I'm opposed to any attempts to restrict access to something that constitutes basic medical care. It's less a matter of an adoptee experience and more about having common sense, and a basic understanding of history: remember, the evangelical right in the US was in favor of abortion because it was a factor that distinguished them from Catholics, which mattered quite a bit to them. That it's become a lightning rod issue has been a concerted effort of myth making by radicals for decades.
How do you feel being adopted has affected your opinion on abortion?
I was raised in a more evangelical sect, and experienced the mindset, and experienced being a prop trotted out for anti-choice rallies. I was smart and quiet and well behaved- a model child- and thus became an example for all the folks at my church to point to for the evils of abortion.
Many adoptees have been asked "Aren't you glad you weren't aborted?", what is your response to that?
"Fuck you," is my main response. This isn't a good faith argument, it's a rhetorical trick, and it's not truly worthy of any sort of real response. It's an insult, and it deserves an insult in return. What I'm glad about is that my birth mother lived in a world where she made a choice based on what she thought was best for her. I wouldn't take that choice away from her.
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?
Absolutely. The anti-choice rhetoric is very much dehumanizing, and built around a fiction of what adoption is- when at its core, adoption is a very traumatizing experience for both mothers and children; traumatizing in a way that society barely comprehends because we've spent so long building up a myth of adoption as an "alternative". And for that rhetoric to work, it depends on ignoring the actual experience of adoptees; it goes back to the old statement about how a fetus is the perfect political prop- they don't have opinions and can't disagree with you. This makes me furious.
Can you talk about a time when you felt pressured to have an opinion on abortion?
As a child, growing up in a conservative Christian movement, I was certainly told what opinion I should have. I even wrote letters to the President, expressing how important it was to me personally that abortion be ended. But I was a child. I didn't know what I was talking about. And yes, that also makes me angry
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