SisterSong and Georgia

Fulton County Judge, Robert McBurney, ruled Georgia’s abortion ban unconstitutional under the state constitution. He suggested that the six-week abortion ban treated women like “collectively owned community property.”

This word “liberty” has been niggling at my values awareness at least all this day long. The judge wrote, “A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.” He added that society can only intervene in a person’s pregnancy when the fetus reaches viability, which is generally understood to be between 22 and 24 weeks.

McBurney wrote – “While the State’s interest in protecting ‘unborn’ life is compelling, until that life can be sustained by the State ― and not solely by the woman compelled by the Act to do the State’s work ― the balance of rights favors the woman.” Physicians in the state can now provide abortions until fetal viability, reverting to Georgia’s 2019 abortion law.

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote,” McBurney wrote. “Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.”

The ruling is a monumental win for abortion rights advocates who have rallied against the extreme abortion ban. On Saturday, reproductive justice groups hosted a rally at the state capitol to demand a repeal of the law and commemorate the two women who died because of the state’s abortion ban. ProPublica recently reported that Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, two Black mothers from Georgia, died because they were denied proper medical treatment after using abortion pills.

“Today’s win was hard-fought and is a significant step in the right direction,” Monica Simpson, president of the women of color-focused reproductive justice organization LINK>SisterSong, said. “[But] every day the ban has been in place has been a day too long ― and we have felt the consequences, especially our Black and brown communities.”

This blog’s content depended upon the reporting of Alanna Vagianos in The Huffington Post at this LINK>Judge Strikes Down Georgia’s 6-Week Abortion Ban.

SAY HER NAME

Georgia, Georgia
The whole day through (the whole day through)
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind (Georgia on my mind)

I said Georgia
Georgia
A song of you (a song of you)
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines

Crazy and Too Old ?

A personal story in The Huffington Post got my attention this morning – LINK>I Never Wanted Children. Then I Got Pregnant With Twins At 53 by Anne Bockman Hansen. The link mentions “advanced maternal age”. I’m totally familiar with that !! I conceived my oldest son at 47 and my youngest son at 50. When we told my dad we were going to try and conceive the older one, he said “I question your sanity.” And I do understand but really we have been fine being older parents. Occasionally, it has been suggested I am my sons “grandmother”. I also have a grown daughter and 2 grandchildren, so I can easily and honestly say, “I understand why you would think that because I AM a grandmother.”

We knew we didn’t want multiples and so, because we had to use assisted reproduction, it was always a possibility. We relied on the experts’ advice on how many embryos to transfer with a good potential for success, without trending into a greater likelihood for twins, and it gave us the single births we preferred. Many of the mothers who cycled along with me at the same time did have twins and even one had triplets – they were all happy with their results and somehow managed the challenges. Glad it was NOT my own challenge. Having a baby and then toddler in one’s life is challenging enough for me !!

Anne Hansen shares – “Still, the thought of having children did not interest me until I was 52 and had taken time away from my job to re-evaluate what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. When I finally knew that I wanted to do it, the realization hit me with incredible force. I felt certain that I wanted to raise kids — and raise them the way I wished I had been raised. I wanted to bring them up with unconditional love, compassion, a love for learning, a sense of adventure and amazement at the miraculous small things in life.” blogger’s note – Sounds like what happened with my husband after we had been married 10 years.

And even before I had learned all of the issues I share in this blog, I also knew that, as the author says – “. . . I wanted to carry them. I never considered surrogacy or adoption.” and that “I was not ovulating,” plus she shares yet another complication – her 58-year-old husband had a vasectomy in his 30s. blogger’s note – in our case, my husband was able to provide his own sperm and I love seeing how some of his traits have turned up in our sons and that he can be a genetic mirror for them.

Yet, when they saw a reproductive endocrinologist, he told them that sperm could still be retrieved from her husband. Like what happened to me when my husband decided he wanted to have children after all (he had been grateful, I had already done that in my own life, no pressure on him), she was told that she could still get pregnant using an egg donor. For me as well, that was a major breakthrough.

