As an adoptee how do you feel about the issue of abortion?
I’m very strongly pro-choice & pro-abortion. Birth is an expensive, physically & emotionally traumatic, and often times a physically disabling event.
Not only that but you’re expected to raise a child, provide care, love, emotional intelligence, as well as basic needs. No one should be forced into that. No child should be born into a place where they aren’t supported, loved or cared for.
Adoption is not an easy substitute for abortion. Adoption is Trauma. It’s being forcibly & non-consensually taken from your biological parent which causes lasting physical and emotional harm. Including neurodevelomental damage, & a dysregulated nervous system from the day you’re born.
How do you feel being adopted has affected your opinion on abortion?
Being adopted has very little sway on me being pro-choice. People should be in complete control of their own bodies and their futures. No matter what they choose to do.
Many adoptees have been asked "Aren't you glad you weren't aborted?", what is your response to that?
What happened, happened. I wish my bio family would have had the resources and support to keep me, but also if she truly wanted it I wish that my bio mom could have aborted the embryo that would eventually be me.
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?
Definitely. My adoptive parents were not great. They were manipulative & neglectful, and as I grew older showed me how racist & homophobic they were. But they were comfortably middle class and therefore felt entitled to “save” a child through adoption.
I was made to feel grateful for being adopted. I was told that the best thing my bio mom had ever done in her life was give me up so my adoptive mom could be a mother. I was told to not go seeking my bio family because they were probably poor, or drug users, or violent.
They weren’t. They were loving & caring. And it hurt to learn that I could have had that as my upbringing. It’s been hard to come face to face with that rhetoric. That my adoption was a gift or blessing or morally pure. The superiority they felt for “saving me.” The box that they tried to fit me in & their abandonment of me when I didn’t fit in it neatly.
Can you talk about a time when you felt pressured to have an opinion on abortion?
I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone in my life who was anti-abortion. Even my adoptive parents were oddly pro-abortion (although I suspect it was a eugenics motivation to support abortions & not bodily autonomy) And I definitely don’t get into arguments with trolls, fascists, or evangelicals. They aren’t making you get into impassioned arguments because they want to learn about others perspectives or grow - They are just there to cause chaos and hatred in the world. I usually just block, or walk away from anyone who is a troll.
I’ve never been anti-abortion. No one should have the right to deny anyone complete autonomy over their body. Whether it’s abortion, disability justice, gender & sexuality- or anything else.
Comments