Adoption Not Abortion

The current stance of the alt-right says that abortion is immoral and the obvious choice is adoption. They’ve made an entire slogan out of it: Adoption not Abortion. And this slogan encapsulates a demonization of the birthmothers who give their children up and paints the adoptive parents as saviors. I mean, check out the last presidential proclamation for National Adoption Month this past November: “Adoption affirms the inherent value of human life and signals that every child ‑‑ born or unborn ‑‑ is wanted and loved.” Unborn? Good job, Prezzo, we already knew your stance on abortion. Personally, I think God is getting in the way of reproductive legislation.

Because if adoption is so much more preferable, why don’t they fund more empathic legislation for adoptees and birth parents? And why won’t they fund the overflowing orphanages and foster care homes? They say they do, but they don’t. And worse, why is adoption (domestic AND international) such a lucrative market? 

In this narrative, it’s the money and the religious beliefs that do the loudest talking. 

Let's be clear: the canon of this narrative says that adoption is preferable to abortion because God loves all the unborn babies. 

The violation of this canon is the unaccounted for trauma that accompanies adoption and what happens to the children after they've been "saved" from abortion. 

You can’t be against terminating unwanted pregnancies if you aren’t prepared to deal with the children that result from them. That’s where the narrative fails. Adoption not Abortion? These are two separate stories.

This morning I called my Dad. He’s where I get my brain from, and most of our phone calls involve topics like taxes, Roth IRA’s, mutual funds, or the science fiction novels we are reading. I’m firmly convinced he knows almost everything, and he is always open to a good debate. Sometimes I ask him hard questions; after all, he was the first person I told about my addiction problems (and addiction was really just a cover for my real emotional problems) back in 2012. He can handle almost anything, and it always amazes me. Unblinking, he helped me admit myself to rehab. I bring all kinds of questions to him, most of them questions that my Mom either isn’t qualified to answer or is too emotional to consider. The gender gap in my family is something I’ve long given up on fixing. So when I need a calculated answer, I call my Dad. 

This morning I asked him how much my adoption cost him. 

“$10,000,” he said, “but that’s just ballpark. Don’t forget we had to pay lawyers, had to pay the home, had to pony up gas for several trips to San Antonio, and, of course, all the normal baby stuff like a crib and all so the expenses were spread out in different increments.” 

“That’s it?” I asked. According to my google search (which pulled up the exact home I’d been placed out of), the average cost for a domestic adoption of an infant in Texas spans from $14K to $40K. Each case is its own, so it’s difficult to pin down an exact number. 

“Well, don’t forget inflation, Shannon,” he said. 

“Right,” I said as I pulled up an inflation calculator. It’s been long enough that the numbers will have changed pretty drastically. 

Still on the low end of the range, this is what it cost my parents to bring me home back in 1991 when adoption legislation was undergoing a serious makeover going from all closed adoptions to all open adoptions. My sister and I were born exactly in the middle of this transition and we have semi-closed adoptions. The best of both worlds. Or the worst. It depends on the day, really. 

Raised in a strictly conservative home, I grew up knowing I was adopted. I don’t remember finding out at all; I just remember how wonderful I felt that I was chosen. I was a gift from God. I was special. I was a goddamn snowflake, and I was supposed to be grateful that I hadn’t been aborted. I was supposed to be grateful that my birth mother had the sense to give me away to a family that could love me and care for me in ways that she couldn’t. 

And it’s true. I’m a total brat. I grew up in a Methodist home, was baptized Methodist, went to church camps, sang in choirs, marched in bands, got homework help from my parents who held two separate bachelor’s degrees, had a large house and a larger backyard, got a brand-new car when I graduated high school, and more. I had a very typical upper middle-class home life that many folks would envy. Do envy. 

Yet there’s something missing. A part of me, a whole story, that evaporated the day that Mom and Dad came to pick me up from the hospital. I could write a whole book on all the sad birthdays I’ve endured, sad birthdays that, even without my understanding why they were sad, happened anyway because there is no story to attach to the day. I was born in some mysterious hospital in San Antonio. I don’t think my parents were even there. 