And she mentions the “age related” comments, which I have heard as well. She says – “A member of my church said, ‘A lot of people will think you are selfish for bringing children into this world at your age’.” My perspective is – no one knows how long their parents will continue to be alive while they are maturing – I know many examples where parents died young. Though I remember clearly one day, while checking out groceries, realizing that when my youngest turned 20, I would be 70 – oh my. That day arrived this year.

The same as what the author shares, “My pregnancy was a breeze. I felt the best I had ever felt.” I loved being pregnant. And yes from me too – “the babies were precious and I felt so blessed to have them. The love I had for them was beyond measure.” Ours also changed our lives in so many beautiful ways. Our lives became immensely richer. We have never regretted our decision to become parents, even at our “advanced” ages.

Of course, she had the same experiences that I have had. She shares, “Invariably, everywhere we went, people would think I was their grandmother. Sometimes I corrected them and they were embarrassed and surprised, but many times I just let it go. It didn’t bother me and, incredibly, it didn’t bother the kids. It still doesn’t.”

She follows up at the end with this thought – “I’m now 67 years old with a 73-year-old husband. Despite the difficult and amazing journey we’ve been on — and despite my worries that we could be gone before the twins reach adulthood — I would not have done anything differently. Parents at any age can and do get sick and leave their kids parentless, but not many parents have the free time to devote to their children as we have had and do.”

How Foster Care Changed Him

Billie Oh and Z going for a walk around their neighborhood.

My day has been eaten up with technical issues in my household. Because foster care often leads to adoption and because I care about fathers – this article in The Huffington Post caught my attention. LINK>I Didn’t Know If I Was Ready For Kids. Then I Became A Single Foster Dad At 27. Got to get on with the other demands of my day. Thank you for understanding.

It Is NOT The Easy Answer

I don’t know who Megan Devine is but her words seemed perfect for a Huffington Post personal essay I read today by Joanna Good – LINK>At 17, I Gave My Baby Up.

She was scrolling through her social media and came upon a mother asking for advice. She had just found out she was pregnant, and because she and her husband already had several children, he didn’t want any more. Though he was sure of his decision, she wasn’t, and wanted help figuring out what to do. She writes – “I was feeling so many emotions at once that I wasn’t sure I could even identify them all, but I definitely felt frustration, anger, and yearning swirling through my body.”

She goes on to note – “People who have never been touched by adoption always seem to think of it as easy, but as a mother who placed her child for adoption, struggled through the chaotic emotional aftermath of the separation, and then reconnected with my child later on, I know the truth. Even though it was the right choice for me at the time, adoption is anything but easy.”

She admits – “I had never stopped thinking about Hanna (blogger’s note – the adopted name of the baby girl she gave up to adoption) — never. But the adoption had forced me to grow up quickly, and I did. I had come out stronger. Sturdier. Wiser. I continued to feel so many emotions, but now I was able to handle most of them. The guilt was a different story.”

No one really talks about what follows you through life after adoption. There is no such thing as a clean break. She realized that “I knew my little girl might never know me, yet I saw her face everywhere — in the photographs her adoptive parents continued to send me, but also in other children’s faces at the grocery store, at library story time . . . I often wondered if Hanna ever thought she saw my face in a crowd.”

She saw her daughter again when the little girl turned 6. Joanna shares – that her daughter poked her in the stomach and said, “Mommy said God put me in your belly because she couldn’t have me in hers.” Then, when Hanna was 13, she got a message from Hanna that hit her like a train going full speed. They had begun chatting almost daily via Facebook messenger — something she always looked forward to — but she never expected to see these two words pop up on her screen – “I’m trans.” (A person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.)

Typical of an Evangelical Christian response – “Hanna’s adoptive parents offered no support and referred to his brave coming out as ‘a phase’. They refused to use any other name but the one they bestowed upon him and would not allow him to seek counseling or see a doctor for potential hormone blockers. Instead they looked to religion and prayed this phase would end.”

