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Adoption means abortion just isn't necessary, SCOTUS claims: That's even worse than it sounds
Link to tweet
https://www.salon.com/2022/05/03/adoption-makes-abortion-unnecessary-claims-the-right-thats-even-worse-than-it-sounds/
"Less abortion, more adoption. Why is that controversial?"
That was the response of Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, to Politico's bombshell revelation Monday night: a leaked Supreme Court majority opinion suggesting that we face the imminent reversal of Roe v. Wade.
About halfway through the 98-page opinion, which was authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito — and which Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged on Tuesday as genuine — came a familiar argument: that "modern developments," including the availability of "safe-haven" laws, which allow parents to anonymously relinquish babies without legal repercussions, have rendered abortion unnecessary. The opinion noted that "a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home."
Tucked into a footnote for that statement was a telling citation from a 2008 CDC report that found "nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e., they were in demand for a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent."
*snip*
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dchill
(42,660 posts)... don't even think it's fucked up.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)shortage of white, healthy babies waiting to be adopted.
It is, btw, far more expensive, time consuming, and problematic to adopt than to just do yer basic roll in the hay one night.
PatSeg
(53,214 posts)Many privileged, entitled women out there want a baby, so we'll turn less fortunate women into breeders to fill the demand. Of course, safe affordable contraception, sex education, and more male responsibility would in most cases "render abortion unnecessary", but they don't want to hear that. Those solutions don't serve their purpose. The cruelty and arrogance is stunning.
dalton99a
(94,109 posts)EXPAND THE COURT
lastlib
(28,258 posts)Most abortions are done for MEDICAL reasons. NO amount of adoptions will save the life of a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy. I won't preach to the choir here, but Adoption. Is. NOT. An. Answer. in most cases.
Rhiannon12866
(255,497 posts)
uponit7771
(93,532 posts)
JoeOtterbein
(7,869 posts)...they want a steady supply of cheap labor.
chowder66
(12,240 posts)
Solly Mack
(96,940 posts)
sheshe2
(97,620 posts)the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent."
Consumer shortages? Supply chains? Supply and demand? What, go out and rape a few more women and children until the supply chain has been replenished? Do they work on a commission basis?
Amy is one hardhearted, cold and evil woman. Supply and demand. I am going to be sick now. Coldest thing I have ever heard from a woman.
Claire Oh Nette
(2,636 posts)Adoption is not the opposite of abortion.
Parenting your own child is.
Abortion is not the opposite of adoption.
Parenting your own child is.
Adoptees are not props.
Surrendering a child from its mother is TRAUMA.
Losing a child is trauma.
Infertile couples are not entitled to other people's children.
The entire adoption discussion is from the perspective of the adoptors. No domestic supply means birth control and Roe work, and women are keeping their babies.
PatSeg
(53,214 posts)Giving a child up for adoption often ends in a lifetime of pain and trauma for both the mother and child. Though adoption can be a reasonable solution in many cases, it certainly isn't the only one. The assumption that people who are privileged and financially well-off make better parents is truly offensive and arrogant.
Yes I agree, that adoption discussions are almost always from the perspective of the adoptors and the mothers are often used and discarded to fulfill someone else's dreams and desires.
Claire Oh Nette
(2,636 posts)Read about the Baby Scoop Era.
Lots of adult adoptees in the 40s 50s, 60s who are livid right now.
Read the Girls Who Went Away, or Wake up Little Susie for a good look, and ask the adopted friend you have if they agree with this colonialism & cavalier position.
Adoption is predicated on loss, and society does not permit the birth mothers or adoptees to grieve those losses. Unresolved grief comes out sideways. And I had a "good" adoption.
Abortion should make adoption all but unnecessary.
It's patriarchal social engineering and punishing women for being caught having sex.
PatSeg
(53,214 posts)I am both an adoptee and a birth mother and the grief and loss stay with you for a lifetime, especially when you were never permitted to grieve openly. Instead you are expected to be perpetually "grateful". Meanwhile, the fathers rarely suffer any consequences.
There are so many stories of both adoptees and mothers spending much of their adult lives searching for their lost loved ones. Sadly, even if they find who they're looking for, that hole from the original loss doesn't go away. So much damage.
