Adoption is increasingly being presented as the enemy of abortion.
The Cut at New York magazine’s website has a column on adoption from a woman who says she was adopted by force birthers. She says her biological mom was led to adoption by a crisis-pregnancy center* that insisted on adoption. She goes on to talk about how pro-adoption pro-lifers (my word, not hers) consider babies who can be adopted instead of aborted to be second-class citizens. She says she was guilted into gratitude that she was adopted and that her situation wasn’t worse.
She writes:
It makes my blood boil when I see people frame adoption as an alternative to abortion. A lot of the time parents adopt for themselves, because they want kids, but many people in Christian environments don’t ask themselves why they want them — you’re just expected to marry young and have them, and if you can’t have them, it’s a trial given to you from God and you resort to adoption. But we’re not a backup. So many people on the right who say either “We’ll adopt your baby” or “You can put your baby up for adoption” see adopted kids as second-class kids. A lot of people on the right see kids as property without agency, and it’s worse when you’re adopted because they think they did you a favor. My dad and his mother, my adoptive grandmother, constantly made me feel I should be more grateful to them, like I could have been in a worse situation if I hadn’t been adopted, which felt like gaslighting.
I don’t know her parents. But I do know plenty of adopted parents who insist that they — the parents — are the ones who are blessed by adoption. Just the other day, I was talking to an adoptive couple during the National Review Institute’s post-Roe Fridays for Life virtual series, and they talked about how adopting their daughter from China was the best decision they ever made, how they could not imagine life without her. They do not see themselves as mini-saviors for adopting her.
As for second-class citizens: The pro-lifers are the ones who don’t want the babies killed.
The author was raised in a Christian household and says it wasn’t until watching a YouTube recently on “bodily autonomy” that she decided there should be no restrictions on abortion.
She writes:
Abortion is a touchy topic for Christians. Until recently. Now she’s decided:
If someone no longer wants to be pregnant, that’s their choice, period. People on the right will say abortion is murder. Is it murder if you don’t donate a kidney, you know someone needs it, and they die? Fetuses are not entitled to anybody’s body, even for survival, just like the rest of us aren’t entitled to anybody’s body.
This culture is so poisonous. That anyone could compare her unborn self to a kidney.
She concludes with the conviction that her birth mother should have had the choice to abort her:
I’m angry and heartbroken about Roe being overturned, and fear it’s going to be used as a way to put more kids into the adoption or the foster system. When I share my views about adoption, so many people are like, “Would you rather have been aborted then?” And I tell them, for the last time, adoption is not the alternative to abortion. It’s forced birth. And I was a forced birth. But even if I had been aborted, if that meant my bio mom had a choice, I’d be fine with that. I’d be none the wiser. It would have been her choice. It pisses me off that she wasn’t given one.
Please pray for this woman and all who suffer. We need to inundate women and children and families with love and resources. We need to celebrate birth mothers and make clear that each human life is the most precious resource there is — the mother, the child, the adoptive family. We need to encourage birth fathers to step up to the plate. We need to make sure everyone is loved and not made to feel alone or outcast or a mere incubator. Life is mess, painful, and beautiful. Let’s be with one another more. And especially for the poor, the scared, the lonely, the desperate.
* Pro-lifers tend to not use the phrase “crisis-pregnancy center” in no small part because mothers do amazing things — they just need to have the resources. Love them and look at them with the full knowledge that a mother is capable of amazing things, and they might be able to see it too.