Joanna shares that she – “decided to become the solution. I would be there for my birth son no matter what and I promised to be the parent I couldn’t be at 17. . . . I was there every step of the way as Hanna slowly transitioned to Aarron.”

She concludes her essay – “Adoption. It might seem easy — the perfect solution for an unexpected child and an unprepared mom. But too often we don’t talk about the messiness. The trauma. The endless questioning. Or that there really is no such thing as a truly severed connection.”

What response could she possibly offer this pregnant woman in need of support when there is no one true answer? “Then I realized the one thing I most needed to hear when I was in her place all of those years ago. I typed, Hey, I understand. I’m here if you need to talk, and hit post.”

Have You Noticed ?

Lately, it seems every few days or weeks there is a new story that reaches my awareness related to Korean adoptees. Today, I have 2 to share in this blog. The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. A lot of Korean born children came to the US after the war and in the decades since.

I discovered Kristen Kish in the current issue of Time magazine’s feature – 100 Next – The World’s Rising Stars and then found an interview in Bon Appetit – LINK>How Being an Adopted Korean Influences the Way Kristen Kish Cooks by Alyse Whitney, who notes – I was also adopted from Seoul (by a white family in upstate New York). She talked to Kish about feeling disconnected from Korean culture—especially the food.

Even before this, my husband pointed out a story in The Huffington Post – I Was Told My Parents Were Dead. 38 Years Later, I Got An Email That Changed Everything by Cat Powell-Hoffmann. As a Gemini, stories about twins fascinate me. She observes – “Was this why I could never shake that lonely gnawing in my belly when I was growing up? Was she the reason?”

Something that seems clear to me in reading both stories is how this cultural “exchange” failed to truly provide these adoptees with any cultural foundations. Kish was born in Seoul, South Korea as Kwon Yung Ran. After living in a few orphanages as an infant, she was adopted when she was four months old. Cat’s adoption records noted that she had been “abandoned at birth with no living relatives.” Contacted by a woman who worked at the adoption agency 38 years later, she is told – “you have family in South Korea. Your mother is alive and well.” And “You have a twin sister.”

The woman from the adoption agency forwarded two letters to Cat. The one from her birth mother addressed her by her orphan name, Yi Soon. Her words were tender and fragile. Her twin’s letter felt like living distant but parallel lives. Her reunion occurred in Tulsa Oklahoma, at the adoption agency’s corporate headquarters. She notes the “two women raced toward me with their arms outstretched and tears in their eyes.” She said meeting her twin was “like looking at a stranger wearing my face and using my voice — but one of us spoke Korean and the other did not. It was disorienting and bizarre to think I’d shared a womb with another human being and now I was meeting her again 38 years later.” Then she says, “The very first words my birth mother said to me were ‘Mianhae,’ which means ‘I’m sorry’ in Korean. Then she said ‘Saranghae,’ which means ‘I love you’.” Turns out that when she was born in 1973, twins were considered bad luck in Korea. Her mother had to choose and chose the first born twin. The cultural differences meant they didn’t understand each other, and they were accustomed to living very different lives. She says, “because of our language barrier, we were mostly forced to play charades to communicate, and I could barely get across the most basic sentiments, much less hold the heart-to-heart conversation I so desperately wanted to have with them.”

Back to Kristen Kish’s story – she writes, “As I grew up, I realized just how incredible it was to go from unwanted and abandoned by my birth mother to being part of a new, welcoming family, who felt only joy at my arrival.” Kish writes that adopted children are like “real-life Cabbage Patch Dolls” because they have their own special dates and certificates for when they are adopted and become citizens of the United States. Kristen Kish was adopted into a family in Kentwood Michigan. She says, “I love to eat Korean food, but I don’t need to cook it. Other people can do it better.”

