion. Please stop throwing it around carelessly. I am advocating in my space, but as an adoptive mother my experience is not the one we should be centering here. So if you are not an adoptee, and come to try to speak your knowledge of adoption, imma tell you to sit down and listen to those most affected here.
