Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is not the first, and certainly won’t be the last, to pose abortion as a problem and adoption as its solution. The adoption argument has become a pillar of the anti-abortion movement’s platform. Each time the words abortion and adoption appear together in headlines, there’s a rapid and robust response from adoptees and others to counter the fallacious proposition. This time, however, Barrett’s comments have roused ire not only for their essential, objectionable content with respect to adoption, but also for the cavalier language she used to dismiss the impact giving birth has upon a woman’s health, her career, and her life.
During the recent Supreme Court oral arguments concerning Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, Barrett, an adoptive mother, not only posed adoption as a substitute for abortion, she further suggested that if the consequences and obligations of motherhood are deleterious to some women, they can simply sidestep the “problem” by taking advantage of safe-haven laws, as if dropping off a baby to a police or fire station has no repercussions to a mother or her baby. As if there were no career reverberations and no health risks. As if the wellbeing of the child were of no concern. As if it doesn’t matter that adoptees may be weary, enraged, or traumatized by having again and again to field a question that should never be posed: Would you rather have been aborted?
Unfortunately, the burden of dismantling these destructive narrative falls upon adoptees and allies. Following is a sampling of their efforts. Please join the conversation by adding your comments.
—BKJ
“I Was Adopted. I Know the Trauma It Can Inflict,” by Elizabeth Spiers, The New York Times
“What We Get Wrong About Adoption,” by Gretchen Sisson and Jessica M. Harrison, The Nation
“Adoption is Not the Answer to Abortion,” by Lora K. Joy, My Adoptee Truth
“Barrett is Wrong: Adoption Doesn’t ‘Take Care of’ the Burden of Motherhood,” by Gretchen Sisson, The Washington Post
“Why Adoption isn’t a Replacement for Abortion Rights,” by Anna North, Vox
“I’m Adopted and Pro-Choice. Stop Using My Story for the Anti-Abortion Agenda,” by Stephanie Drenka, HuffPost
“Amy Coney Barrett’s Adoption Myths. ‘They’re Co-opting Our Lives and Our Stories,’” by Irin Carmon, New York magazine.
“A Choice in Name Only,” by Nicole Chung, in “I Have Notes,” a newsletter from The Atlantic.
“Is Pro-Life Evangelicalism Killing Adoptees,” by Sara Easterly, Red Letter Christians
“Adoption is Not a Simple Solution to An Unwanted Pregnancy,” by Lucia Blackwell, The Seattle Times
“Adoption doesn’t mean abortion isn’t needed, even if some Supreme Court justices think so,” by Aimee Christian, NBC THINK