Kish writes – “I don’t know anything about Korean culture. I was raised by a white family in Michigan, and I didn’t look in the mirror and think about why we didn’t all look the same. They are my family, and that’s all I know.” Also that “There’s this fondness I’ve always had for older Korean women—I soften up, and I can legit feel it inside my heart. They’ll be like ‘I’m so proud of you’ and it just crushes me, in this really sweet way,” Kish explained. “My life is f—king fantastic and I don’t want a Korean family, but we both know that there was another life that could have potentially happened. It’s the ‘what ifs?’ that get you.”

She has a positive perspective on her adoption but still hopes to one day at least go to the clinic where she was born. She notes – “I feel oddly disconnected because my family is my family. Maybe I wouldn’t have become a chef if I grew up in Korea. I was put up for adoption for a reason, whether I was unwanted or they couldn’t care for me, and my life wouldn’t have been as great. Being in a family that wants you, that life is much better.” Kish has been named as the new host of Bravo’s popular and long-running series “Top Chef,” which she won in it’s tenth season.

More To This Story

On June 20th in 2020, I published a blog at this site about the movie LINK>The Blind Side. I wrote that it was a “white savior” movie and that opinions on the movie “The Blind Side” were mixed. The film has been accused of pacifying Oher, molding him into an unrealistically noble and non-threatening “black saint.” That take is a patronizing one. He is never angry and shuns violence except when necessary to protect the white family that adopted him or the white quarterback he was taught to think of as his brother.

In other words, Michael Oher is the perfect black man. Robin DiAngelo, whose book White Fragility I have read, criticized the dis-empowered way Oher is presented, as though only this white woman could save him. Oher actually said – “I don’t like that movie.” At a media event, just prior to Oher’s 2012 Super Bowl win with the Baltimore Ravens, he told reporters that he was “tired” of being asked about The Blind Side. In 2011, Oher published a book, I Beat The Odds, writing that the Tuohys told him there was no difference between adoption and conservatorship.

It now has become evident that there is more to his story. From The Huffington Post – LINK>‘Blind Side’ Inspiration Michael Oher Says The Tuohys Never Legally Adopted Him and that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy made millions off of his life story. “The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which co-conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” the legal filing reads. The lawsuit also notes – “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys.”

The Tuohys were each paid $225,000 for “The Blind Side,” plus 2.5% of the movie’s “defined net proceeds,” according to the legal filing. But Oher’s contract signed away his life rights without any payment, the petition says. Oher has no memory of signing the contract, he claims. “They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account,” Oher wrote.

The legal petition reads – “Since at least August of 2004, conservators have allowed Michael, specifically, and the public, generally, to believe that conservators adopted Michael and have used that untruth to gain financial advantages for themselves and the foundations which they own or which they exercise control. All monies made in said manner should in all conscience and equity be disgorged and paid over to the said ward, Michael Oher.”

Every Person Deserves To Know Their Origins

From LINK>The Huffington Post by Marie Holmes – There are some key differences between the experiences of adopted and donor-conceived kids, but one thing remains the same: They should know about their origins.

For many people today, a surprise DNA test result opens the door to their true identity. The outcome can reroute their lives around uncovering of their family’s secrets. Many become advocates for people having full access to their genetic histories. I certainly believe that is important. From experience, I know that my genetic origins did matter greatly to me.

One woman describes finding out that her parents’ story, the story she’d bent herself into a pretzel to continue to believe, was a fabrication. The years that followed were difficult. “I went through a really serious time of grief and just identity crisis.” For a time, she didn’t speak to her parents.

The current consensus among professionals in the related fields is that it is best for children to know their whole story from the very beginning. That has been the perspective for me and my husband with our donor egg conceived sons. A communicative openness is best between parents and their children. Always we have believed in as much openness as our children encourage. We did not made a big deal of it, just a matter of fact-ness on occasion when called for.

