The Wrong Pro-Choice Response

I’ve probably been guilty of this, to whatever extent, over the course of writing so many blogs here at WordPress but today, I was really made aware of how problematic this argument feels to some who have been in foster care and they have a valid point.

Someone posted that the pro-Choice argument that goes something like this is problematic. [1] it makes some former foster care youth feel like a rescue dog or a commodity. [2] It can be misinterpreted by some (it is a stretch but it has happened) that foster children should have been aborted. Former foster care youth object to the weaponizing of their trauma to support the pro-choice argument.

To be fair to my own intentions (and I don’t actually know if I was guilty or not but I could have been because nuance is tricky) – it’s a good argument. Pointing out the hypocrisy of a society that only wants to help a fetus and not actual children. Pointing out how social service systems are already underfunded. However, it also dehumanizes foster youth by lumping them into a monolith in need of rescue.

The recent overturn of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court will cause a flood of pregnant and parenting teens into the system. One pro-Choicer writes – I’m not comfortable weaponizing a trauma I haven’t experienced personally, but I believe the point they are trying to make (harmfully, to note) is that pro life people aren’t actually pro life, they just want to control women and people with uteruses. It’s not about life with them, it’s about control. They don’t actually put effort towards improving the quality of life of those struggling. I once read a post where a woman convinced a mother to keep her child, but when the mom needed financial support, the lady basically said “tough luck.” Meaning they only value what decisions that can control of a pregnant person, and they don’t care about the struggles of those already born and alive. Especially considering a lot of people forced to give birth or were given no other option might consider to put up for adoption because having a kid wasn’t something they wanted OR they might keep the kid and the child might be raised in an environment where they aren’t wanted or abused. But most pro lifers don’t care about providing resources or voting for increased accessibility to resources for those who need it.

I agree that it’s not right to use someone’s trauma as an argument. Instead of using that kind of argument, we should just argue it at face value – people claiming to be pro life don’t allow access to resources that living people need. Instead, they vote AGAINST accessibility and governmental help for those in need. Instead of focusing on current foster children, we should be asking questions such as – what they would do to help mothers who aren’t in a position to raise children, instead of them saying, “Well if you don’t want kids, just close your legs or put the baby up for adoption.” I believe the pro lifers make children more of a commodity than pro choicers do because they act like adoption is an easy solution and decision- “just adopt your baby out! Just give your kid up! But don’t you dare have an abortion!” And yes, not every foster child is the result of such a decision or dilemma but pro lifers act like adoption is easy for everyone involved, and it’s really not.

Neither side should be using the adoption community as a weapon, but one side brings it up and the other side fires back, and it’s making this whole situation ugly. They’re fighting with feelings instead of facts.

Is It Really The Same ?

It often comes up in the adoption group I am a member of whether it is really possible to love adopted and genetically related (biological) children equally. Many doubt it and some from experience.

A woman who gave up a child for adoption writes –

I am not sure if I could love an adopted child the same. I mean, it would be a child so of course I would love them. But love them as my own? I can’t honestly say yes.

People always point out how my son and I are so similar. Yes we look alike. But he has my anxiety, my compassion, my sensitive nature. If I had adopted a child, if people told me we were so much alike, some part of me would think they were just pacifying me.

I can’t imagine being adopted and having these thoughts. I struggle with the fact that I have a family member out there that I sentenced to these thoughts. I wish there was a lifelong revocation period for real.

An adoptee responds –

I used to laugh at people when they said me and my a dad look so much alike- we don’t. I used to love to say- that’s funny cause I’m adopted, just to make them feel silly. Somehow it made me feel better to discredit the mention of resemblance.

One woman made the point that an adoptive parent simply has no “biological” obligation to the adopted child. That is hard to argue with. A legal obligation certainly. A financial obligation, one would hope. I know my mom had told me her adoptive parents couldn’t disinherit her and her adopted brother because Texas law forbid that.

One woman notes she has seen this in spaces where the adoptive parents can remain anonymous. She says, adoptive mothers who have both biological and adopted children do validate the inequality, especially if put in the context of a theoretical question like – “if the house was on fire…who would you save ?”.. Certainly, adoptive parents who have only adopted children do believe they love them the same as if they were their “own” offspring but when the comparison is there in reality ?, that clarifies the issue.

A very honest example matches my illustration above –

I was raised by my natural mom but we are very different people. My next sibling and her always clicked in this way that she and I never did and it definitely f**ked with me.

I don’t know if it’s related but the entire narrative about how you’re supposed to love an adopted or fostered kid from the getgo “like they were your own” always struck me as really f**king bonkers and super gross and violent towards the kid in question.

Like, you’re strangers. They don’t even know if they’re gonna like you yet, leave them the alone and let them figure out their feelings in their own time and space.

One more, as an adoptive parent I would never speak for all adoptive parents, but in my experience as both a mother to a biological and an adopted child, it is NOT the same. There is more nuance, more complexity, more layers. I have often likened it to a marriage commitment. I choose to love her no matter what. Sometimes the feelings are there; sometimes they’re not. But I would also say that it’s true for every relationship. True love is a commitment and a daily choice.

Be sure to choose love regardless of whether the child is adopted or your own. Love is a state of being and how one acts towards another person. Love does not need a genetic relationship to exist. If the love isn’t there, find yourself a good therapist !!

Eugenics

I’ve heard many adoptees actually say that they wish they had been aborted. This is a terrible situation for a human being to feel like. I celebrate that I am alive and the heritage I am saddled with has the wounds of separation inflicted on my own two parents by being separated from their mothers.

Once again Population Control has captured the media frenzy following the Climate Change debate hosted by a CNN town hall recently. Rush Limbaugh was going on and on that Bernie Sanders endorsed mass abortions in third world countries. The truth is a bit more nuanced.

When asked if population control would play a part in his administration’s policy for dealing with climate change, Sanders answered “yes”. “And the answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions.”

“And the Mexico City agreement, which denies American aid to those organizations around the world that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control to me is totally absurd. So I think especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, is something I very, very strongly support,” he concluded.

Conservative pundit SE Cupp is taking fire after wrongly accusing Sanders of promoting eugenics, a grotesque means of shaping the human population by selective breeding. What is important is that every child is wanted and every mother is supported in being able to raise her child.