Reasons To Be Thankful

Looking at the demands on my time for the week, this may be my last opportunity to write a blog for this space until next week.

In thinking about what I could write and the upcoming holiday, which is much on a lot of people’s minds, including my own – I thought I would list a few from the years I have been writing this blog.

Be thankful if your biological, genetic family is intact. No disruptions, no family separations, no taking of children away or fleeing domestic violence. You may even be in a minority number, if you can claim all of that.

If you were the recipient of adoptive parents, be thankful if yours have been kind, attentive and generous with you. I’ve read enough horror stories to know that is NOT how it always turns out.

Be thankful if you actually know where your genetic, biological ancestors came from. I was over 60 years old before I knew this about mine – or for that matter, even who “mine” were.

Be thankful if you knew your family medical history and what your vulnerabilities are. I still don’t know mine 100% but until I was over 60 years old, I could only say – we don’t know, both of my parents were adoptees.

Be thankful if your parents were actually “there” for you, if you got in trouble – found yourself pregnant out of marriage often with uncertainty about who the actual father of your child was.

Be thankful if you were able to get an abortion, during the decades it was legal. You often don’t know how much access to that might matter, until you need such services. Exceptions mean nothing to a doctor who fears doing one under such allowances might still jeopardize his future.

Be thankful if you have adequate shelter and running water – I have experienced a lack of both in my lifetime.

I know, that if I continue to ponder this, I could come up with at least a few more. Not all but most of the above are based directly on my personal knowledge, related to my own or a genetic, biological family member’s experience.

You could try creating your own list – whether you are an adoptee, a first/natural parent who was unable to raise their genetic, biological child for whatever reason, or an adoptive parent. It is said we should always count our blessings.

A Selfless Act Of Love ?

An adoptee asks – does anyone else get really annoyed when people say “adoption is the most selfless act of love” ? Because no ? I think the most unselfish thing for my biological mom to have done would have been to get her life together, so she could parent her child. And I think the most unselfish thing my adoptive parents (and the Div of Family and Child Services) could have done would be to HELP my biological mom get it together, so she could parent her child. I think it was pretty selfish for my biological mom to just give in and give up because SHE couldn’t get it together for a child she created. And I think it’s pretty selfish of my adoptive parents to just take me, no questions asked, because they wanted to. I don’t know. Nothing about my adoption was selfless. None of it was centered around my best interests. I’m just really angry about it today.

One adoptee responds – As a teenager I had the feeling of “why wasn’t I enough” every so often. But when I met my biological family at 18, I was sooo thankful I was adopted. Absolute disgusting trash of a family. My adopted mom may not be perfect but it definitely made me more grateful for her vs what I could’ve grown up in. I think everyone has their own perspectives. Sometimes it is selfless, because the biological family is in no place to raise a kid. Does it suck? Yes. But in my case, I’m thankful I was taken by the state and adopted out.

Another adoptee notes – I met my birth mother who was a POS that gave two of us up separately. I’m glad I wasn’t raised by her, but that in no way negates me losing all my family, my identity, my vital medical info & updates, my background info, potential relationships, not meeting family who have passed, and suffering the trauma of all that & family separation.

Another person says the truth – It is simply something said to make adoption presentable. It’s gross the way words are used – twisted and weaved – to make the idea of something dreadful and repulsive into something lovely and desirable.

A mother of loss shares her own experience – For me it wasn’t a matter of “not getting my shit together”, it was having people actively working against me, preventing me from getting information and resources that I was either legally entitled to or that it was standard practice to provide. There was absolutely no part of me that did not want my child, but between the constant messages of “if you truly love the baby you’ll do this” and “if you don’t do this we’ll take away any bit of choice you do have”, had I been given the chance to “get my life together”, I absolutely would have, but I was denied that chance.

One who was placed with relatives shares – My mother wasn’t abusive, but wasn’t fully functioning either. She’d been raped to conceive me, and she wanted to leave her cheating husband. Her parents flat refused to help. They themselves called Child Protective Services on her and reported her as neglectful and homeless, because they wouldn’t let her move back home with my sister and me. My sister’s uncle ended up taking me in, because the judge wouldn’t give us back to our mother. (Her dad took her.) She didn’t voluntarily give us up, but she did give up fighting for us and moved away from all the thoughts and memories. The people who took me in played house until their own children were born. Then, they emotionally used me as their surrogate and discarded me as a daughter. They could’ve worked to reach out to her and see if she had her stuff together and could raise me.