And yet, secrecy is still an issue. Advocates today recommend a ban on anonymity. In my mom’s group, almost 20 years ago, we split into “tell and don’t tell” members. No one anticipated the inexpensive availability of DNA matching sites like Ancestry and 23 and Me. Parents who have not yet disclosed to a child that they were donor-conceived, are encouraged by advocates not to wait another moment. Ideally, children would never remember a time before they knew they were donor-conceived, because parents would speak about it frequently and openly. There is no minimum age a child needs to reach in order to hear the story of their origins. It is the right thing to do for their children and parents owe this truth-telling to themselves. Secrets do have a tendency to out themselves.

Unfortunately, sperm banks, egg donation agencies and other providers of third-party reproduction continue to remain silent on the issue of a donor-conceived person’s right to information about their origins. To be honest, in the past parents were usually not given any information about their donor, and donors weren’t told how many children were born as a result of their donations. Today, queer couples and mothers who are single by choice make up a majority of any sperm banks’ customers. These families tend to have a different attitude toward their sperm donors’ anonymity, with many specifically search in advance for “willing-to-be-known” or “identity release” donors who agree to allow their children to contact them once they turn 18.

To be certain, there are crucial differences in the experiences of adoptees and donor-conceived people. The latter generally grow up knowing one biological parent. Adoptees must also reckon with deeply emotional questions regarding why their family gave them up for adoption. Donor-conceived people do not have that challenge. A recent study published in the journal Developmental Psychology surveyed 65 families formed via third-party reproduction (sperm, egg or embryo donation) and compared them with 52 families who had not used assisted reproduction. The children were 20 years old at the time they completed the survey. Researchers found “no differences between assisted reproduction and unassisted conception families in mothers’ or young adults’ psychological well-being, or the quality of family relationships.” I find this good news but also my own experience.

It’s worth noting that in families where the children were informed about the donor by age 7, they were less likely to have negative relationships with their mothers, and the mothers themselves showed lower levels of anxiety and depression. The study’s authors say their findings “suggest that the absence of a biological connection between children and their parents in assisted reproduction families does not interfere with the development of positive mother–child relationships or (the children’s) psychological adjustment in adulthood.” With donor conception, an intentionality on the parents’ part appears to make them feel more responsible about telling their children the full story of their creation. So, are not adoptive parents also intentional about their choice ? I wonder. As my sons matured, we did 23 and Me, first for their father and then, for each of our boys. This allowed us the perfect opportunity to fully explain the reasons behind our choice. Their donor also did 23 and Me and they have the ability to privately contact her there should they wish to. They have had some contact with their donor, though years have passed since. They are aware she has other children and I show them photos from Facebook so they have some idea.

Non-Biological Parents

Marjorie Taylor Greene (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool)

MTG is not someone I have a lot in common with. My husband pointed this article in LINK>The Huffington Post out to me. The article is about a comment linked to step-parents but it could certainly apply to adoptive and foster parents. Rep Robert Garcia of California said “When Marjorie Taylor Greene says that adopted or parents through marriage aren’t real parents, you’ll be damn sure I’ll object.”

Of course, there was a lot of criticism over her remark. Suggesting non-biological parents are not “real” parents is such an evil, heinous thing to say that the natural conclusion of reasonable people might be to wonder if Greene was misquoted or guilty of a misstatement. MTG said this during a segment of her Facebook show (MTG Live) – “The idea that mom and dad together ― not fake mom and fake dad ― but the biological mom and biological dad, can raise their children together and do what’s right for their children, raising them to be confident in who they are, their identity, their identity is, you know, they’re a child made by God…”

A non-biological parent is not related to the child by blood or genes. Despite not being biologically related to the child, a non-biological parent can still obtain legal parental status by formally adopting the child. Real is defined as actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed. A non-biological, non-adoptive parent is one who has acted in a parental role and therefore, may be considered a de facto parent because they have participated in the child’s life as a member of the child’s family. The de facto parent resides with the child, and with the consent and encouragement of the legal parent, and performs a share of caretaking functions that are at least as great as the legal parent. However, raising a child not genetically connected to his/her parents may lead to critical questions and difficulties regarding family identity and representations, attachment or even disclosure to the child of his/her origins.

