Transcript!

PDF transcript. Also available via our Buzzsprout page.

Shownotes
(because citations are political)

This is the fourth of our 4 episode miniseries on religion and adoption, which actually turned out to have five episodes because, well, there were just too many horrors to be neatly contained in an outline.

In this episode, we revisit reproductive freedom, and how the history of the (lack of) reproductive freedom is 1000000% part of the conversation about adoption.

We also offer a content warning: adoption and the constellation of issues that surrounds it—appropriately or not, things like abortion, abandonment, child abuse & neglect, infertility, histories of religio-racist child removal—is hard for lots of folks. Really hard. So if these frank, data-driven episodes aren’t for you where you’re at? No worries. We have so many other things to listen to.

In this episode, we talked about reproductive freedom. We said that while we are very used to imagining adoption as a solution for abortion, that this is fundamentally a pack of lies that are—you guessed it!—part and parcel of white Christian supremacy and hegemony. We talked about how adoption became viewed as a solution for abortion (which, for the record, nerds, needs no solution since it is not a problem), but we also talked about how adoption is not a solution for infertility, either.

Adoption is part of conversations about reproductive freedom issue for a few reasons. The ones we talked about included:

1. Folks who want pregnable people to lack bodily autonomy. So, if you’re someone who hates the idea that folks with uteruses might make decisions you would not make about that uterus and any potentially fertilized eggs within, you’d be hellbent on promising freedom from parenting since you’re legislating the lack of freedom over one’s own body.

2. Selling adoption as a solution to infertility. Sadly? This ain’t it, either. Adoption is not a solution for infertility. People who are medically infertile, for any number of reasons, remain infertile after adopting a child. People who experience multiple miscarriages do not lose that risk because or when they adopt.

3. Thinking of adoption as part of reproductive freedom already assumes that adoption is about adults—adults who are pregnant and don’t want to be, adults who have children they cannot care for, and adults who want children. None of these wanting adults figures what adoption actually is, though: care for a guardianless child.

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Homework

We cited numerous medical surveys. THese are almost exclusively drawn from medical journals, which are behind paywalls. Let us know if we can get you access.
(IRMF, here: I’m leaving this as a contextual paragraph, since you likely won’t have access/logins, and a bulleted list seems … ineffective.)

We talked about health disparities between adoptees and non-adoptees, which appear differently over the life of the adoptee. Some factors include: the stress it causes newborns to be separated from the birthing parent; about the unique medical care of adoptees at any age, in light of incomplete or missing medical records; about infant adoptees being more prone to colic; about adoptees being more prone to PTSD and CPTSD; about adoptees needing medical care that reflects their status as adoptees; long term mental health disparities, which increases if the adoptee had been in multiple placements or without a placement for longer periods of time or are of differing races from their parents; and we know that adoptees, while subject to a lot of medical screening, undergo those medical screenings for issues of public health (as is the case especially in international adoption) or suitability (as in, maybe this child isn’t well or able enough to be adopted outright). 

Other Resources:

• REBECCA RANDALL, https://sojo.net/articles/decades-churches-forced-unwed-mothers-adoptions “FOR DECADES, CHURCHES FORCED UNWED MOTHERS INTO ADOPTIONS” 10/17/23 Sojourners 

• Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature: Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion by Alice Diver (2023) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-46246-7#toc

• Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants by Sunah M. Laybourn (NYU 2024) https://nyupress.org/9781479814770/out-of-place/

• Books by adoptees:

• Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know https://www.amazon.com/All-You-Can-Ever-Know/dp/1936787970

• She also is on the podcast Divided Families about transracial adoption, and it is a very solid episode. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-31-writing-a-transracial-adoption-story-for/id1494522013?i=1000520480225 

• Barbara Gowen’s Blending IN: Crisscrossing the Lines of Race, REligion, and Adoption https://www.amazon.com/Blending-Crisscrossing-Religion-Family-Adoption/dp/0595443850

• These next few are a little in the self-help realm, but relevant: 

• 20 Life Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make by Sherrie Eldridge https://www.amazon.com/Life-Transforming-Choices-Adoptees-Need-Second/dp/1849057745

• 20 Things ADopted Kids Wished Their Parents Knew by Sherie Eldrige https://www.amazon.com/Life-Transforming-Choices-Adoptees-Need-Second/dp/1849057745

• “This Land” podcast by Cherokee writer and activist Rebecca Nagle about the ways US institutions use Native children to undermine Native sovereignty.

Religion Is Not Done With You

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