Another adoptee shares – My adoption was open and I saw the life my birth mom had vs the life I had with my adoptive parents. I do believe it was selfless. I wouldn’t change my situation. My birth mom and I have a relationship now. I have a great relationship with my adoptive parents. She did what she felt was best and I agree. I respect her for it. It was her choice and it was selfless in my opinion.

Sadly, this adoptee had an unhappy experience – I am so glad I was adopted. Yes, I do have resentment towards my adoptive parents for some of the decisions that were made in raising me and with how they handled my adoption. But I did reach out and try to establish a relationship with my birth mother. I wish I never would have because she completely destroyed my life. It took years for me to even begin to come back from what she did. And that’s not even touching on the emotional toll I still have to deal with.

Another one shares – No one offered my biological mom help or support. She was a teenager in foster care with no help. She had no choice. No one would help her or support her. So she did the only thing she could do because she clearly couldn’t take care of me. She had no job, no home, no way to take care of me, no support – nothing. I don’t blame my biological mom since I learned the whole truth. She was a child.

This same woman (from above) is raising her cousin’s daughter and her story is – to me – a genuine selfless act of love – my cousin asked me to adopt her daughter because she was struggling with drug addiction. I was just shocked and in disbelief. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. She told me that she didn’t want her daughter to end up in the system. I met with her the next day and brought her EVERY RESOURCE I knew of in the area. Coincidently, I worked for the area and knew all the resources for moms who were using while pregnant. My FIRST RESPONSE was to run to her, hug her and tell her this is not your only choice. Let me help you. I can get you into treatment and you can stay with your baby at these places. I know the owners, I can get you in. Plus other resources. I explained to her my adoption trauma and how I would never wish that for anyone. I gave her all the resources and told her I wanted her to look at them. Like really look at them. I would support her however I could, even taking placement until she got on her feet. Several weeks later, she said she still wanted to give her daughter to me and she wants me to adopt her vs guardianship because she doesn’t want Child Protective Services in her life – EVER – which would happen, even if her daughter wasn’t in her custody. So eventually, I agreed on one condition… she stays in her daughter’s life… she was so thankful and grateful. We talk almost everyday. She’s that girl’s mama and always will be.

Another adoptee admits – I think the most selfless thing my first mother could have done would be having an abortion instead of birthing me. My siblings feel similarly (both those kept and those relinquished). And taking a baby and pretending it’s yours, so you can play house and pretend to be its parent, is not selfless to me.

An adoptee struggles with the trope as well – I struggle with the selfless narrative, we hear as well (and some of us are) mothers who you couldn’t pry away from our children, we’d do any and everything to keep them and do our best by our children. Giving your kid away is the opposite, letting someone else worry about feeding, clothing and raising them isn’t selfless, it’s selfish. The adoptive parents rushing in isn’t selfless, they’re selfishly taking someone else’s child.

And there was this compassionate response – My birth mother was gang raped (I found this out a couple years ago). I was conceived pre-Roe v Wade. She didn’t have a choice, unless she wanted to get a back alley abortion. So, what you’re saying is she is supposed to raise me & live that rape everyday ? I’ve always been very pro choice , so give women a right to have an abortion & fight for it!! If the current administration coming in has its way, there’s going to be lots more women & children in my situation & that makes me very angry!!

From another adoptee – I hate hearing it. Because it makes it seem beautiful that I was abandoned. Which it was not. It’s the greatest wound of my life. What would’ve been beautiful would’ve been the adoption agents actually helping my relatives somehow. Not forcing my mother to sign papers, so I could be shipped abroad. Nothing about it feels selfless. It feels wrong and so sad. While I love my adoptive parents, I hate what happened for me to get here.

And this reality check – If giving up a child is “loving, brave and selfless,” does that mean parents who keep and raise their own children are “unloving, cowardly and merciless?”

