Oh dear! Jim Finnegan, president, Illinois Choose Life, demands his organization’s “civil rights under the first and fourteenth amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech and equal protection under the law” to get his alleged “pro-adoption” Choose Life plate out of the Statehouse and on to the road.
Well, what about the civil rights and equal protection of Illinois adoptees whom Finnegan claims to love so much that he wants to make more of us with his cheap license plate advertising? What about the civil rights of the thousands of adopted adults who are perpetually infantalized and anonymized by Draconian Illinois adoption law that confiscates, seals, and locks away the birth certificates, identities, genealogies, and histories of the state’s thousands of adult adoptees? Sorry! In a hierarchy of “civil rights,” the rights of adopted adults to their own identities and records trumps the specious right of a small loud band of Biblical Americans to tool around the state with their “pro-adoption” government-approved message tagged to their cars. Of course, this is the same “pro-adoption” crowd that routinely opposes adoptee civil rights in whatever state they drive in. Live adults have never been their strong suit. And we’re not so cute either.
Choose Life is not about promoting adoption but promoting newborn relinquishment and filling the coffers of their CPIC (coercive pregnancy indoctrination center–aka “crisis pregnancy center”) friends and connections with premium healthy white infants. According to both HB 5883 and SB 1502 funds derived from the sale of Choose Life plates would go to “meeting the physical needs of pregnant women who are committed to placing their children for adoption.” (What happens if somebody change her mind? What about women who want to keep their babies? Don’t they count?) Even then, the funds don’t go directly to these “committed women” but to “agencies” that dole funds out to the “worthy.”
At a time when pubic assistance is drastically curtailed and only a minute number mothers willingly place their newborns for adoption, some might accuse Choose Life of bribing mothers out of their newborns–or worse.