Edit to add: Every time I see Amy Coney Barrett, it just brings that pain to the surface all over again.
Claire Oh Nette
(2,636 posts)I've buried both my mothers now, and those losses reverberate into infinity.
My maternal half sister said to me, six years into reunion, I "should be over it by now."
Um. Wow. She's ten years younger, b. in 76 and doesn't remember at all how it was. Girls still went away when I was in high school.
Big hug to you.
PatSeg
(53,214 posts)Sadly, many who have not experienced it can't begin to understand. I really don't expect them to, but I also don't need them telling me what I should feel. Sometimes it is okay to just say, "I can't imagine what that must be like."
Of course life is full of pain and loss for everyone, but for many of us there is also the loss of experiences we never could have and the pain we were never allowed to share. A lot of details fade over time, but the emotions are always with us.
Hugs to you too!
Hekate
(100,133 posts)Last edited Sat May 7, 2022, 04:19 AM - Edit history (1)
… of keeping it were something you can’t even imagine today. I remember. The swelling belly was public proof of their “sin,” and then of course the baby was too. Birth certificates stamped “Illegitimate.”
Interesting that Alito’s draft brings back the old vocabulary of shame: “Out of Wedlock,” “Unwed mother,” “Illegitimate,” the words I remember from my girlhood.
Odd thing though, I remember reading at one point about the adoption industry: white babies were readily adopted, but black babies were usually folded back into their communities. Why? Because black babies were not wanted for adoption by the majority (i.e. white couples). White babies were wanted by white infertile couples — and I think that fact had something to do with the intense pressure put on young women to give up their infants, often without even being able to hold them after birth.
Something changed to dry up the source of adoptable babies though: reliable contraception. The Pill. IUDs. Legal and safe abortion. Isn’t that something?
And isn’t it just gobsmacking that the same people that want desperately to overturn Roe also want to overturn Griswold, which was about contraception.
One hand washes the other….
Buckeyeblue
(6,351 posts)There families made the decision and they risked alienation and extreme poverty if they went the route of parenting their child.
I would add that the other reason for the "shortage" of babies to adopt, aside from better birth control and access to legal abortion is that the stigma around being a young single or just single mother has all but disappeared. Except for the old bitties from the church, it's a non-issue.
I would say because this "stigma" has dissipated, more women decide to raise their babies, with, I might add, enthusiastic support from their parents. So these middle to upper middle class women are not longer emotionally forced into placing their babies up for adoption.
It's just a different world.
But using adoption as a reason to deny reproductive civil rights is not a legal opinion. It's just an opinion.
shrike3
(5,370 posts)Claire Oh Nette
(2,636 posts)Wake Up Little Susie looks at this very issue.
Yes some Black infants were adopted, but the adoptive parents of the 50s and 60s and 70s wanted white infants. WHen that source dried up in the 70s, they turned to Korea and Vietnam to avoid Black children.
Adoption is largely a white, middle class phenomena. Black people keep their children. Poor women do not have the means to pay $1500 in 1966 to stay at a Home for Unwed Mothers. (and yes, that pejorative has crept back into the lexicon. Fun fact: all those "premature" first borns you know? Those weddings followed by a baby in five or six months?)
Affluent women were free to travel to Illinois or California, or overseas.
Social workers targeted vulnerable women, especially those rising up into the middle class who feared losing all their status. My own birthmother declared, when she was 70, "I embarrassed my mother." THis embarrassment was non-existent a year later when my birth mother found herself pregnant again with my half brother. They preyed on those girls' parents, too.
They'd like to bring back the Comstock Act, and undo the 19th amendment, along with the 13th, 14th, and 15th. ALito an his ilk want the world of his great grandparents--with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor.
Hekate
(100,133 posts)Thank you for filling this in. I ran out of steam before I got to that, but it was in the back of my mind. Thank you.
Karma13612
(4,981 posts)And remember Barrett very much focused on the ‘safe-haven’ laws. When I heard that, I was not surprised, and knew that she had already rationalized that ‘everything will be OK’ as long as the woman can give birth and hand the baby over to the local church.