And this happens to other mothers of loss – It WAS selfish of me. Adoption offered all these perfect “answers” to allllllll the “problems” that faced me. And since I was given the opportunity to become a living embodiment of a “family building angel” I ate it up. As horrible as it is, I must admit that it felt good to be told I was smart and wise and strong and selfless. I was desperate for that validation and acknowledgment from anyone in my life and of course only the agency offered it. I drank it up. And came home from relinquishing believing in some innate goodness. Which is probably one of the things that kept me alive in the dark times after. I didn’t have to face his father. I didn’t have to face my family. I didn’t have to hear the whispers and gossip ( that existed in my head.. in reality no one would have cared in a few months. So what? I spared myself a few months if discomfit?) I didn’t have to alter my life plans. I didn’t have to even try. And not to end this on a defensive note, but as a kindness to my younger self, she also didn’t know. She didn’t know at 19 that we had a strength within us that would be able to achieve great things in this lifetime. I had no idea what I was capable of and no idea that it wasn’t what they promised it would be. I knew I would hurt and I was willing to take it for the greater good. So I forgive myself and offer grace for what we didn’t know. But it was still a terrible mistake. And yes, indeed a root in selfishness and self preservation. Relinquishment is a desperate act based on survival built on faulty lies as a foundation.

Just one last one – Angry with my adoptive mother – yes. Towards my adoptive father I feel differently because he fostered my relationship with my biological family after my adoptive parents divorced. He never stopped being my bestie and a driving force in my positive mental health. I never was able to fill the shoes my adoptive mother had in her fantasies. I frequently find myself angry about it and found her to be VERY selfish. My biological grandmother gave me away, without my biological mother’s consent.

Support for Reproductive Rights

Tim Walz with wife and children

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Tim Walz was the first governor to codify abortion access into a state constitution. In January 2023, Walz signed into law Minnesota legislation that includes no limitations on when a woman may end the life of her unborn baby. He has said, regarding reproductive freedom – “There’s a golden rule: Mind your own damn business!”

The Democratic governor’s kids, Hope and Gus, are now 23 and 17. He and his wife, Gwen, had been married for eight years, no children but they wanted children. Tim and Gwen Walz’s journey to parenthood was made possible through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). We got Hope because of this type of stuff,” Walz said regarding assisted reproduction.

Walz had campaigned on popular Democratic policies and actually implemented them.

Hard Truths

It’s easy to be righteous about “life” and extreme in your anti-abortion views – perhaps you should open your heart to read this story in today’s Huffington Post LINK>A Letter To My 1-Year-Old Son About His Abortion. The truth is, for many women (myself included) an abortion is just a waypoint on the way to having other children.

The article is full of the REAL reasons some women must resort to an abortion. Near the end, the father says – We won’t tell you about the joy Dub Dub (grandma) felt knowing you were on your way, or how hard Pop Pop (grandpa) tried to live long enough to meet you, only to pass away on the last Sunday in January, exactly three weeks before you were born. We won’t explain how heartbreaking it is to become a parent just as you’ve lost your own.

We will wait until you are ready . . . We will wait to explain Roe vs. Wade, and make sure you know how to raise your voice when the moment demands it, because women shouldn’t have to face this fight on their own. We will wait to explain how dark our world was during that time, but never miss a chance to tell you that you were the one ray of light.

We will wait until you are older to tell you the bad parts, and how they outnumbered the good. We will wait until you are grown to tell you how fortunate we were to live where we did, because if we hadn’t, we might not have had you.

Reproductive Discrimination

Struck v Sec of Defense

This case straddles both the issues of abortion and adoption. Story courtesy of LINK>Teri Kanefield. You can read the entire essay at that link.

Susan Struck joined the Air Force at the age of 23 in 1967. The recruiter warned her that she would be discharged if she got pregnant. She was sent to Vietnam. When Struck learned she was pregnant, her commanding officer gave her a choice: Get an abortion or leave the Air Force. At that time, abortion was legal in the armed services. Struck refused an abortion on the grounds that she was Catholic — although a lapsed Catholic. She wanted to give her child up for adoption and remain in the Air Force.

According to Air Force regulations, when an officer became pregnant, a board of officers was convened to hear the case. On October 6, 1970, Struck appeared before the board and asked if she could use her accumulated leave to have the baby, arrange for the adoption, and then return. The board refused her request. A few weeks later, on October 26, the secretary of the Air Force reviewed the findings of the board and ordered Struck to be discharged effective October 28, 1970.

With the help of the ACLU in Washington state, Struck took her case to court. Colonel Max B. Bralliar, commanding officer of the Minot Air Force Base, testified that Struck “demonstrated excellent ability in the performance of the managerial aspects of the work units and an excellent knowledge and application of nursing care principles,” and that she was highly dedicated with a “professionally correct and mature attitude.”