Who a child’s parents are is a question that might be answered differently by a biologist, by a jurist, by a psychologist or by the child him/herself. There are situations in which parenthood is legally recognized, even in absence of genetic bonds between adults and children. This is the case when conception has occurred through assisted procreation, but also when a child who was born in a biologically-related family is later adopted by a different one. Both Assisted Reproduction (AR) and adoption rely on the intention to be a parent as well as developing a social, relational and affective bond with the child. They require the intervention of a third party to establish and legitimize the parental relationship – the medical field in the case of AR and legal authorities in the case of adoption.

Adoption means caring for a child when the biological parents are unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for him/her. An adoptive parent permanently assumes parenting the child. Adoption creates a permanent change for both the child and the adoptive parent(s). I found it interesting to realize that adoption is an ancient phenomenon, deep-rooted in our historical and mythological past. It can be found in every culture, even in non-human primates. After WWII, adoption started to be considered a child welfare practice and it is now governed by comprehensive legal statutes and governmental regulations. The original aim was to give a family to an orphan child. Most adoptees in modern times are not orphans, though it still does occur.

The article on MTG refers to a congressional hearing and the woman to whom she was addressing her questions is in a same sex relationship. Given that MTG is a Republican, it is likely that her comment was also a veiled attack related to LGBTQ+ rights.

In A System Haunted

It doesn’t take long if spending time among adoptees to learn about the strong link between foster care and adoption. Foster care is often the first step in that direction as children are removed from their parents and placed with strangers. The official goal is reunification of the family when it is deemed safe for the children to be returned to their parents. That does happen in many cases after an emotionally damaging experience for all concerned. Other times the parent’s rights are terminated and in the case of infants and young children, often these are adopted by the foster parents or some other hopeful adoptive parent. And in too many cases, these young children “age out” in the system and are thrown out into the world as young adults with few supports, though that situation has improved somewhat in recent years.

Yesterday, I learned about the link between the building pictured above and foster care. Dr Joseph DeJarnette was a proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill. He was known to idolize Nazi Germany and took the facility under his management from a resort-like treatment center to an apocalyptic prison nightmare. His determined efforts resulted in the passage of the “Eugenical Sterilization Act of 1924” (a.k.a Racial Integrity Act). This new act reinforced racial segregation by preventing interracial marriages and classifying “white” as being pure 100% Caucasian. Men and women who were admitted to his hospital were involuntarily sterilized to prevent the conception of mixed race human beings. DeJarnette also forcibly sterilized single mothers, alcoholics, those with mental conditions and epilepsy, the poor, and the incarcerated. Dr DeJarnette not only performed countless sterilizations but also medical procedures on his patients like electroshock therapy and lobotomies.

He died in 1957. DeJarnette became a state institution with a focus on children’s behavioral health issues. It is at that point in the history of this place that my interest today became awareness. If you believe emotional energy leaves traces of residual energy in a place, then in that sense DeJarnette is believed haunted. A young woman writing an op-ed for LINK> The Huffington Post brought that awareness to me.

At the age of 14, the author was relatively new to the foster care system and waiting for a bed to open up at a long-term facility. The author walked those halls, recognizes the once-grand arches that frame the doorways, the bedrooms with graffitied walls. She says, “Dr. Joe’s evil spirit is said to walk the halls. Some say they’ve heard children’s voices in the darkness or moans and other noises from the former patients reported to have perished due to medical experiments. I doubt the teens who once lived there were aware of Dr DeJarnette by name. I wasn’t. However, the building’s ties to eugenics were among the first things new kids learned about the center.”

She goes on to note that she asked – “Why did they do it?” And the answer she got was – “They think your kids are gonna end up like you. If we don’t have babies, they’ll be less of us and more of them.” She says – “I wasn’t totally sure what more of them meant but I understood less of us. Less of me.” She also shares that she lived in DeJarnette during the winter with the holidays were approaching. It was her first Christmas in the system. Her expectations were perpetually low back then. She fixated on the phrase anything you want when asked to provide a Christmas wish list with one condition – as long as it’s less than 10 dollars. She remembers asking for a Def Leppard tape even though she no longer had her boom box. Receiving the tape symbolized hope and the belief that someday, she would have a tape player again.