Forget the previous 9 career-changing-financial-ruining-body-altering-mentally-taxing months of the woman’s life. Just pop the baby out, deposit in the church inbox and on your way you go.
This coming from a member of SCOTUS of the United States of America
Karma13612
(4,981 posts)Probably nearly a decade ago.
They were admitting that it was getting harder to enlist GOOD, educated people for the service. Yea, you had those joining, but the education and suitability of the enlistees was not where it need to be. There was concern that we wouldn’t have enuf good soldiers.
I could be way off base (no pun intended) but, what if one of the reasons for outlawing abortion in so many states is to ‘produce’ and guarantee plenty of bodies for the military?
Beside controlling women, they can keep us “Army strong”.
Just a thought….
ck4829
(37,758 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)created critical demand for immigrant labor in many nations. Subjection of women to men and with it a feeling that women have a duty to reproduce are both intrinsic to the RW nationalist authoritarianism rising in many nations and most continents.
Karma13612
(4,981 posts)ck4829
(37,758 posts)PA Democrat
(13,428 posts)with a society where women are placed in a position of such desperation that they surrender their child via a "safe haven" box; where women face the highest risk of maternal death among 11 developed countries.
https://www.ajmc.com/view/us-ranks-worst-in-maternal-care-mortality-compared-with-10-other-developed-nations
And let's conveniently gloss over the fact that there is very little demand for adoption of babies who are black or babies born with disabilities.
Karma13612
(4,981 posts)shrike3
(5,370 posts)Forcing a woman to give birth so that someone else can adopt the child is insane.
nolabear
(43,850 posts)First, adoption has been horribly abused forever. The things people have done in that field have been monstrous.
And it’s got particular problems in the best of circumstances. Each case involves a potentially large number of people—child, adoptive parents, birth parents, birth siblings and relatives, adoptive siblings and relatives—whose lives intertwine in complex ways. At best everyone is trying to give children good lives and to fulfill a dream in a different way. At worst children are commodities and seen as such.
My kids have as much relationship with the birth mothers, and in one case the birth father, as is good for the families. It’s not been easy. Not all adults function well and giving the little ones an honest understanding of why they’re adopted can be hard to do. I’ve admired their respect for the birth families, the way they’re age appropriately helping their children figure out what they want that relationship to be over the years. And to protect our beloved little ones from potential harm To see them as elites who have no thought for how many people are impacted is dismissive of everyone involved. This stuff is hard, and the love is tremendous, and the dangers can be daunting.
I guess this is just to say be careful always in assuming things are black and white. These are people, all of them, and even the ones whose actions you might not understand or condone are real and need support. We try. We adore those babies. We have compassion for the extended families and fervently hope we can guide our grand babies into a life where they know they are valued and protected by a lot of very complicated people.
So that’s one way these things go. Just in case y’all are interested.
Claire Oh Nette
(2,636 posts)As is good for the families. If genetics and family history weren't important, there'd be no market for genealogy and 23 and me. Surrogacy is a separate issue as well. Protecting a child from harm, then telling that same child that merely knowing their birth mother's name is harmful, that their own family members = harm is, well, harmful. Can everyone's birth parents be perfectly middle class librarians teachers golf coaches and postal workers? The only real harm was separating me from my mother at birth, then asking me and everyone else * to pretend it never happened* is a recipe for deep psychological trauma.
Your grandchildren can take for granted the luxury of the truth. It's their truth, and it happened to them.
Open adoption is a very different beast from coerced adoption practices pre-Roe and through the 70s until white women either aborted or kept their babies. The assumption that all mothers who surrender are damaged or harmful is breathtaking.
nolabear
(43,850 posts)I think you’re saying open adoption is easier on the children, which I think is true though it’s got its own things that must be dealt with. I think you’re saying that having access to DNA is good, and I agree with that. I have a nephew whose adoption from years ago is closed and he’s got health issues he’s struggling to know if they’re inherited as he tries to decide on his own course. It’s so hard.
I’m not sure what you mean by white women aborting or having no issues. I truly don’t. Can you help me?
Ilsa
(64,362 posts)I'm serious. All I saw was shoulder-shrugging ovef abortion until too many infertile white couples had to compete for babies.