Meanwhile, Struck returned home to have her baby and arrange for the adoption. She gave birth to a girl, who she called L.B., which stood for “Little Baby-san” or, if she was in a different sort of mood, “Little Bastard.” She selected the adoptive parents, Julie and Art, who agreed to Struck’s terms: the baby would be raised Catholic, and Struck would be allowed to visit. On December 10, 1970, the adoption was finalized. Julie and Art named the baby Tanya Marie.

On June 4, 1971, the district court ruled against her, so she appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Five months later, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s order. She filed a petition for rehearing, but was again denied. One of the judges dissented for two reasons: first, men with temporary periods of disability were not discharged, and second, he found it irrational that only the natural mother, not the natural father, was declared unfit for service after the birth of a child. With the dissent, the ruling was 2-1 against Struck.

Susan Struck wanted to take her case to the Supreme Court. Because Ginsburg was then the director of the ACLU’s newly-formed Women’s Rights Project, Struck’s case found its way to Ginsburg’s desk. Ginsburg thought Struck’s case was the perfect case to challenge abortion laws as unequal under the Fourteenth Amendment. The gender distinction in the Air Force policy made absolutely no sense. Once the baby was adopted and Struck was legally no longer a mother, there was no reason to deem her unfit for service.

Moreover, Struck’s case made two vital points: A woman should decide whether or not she would have an abortion, and abortion laws naturally discriminate on the basis of sex or gender. As Ginsburg said, nobody is for abortion. What people are for or against is a woman’s right to choose. For Ginsburg, the issue wasn’t about privacy. It was about autonomy. It was about a woman’s right to control her own life and her own body. Moreover, the facts would make the case unlikely to trigger a backlash.

Ginsburg planned to ask for a narrow ruling that would make the public aware of the issue without turning the abortion question into a hot political mess. To Ginsburg’s regret, as she was working on Struck’s case, another case–the case of Jane Roe–made it to the Supreme Court first. The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade extended the right to privacy to the right to have access to an abortion.

Ginsburg believed the Court’s ruling was too broad. The sweeping decision caused the abortion laws of forty-six states that restricted abortions to be instantly rendered unconstitutional, even the most liberal of them. Ginsburg feared the decision would turn the issue into a political one, mobilizing the pro-life movement.

Clergy Acting On Conscience

The news has been dominated by reactions to the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to permit the enforcement of an 1864 law that is currently interpreted as a ban on all abortions except to save the mother’s life. Arizona’s Supreme Court recently ruled that a law written in 1864, which is a total abortion ban, and was written more than 50 years before women were even granted the right to vote, is now a law again. The law originated during the Civil War and before Arizona even became a state.

Activism for legal abortion came from a coalition of Christian ministers and conscientious doctors, because women in abusive relationships must be able to determine their own fate and end pregnancies that are not in their own best interest, or that of children that they may already have, or may want to have in the future. Making abortion illegal, practically guarantees an increase in child abuse; taking care of children is hard, physically and emotionally. It is not natural for women and too many women act from their own frustration harshly with their own children. These facts are hard to face, but every person who deals with abused women and children knows this.

Since these are uncertain days for women, it can be helpful to remember how progressive faith leaders boldly responded to bans on abortion just before Roe. Clergy acted on conscience to defy abortion bans through a network called the LINK>Clergy Consultation Service (CCS). Some women who used CCS were married with up to five children. Some had become pregnant in abusive marriages. Others were unmarried students in a time when sexuality was taboo and single motherhood unacceptable.

They were horrified at the way laws in all 50 states limited women’s freedom and left only dangerous options for ending a pregnancy — brutal back-alley abortions or self-harm to induce miscarriage. These faith leaders shared a core belief: Care for people in need took precedence over obeying what they considered unjust laws.

I will admit that I once had an abortion back in the early 1970s after it became legal. I went to a well-run Reproductive Services clinic in El Paso Texas that included some counseling. My partner made it clear he would not be there to support a child with me and left the decision about what to do to me. He didn’t go with me to the clinic nor was he there with me in the scary hours that evening, when I was bleeding and didn’t know if it was normal. I was totally alone. Still, I was glad to have a safe choice and I haven’t regretted doing it. I have been disturbed by pro-life propaganda but never for long. I do hope as a society we are not determined to go back to the bad old days but only time will tell what the near future trajectory will be.

