Mari Arneson

As an adoptee how do you feel about the issue of abortion?

I am staunchly pro-abortion.

How do you feel being adopted has affected your opinion on abortion? 

I don't think my adoptee identity consciously impacted my position on abortion. Perhaps the annoyance of anti-abortion fanatics using adoption and adoptees has strengthened my position, but I don't think I considered my adoptee identity as a deciding factor.

Many adoptees have been asked "Aren't you glad you weren't aborted?", what is your response to that? 

I would support my birth parent in making the best decision for themselves. Am I happy to be alive, yes. But if my birth parent had had an abortion then I wouldn't have had an opinion anyway. Me currently being happy to be alive and living my life doesn't supersede or even conflict with my birth parent's right to bodily autonomy.

Have you ever felt like your experience of being an adoptee has been misrepresented or used to advance a certain rhetoric? How does this make you feel? 

e. v. e. r. y. d. a. y. People who tout themselves as "pro-life" are in no way actually pro-life. They are simply anti-abortion and feel the need to force their beliefs on other people - even though they are not at all impacted if someone else makes this decision. They use adoption and adoptees as pawns in their political/religious rhetoric when in reality they don't give a shit about us.