Redefining tragedy

I confess to being baffled by this article on adoption, proving that I will never get feminism. The writer is adopted and loves her parents. That said, while suffering from infertility, she has decided that she cannot support adoption for political reasons, best explained by reading the whole thing. One snippet:

I am part of a growing number of adult adoptees who view adoption as a feminist issue, part of a continuum of reproductive rights. This perspective extends to the right to raise one’s child the same importance as the right to choose whether or not to bear one.

In her book “Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States,” feminist historian Rickie Solinger examines adoption through this lens of reproductive rights. She states, “I believe it is crucial to consider the degree to which one woman’s possession of reproductive choice may actually depend on or deepen another woman’s reproductive vulnerability.” In other words, how might an individual woman’s right to choose adoption actually exploit another woman’s lack of rights?

Jae Ran Kim, a social worker, adoption scholar and author of the blog Harlow’s Monkey, is a Korean adoptee. She echoed Solinger’s call for a broader consideration of reproductive rights: “Who has access to reproductive choice? We focus so much on abortion as a feminist issue, we haven’t talked about a woman’s right to parent.”

Shannon Gibney, an African-American adoptee, activist and writer, said that many of her colleagues have redefined reproductive rights as “reproductive justice,” which has broader implications beyond individualism and invites interrogation of systems of oppression versus privileging the individual. Using this language, Gibney explains, a woman can ask herself, “How can I make the most just decision, given my current historical context?”

Well, I'm not sure institutionalised children care much about historical contexts. Their view of justice is probably more in the realm of sating the deep desire for a family as quickly as possible, which the Church teaches is composed of a mother and father committed to each other in a life-long union.

Technically speaking, justice was undermined well before the wallpaper dried on the orphanage walls -- and that would be when men took sexual favours without being committed to the outcomes. Everything after that becomes scrambled, whether those favours were legitimately for sale, stolen through violence, or offered up in the heat of mutual passion.

Of course, feminists don't give a fig about fatherhood, so it's not a consideration in determining the best interest of the child. Come to think of it, the best interest of the child doesn't seem to be the driving element either. In the myopic world of feminism, it's "all women, all the time." The notion that a home elsewhere is equipped with a resident and devoted paternal unit simply doesn't register. The "right to mother" (evidently the flip side of, "nah, I'd rather abort") seems to be the only yardstick.

Since (as always) it's the child who pays the greatest price, I think the author should look at the needs of the babies, not the question of whether he will subsequently cross a border or the birth mother has reproductive rights. The latter is what got us into this mess -- since it escalates the amount of uncommitted liasons, and leaving the inevitable progeny to pout over their gruel for political reasons misses the point.

Comments

[Heidi Saxton]

Yes, Genevieve. It amazes me when adult adoptees spend so much time ranting against the "system" that enabled them to have a family, and an education, and a standard of living that affords them the luxury of being able to rage against such "injustice." (What's the opposite of "sour grapes"?)

Yes, in many other countries the stigma of unmarried motherhood prevails for the simple reason that sex outside of marriage is a destructive "force of nature." What has happened to American culture is proof of this. When sex is removed from the context of marriage, families and especially children suffer.

Yes, there are women who are being oppressed, and men who are not called to be accountable for their actions. This needs to change. But it must start with us, as women. How can we expect men to treat us, and especially our sexuality, with greater respect than we treat ourselves?