We don’t often consider what it is like for a teen living in foster care. That they don’t have typical teenage memories like going to the homecoming dance, having their first date, a sweet 16 party or getting a driver’s license. What she did get was a strong sense of her ability to survive. She made it through the system and didn’t become a statistic. She says that she is thriving today. She says of that residual energy – “when you consider the collective traumas and experiences of all those who spent time in that cavernous, state-run institution, there was plenty of haunting going on. It wasn’t ghosts, though. It was us.”

Always The Question

From The Huffington Post – I Was Adopted Before Roe v. Wade. I Wish My Mother Had Been Given A Choice by Andrea Ross.

“Would you rather have been aborted?” This is the question some people asked me when I publicly expressed horror at the June 24 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

This question is not only mean-spirited and presumptuous, it’s a logical fallacy. The notion that adopted people should not or cannot be pro-choice simply because we were born ignores the possibility that we can value being alive at the same time we value the right to make decisions about our bodies, our lives and our futures.

My birth mother was 18 years old and partway through her first year of college when she discovered she was pregnant. Her parents arranged for her to go away to a home for unwed mothers once she started showing. My birth mother had limited choices; abortion was illegal, so her options were to keep or to relinquish her baby. And maybe it wasn’t she who decided; perhaps her parents made that decision for her. Maybe she had no choice at all.

Either way, the right to choose to have an abortion has nothing to do with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention crudely referred to in 2008 as the need to maintain a “domestic supply of infants” available for adoption, a notion that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito referred to in the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade.

I was born in the home for unwed mothers, whisked away into foster care within a day, then adopted by yet another family three weeks later. I was shuffled between three families in my first three weeks of life.

The logic of the anti-choice, pro-adoption crowd is that I should be grateful for the fact I wasn’t aborted. After all, I didn’t languish in foster care for 18 years. And my birth mother got to finish college and pursue a career, to have kids when she was ready. It was a win-win, right?

Not by a long shot. Psychology research shows that women who relinquish their children frequently exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. And children who have been relinquished frequently develop relinquishment trauma ― a kind of trauma that “changes an individual’s brain chemistry and functioning … and can elevate adrenaline and cortisol and lower serotonin resulting in adoptees feeling hypervigilant, anxious, and depressed.”

What’s more, the institution of adoption denied me the right to know anything about my heritage, ethnicity or medical history. My birth certificate was whitewashed, amended to say I was born to my adoptive parents, in “Hospital,” delivered by “Doctor.” As a kid, I agonized over what I had done wrong, and worse, how as a baby, I could have been considered so intrinsically deficient as to be unworthy of being kept by my original parents. My life has been marked by self-doubt. I also have a constant and abiding fear of abandonment. I struggle with depression and anxiety. I’ve spent countless hours and many thousands of dollars on psychotherapy.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues that “safe haven” laws allowing women to relinquish parental rights after birth are adequate to relieve the burdens of parenthood discussed in Roe v. Wade, implying that providing a ready avenue for adoption substitutes for the need for safe and legal abortion. Her claim is also a logical fallacy. Adoption is not a substitute for choice.

I’m now past childbearing age, and I don’t have daughters, so the overturning of Roe v. Wade will not affect me directly. But I think of my beloved nieces and female students at the large university where I teach. I am furious that they no longer have the constitutional right to bodily sovereignty, and I’m terrified by the possibility their lives might change for the worse if they are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. I do have a young-adult son, and if he impregnated his partner, I would want them both to be able to decide which option made the most sense for them. The circumstances that dictated my birth have no bearing on their rights.

No, I don’t wish I had been aborted, but I do wish that all those years ago, my birth mother had possessed the right to make her own decisions about what to do with her own body, the same right we all deserve.