Adoption cannot be conflated with abortion. Foster care cannot be conflated with abortion. Neither adoptees nor foster care survivors are your abortee and poster child.
Professional abortion abolitionist and would- be cover girl Lila Rose has been crowing for the last couple weeks over (1) passage of Alabama’s “Heartbeat bill” that outlaws abortion except in severe medical emergencies (no rape or incest exceptions), sends abortion providers to the slammer if they perform non-state-authorized abortions, and some fear can criminalize women who get abortions (2) the simultaneous news that Alabama’s foster-to-adoption placements jumped from 509 children in FYI 2017 to 710 in FYI 2018
Of course, the two have nothing in common. We’ve already gone over that one, but let’s review:
- Abortion is the decision not be pregnant for whatever none-of-your-business reason
- Adoption is a decision to not parent for whatever none-of-your business reason.
Miss Rose, countering “the liberal” argument that abortion abolitionists don’t give a shit about older children, tweeted an implied relationship (since she can’t prove it) between abortion and foster adoption; thus propagandizing foster children as she does adoptees:
The state you excoriate for legal protections for babies – Alabama – just hit a record high for adoption. You ignore that fact. Your solution for the poor is abortion clinics waiting to kill their children. This is not the way of justice, love or Christ.
My response
First off, the biological parents of the newly adopted did not abort them nor were they probably turned over to the state upon birth, Newborns, even “minority” newborns in “bama are juicy morsels gobbled up by agencies, lawyers, and their well-heeled baby-grabbing clients at anywhere from $25,000-$60,000 a bite. The state seldom gets near them.
Secondly, not mentioned, is the fact that many eligible-for-adoption-children in care are eventually adopted by relatives I don’t see any figure for 2018, but in 2015 according to Child Trends 33% of children adopted from Alabama’s foster care system were adopted by family members. These children were not newborns,.Only 2% of Alabama foster adoptees that year were under the age of 1. The vast majority of new adoptees were between the ages of 1-5 (48%) and the ages of 6-10 (28%). Figures for the US overall are similar. Those adopted by relatives remained in their family and were not reimagined and anonymized in the adoption witness protection program. Thank God Bastard Nation got to Alabama before the Lila Ladies did. Unfortunately, most of the country’s adopted; class is still under protective seal and continue to be battered by abortion abolitionists who privilege the “innocent” unborn over “guilty” already-born cranky bastards. When cranky bastards complain that fetus saviors, who generally speaking have as much knowledge of adoption as I do of the Aragonese Crusade, recommend in no uncertain terms that we shut up and be glad we weren’t aborted.
We have no idea what led to the children in Alabama being thrown into foster care, but one thing is certain, they were not aborted. Their mothers had a choice (as much as one can have a choice in Alabama) to carry their pregnancies to term and make a go at rearing them. Something went bad along the way be it genuine abuse or the ephemeral “neglect” which can mean anything from literal neglect to simply not meeting certain patriarchial bourgie–especially white– standards, particularly if you are poor or black, brown, or indigenous. #
Miss Rose also fails to mention adoption incentives, The state received funds for every foster child placed for adoption and adopters are eligible for state and federal subsidies and tax credits. Everybody gets loot but birth families and their offspring framed as happy and grateful beneficiaries.of corrupt adoption policy
Miss Rose’s immediate goal was to show that forced-birthers care what happens after birth. What she failed to mention is that forced-birthers and the politicians they elect seldom support contraception (inexpensive or otherwise) family preservation, ACA, Medicaid expansion, inexpensive childcare, job training, school lunch programs, poverty programs, and other pro- mother and child initiatives unless, of course, they are tied to Protestant or Catholic evangelism, not publicly funded secular programs.No amount of one-on-one foster adoption is going to solve economic class- and race-based problems. BUg my abolitionist accounts adoption will.
If forced birthers really cared about children and their families they would support those programs. Their agenda though is not pro-family or pro-child They are obsessed with control and ownership of the female body. Their agenda is stigmatizing and punishing women. and moving their children into “properly” vetted two-parent cis adoptive families with proper conservative Christian values. For them, an unplanned pregnancy is solved only two ways: abortion or adoption.
Miss Rose’s other goal was, as usual, to link adoption and abortion in a twisted abolition scheme. Certainly, some abolitionists care about post-fetal live children, but implying that adopting older children from foster care is a stop-abortion tool is absurd, Outlawing abortion will not create an uptick in foster adoptions nor in adoption in general. Most women will continue to keep their children unless povertized or stigmatized (long term goal) out of them. The argument reminds me of Gloria Steinem’s “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle
My intent today was to discuss in much more detail the hypocrisy of the abortion abolition movement that promotes family dissolution, racism, sexism, eugenics through adoption, and claims that reproductive rights and justice endangers women, I found myself scattered, getting way off the mark with too much to say in one piece. I saved those sections and will revisit shortly. I suspect there will be several more. Consider this an introduction.
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# Dorothy Roberts, Professor of Law, Sociology, and Africana Studies at The University of Pennsylvania, has written extensively on this topic in her books Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare. This article in The Appeal , written with Lisa iSangoi is an attorney and Soros Justice Fellow at the NYU Law Family Defense Clinic.is a good introduction to the topic.