Childless Mother

I learned about this book today. From Pegasus Publishers comes this description – 1970, pre-Choice America. After their eighth move in her thirteen short years, the lonely only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother, Tracy Mayo longed for a normal adolescence – to have friends, to feel rooted. What she got was a pregnancy at fourteen and exile to a maternity home. There, she bore not only a child but also the weight of the culture’s shame. She was required to surrender her baby boy at birth and pretend it never happened. Twenty-two years later, her longing undiminished, Tracy set out to find him – and perhaps, through her search, to reclaim her self. Are we moving back to a world where women have no agency, stripped of control of their bodies and their futures? More than fifty years after one frightened, grief-stricken young mother was ordered to forget, Tracy’s story is even more important to remember.

A book note from KATE MOSES, author of Wintering, Cakewalk: A Memoir, and Mothers Who Think – In her courageous and beautifully rendered memoir, Childless Mother, Tracy Mayo breaks ranks with the institutionalized secrecy, shame, and silencing that shattered countless pregnant girls and young women prior to legalized abortion and open adoption.

You can also read an excerpt posted by the author courtesy of Severance Magazine at this LINK>The Still Point.

Tracy Mayo

Advocating

What I try to do with this blog is advocate for a change in the perception of people who are involved in adopting children or providing foster care for them. It is a small effort on my part to write something, anything, each day to keep the conversation going. Sometimes it gets noticed by someone and validates the effort.

One adoptee voice that I appreciate is Tony Corsentino who writes on Substack. His most recent post is LINK>Political Orphans and he makes a strong case for his perspective.

I saved some of his paragraphs for my own self –

“Many of us advocate on behalf of the adopted children of today: to change the legal and social landscape for them, to open the opportunity for a future that is better.” I thought, YES, this is what I am trying to do with the blog I write.

I found this fact sad – “Not even the country’s foremost civil liberties organization, the ACLU, recognizes adoptees’ rights to their original identities and genealogical histories.”

Being a Tolkien fan, this touched my heart – In politics, to paraphrase a wise old Ent, “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side.” Many adoptees understandably feel this way.

Tony says, “Political change in the direction of justice for adoptees is maddeningly slow. . . . Powerful interests, mainly religious groups and the adoption industry, are opposed to justice for adoptees, because justice for adoptees is perceived to clash with their goals of providing clean-slate babies with minimal baggage from as large an infant supply pool as possible.”

It caused quite a stir when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito added a footnote, to his draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, from a government report on the demand for adoption in the U.S., which used the phrase, “domestic supply of infants.” Though it’s inclusion is often misunderstood and misattributed in social media, it originated as a footnote to the Supreme Court draft opinion and was a direct quote from a 2008 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the decades preceding the report, societal changes led to a decrease in the number of children available for adoption. This is a fact. There is more detail at FactCheck.org – LINK>Posts Misattribute Phrase ‘Domestic Supply of Infants’ in Draft Opinion on Abortion.

One commenter, Jamie Scott, on his blog writes, “. . . real objection is that the adopted person is daring to challenge the myth that society adores, ie, that adoption is a wonderful thing. To suggest that adoption is less than wonderful is like suggesting Jesus was just a nice Jewish boy.” She also goes on to note – that whole “birth mothers were promised secrecy” thing is BS. I feel sad for her when I read, “Despite hearing me talk for years about the anguish of losing my child, . . . numerous friends and strangers tell me what a WONDERFUL thing I did in relinquishing my only child.”

I also write for the mothers who lost a child to adoption – both of my sisters are one of those – and both of my parents were adoptees. I have plenty of reason to participate in the effort to make things better for both adoptees and the mothers who gave birth to them.

6 Months After

It’s still too early to know all of the ramifications of overturning Roe. My state of Missouri was quick to claim the first out of the gate to overturn any right to have one. It is said the decision had a definite effect on the midterm elections. Kansas was an early surprise.

What impact has the overturning had on adoption ? After all, more than one Supreme Court Justice covered their decision by praising adoption. LINK>Good Morning America has a piece that takes a look at this.

Research on abortion and adoption shows that, in reality, there is not a clear line between adoption and abortion as equal options. “The idea that adoption is going to be an alternative [to abortion], that’s not borne out in what we see people already deciding. That’s not what they want for their lives, and their children’s lives,” according to Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist and researchers at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California San Francisco. Among women who are denied abortion services, over 90% of them choose to parent versus choosing adoption, according to data from LINK>The Turnaway Study, which tracked nearly 1,000 women for five years.

According to Sisson, the data shows that adoption is a “rare decision to make,” while abortion is by comparison a “far more common” decision women make. In 2020, 620,327 abortions were reported in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collected data on every state aside from California, Maryland and New Hampshire. That same year, there were an estimated 19,685 non-stepparent, private domestic adoptions in the US, according to the National Council for Adoption, an adoption advocacy organization. “Adoption is almost always a constraint. It’s what happens when people feel they don’t have another option, when parenting is so impossible, so untenable, so unsupported, that people will turn to adoption purely as a way of surviving and ensuring their child’s well-being,” said Sisson. “And if you remove abortion as a legal option, more people will relinquish when they feel that they can’t parent.”

Exploiting the poor to increase the supply of adoptable babies ? That has seemed to be the intent from the Supreme Court Justices. Sisson estimates that new abortion bans enacted post-Roe will increase the number of infants available to adopt each year by as many as 10,000. “You’re talking about a relatively small number compared to the number of people that are going to be parenting children that they didn’t intend to parent,” said Sisson. “But you’re talking about a massive number when looking at the overall rate of adoption.”

Rory Hall, executive director of Adoption Advocates, a Texas-based adoption agency, said the agency has not yet seen a noticeable increase in women opting for adoption amid heightened abortion restrictions in the state. She said that while she believes infant adoptions will increase, she does not believe they will increase as much as anticipated because adoption is such a “hard” option. “Our biology tells us not to do it, and emotionally it’s just so hard to do that,” Hall said of adoption. “I think most people, if they would terminate the pregnancy but can’t, are going to try to find a way to parent.” She continued, “With that said, there’s going to be some that are just in a position where they can’t no matter what, and will choose adoption.” Hall said of increased abortion restrictions, “I think it’s going to weigh even more on our foster care system. My concern is we already have so many kids in [foster] care … and that will increase, probably exponentially, as each year goes by, and so I worry about those kids.”

Reproductive Justice

And Reproductive Justice MUST include adoptee voices because adoptees are intimately familiar with the same systems of white supremacist violence that make reproductive justice necessary. Today’s blog is thanks to an op-ed by Tina Vasquez in LINK>Prism. The goal of this series about reproductive justice and adoption was simple – disrupt the adoption storytelling that has become the norm in mainstream media. These feel-good stories from the perspective of adoptive parents rarely include the voices of adoptees or question the preponderance of “cheap, easy, and fast” transracial and international adoptions by evangelicals that amount to little more than child trafficking.

No more salvation narratives. No more narratives of gratitude. No more framing adoption as a “win-win.” No more white saviors. We will question adoption as a system—its power dynamics, its economics, and its privileging of certain “reproductive destinies.” “Out of the Fog” is a phrase adoptees often use to describe facing the reality of their adoptions.

LINK>Operation Stop Child Protective Services (CPS) was founded by Amanda Wallace. She spent 10 years as a child abuse investigator before realizing that “she had become the silent enforcer for an oppressive system.” She now lends her insider knowledge to families navigating the system and trying to regain custody of their children.

About 27% of adoptions are transracial, according to a recent survey from the Department of Health and Human Services: birth mothers are disproportionately women of color, and adoptive parents are overwhelmingly white. Low-income Black and Native American children are the most likely to be separated from their families. Poverty is often interpreted as neglect when applied to these people.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, white evangelicals wasted no time communicating their desire to take the babies that result from forced pregnancies. Never mind that most people denied abortion care simply become parents and that there is little evidence linking abortion bans to increases in adoption.

Time and time again, the solution offered to state violence is adoption, yet we fail to center adoptees whose lived experiences and areas of expertise touch every injustice and systemic problem our movements battle against. This is especially true when it comes to reproductive justice. While efforts are being made to explicitly discuss adoption as a reproductive justice issue, adoptees’ voices are still not being uplifted in these conversations. Adoptees are building their own movements—including Facebook groups like LINK>Adoptees for Choice—but will movements for sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice invite them into the fold?