So you can imagine my frustration when conservative politicians group me and others like me into the reproductive justice group as some kind of alternative option. Or maybe you can’t. And it’s bullshit because we all know that politicians see the money first. But adoptions cost exponentially more than abortions do. But they cost the people who can afford those costs, not the birthmothers. And so the market remains lucrative. 

There’s this narrative that exists about adoption now. It’s changed faces many times over many years, but the current face, though charming on first glance, is just as damaging as many of the first narratives. Maybe you’re familiar, maybe you’re not. Here it is:

Adoption is the best choice for the birth mother; she’s giving her baby more opportunities in life, in fact she’s giving her baby the best gift of all, life itself. It’s the best choice for the adoptive parents; they get a baby all their own to love despite circumstances that might not have previously allowed for a child at all. It’s the best choice for the child; they’ll grow up happy and healthy in a stereotypical American home. 

Triple win, right? In some ways, yes. I did win the parent lottery.

My Mom and Dad with my Birthmother & me.
San Antonio, TX 1991. 

But adoption is SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT. 

Sure, there are reports of guilt that come from abortion (and I am in no way trying to minimize that agonizing pain), but the intensity of that grief pales in comparison to the lifelong impact of relinquishing a child to parents “more qualified” than you (I could write an entire essay relating adoption in America to colonialism, but I’ll spare you). And it definitely pales in comparison to the kind of emotional turmoil that being an adoptee entails. I should fucking know. And my parents would know, too. After all, they’re the ones who have footed the bill to bring me home and for God knows how many counselors and therapists, the rehab, and jail visits. Just like any kid, an adopted kid is expensive, but unlike most kids, they must deal with extremely advanced emotional processes. I’m still learning how to talk about mine.

And interestingly enough, I have been shamed for supporting abortion because, “what if YOU were aborted, Shannon? How can you support that when you were born instead of aborted?” Well. I wouldn’t have awareness of it, would I? And my birth mother wouldn’t feel so damn guilty every five years or so for not writing a letter that must be sent through an agency to get to me. A whole lifetime she’ll feel uneasy. She might feel better now, now that we’ve both fallen off the circuit. I don’t know. I do, and I don’t. 

Adoption and abortion are so far from similar, it aggravates me when people group them together. These are two separate stories, but we are so lazy, we’ve grouped them in as one. And it’s bullshit. 

What’s the story? The story is that poor and uneducated (probably) women, usually minorities, are getting pregnant because of their lack of access to birth control. If they abort, they’re heartless killers who care more about themselves than an unborn fetus, or baby, SORRY. And if they adopt, they’re choosing the most selfless path for themselves and their baby. But this doesn’t account for the grief of the adoptee or the birth mother at all. And you can say, what about counseling? But I can tell you that adoption counseling itself is a sticky place to be. I’ve never met an adoption counselor that was also adopted, and even the adoption process only gives you a few workshops to attend before handing you a child. There’s no way you can learn all the intricacies of an adopted child in a few weekends. My mother alone owns a complete library of parenting books, and she still struggled. (Granted, I was a special kind of asshole when I learned about some of the harder facts of my adoption.) 

And that’s just the adoptee. Can you imagine what a birthmother goes through?  I’ve given birth and it sucked donkey balls, guys. I can’t fucking imagine doing that and then handing off the results of my hard work off before I’m even able to pee by myself again. Can you imagine? Not only lifelong emotional pain for the mother, but for the child as well. Adoption doubles the pain. It’s happiness and grief and confusion and misplacement and gratitude and hope and shame all wrapped into one tortilla. It’s complicated.

I can tell you right now that the only reason I didn’t abort my own baby is for the simple fact that I wanted, no, I needed somebody just like me. I’ve never had that, a real family member with my own blood, and every single day I’m happy to have her. Think Meet the Robinsons here. But if I wouldn’t have had that need being an adoptee myself, which do you think I would have picked? A termination of the pregnancy or lifelong suffering, wondering if my baby was okay in the arms of strangers, knowing her confusion not unlike my own at her adoption, grieving that I wasn’t in a better position to parent? Like my birthmother before me, I don’t make a ton of money, and I take winding paths to nowhere often as I try to find my place in the world. Maybe she’d be better off without me, but I’m better off with her.

Me and my mini-me

And for all the (little) work we’ve done in legislation about adoption across the country, this “option” is still the most emotionally fraught of them all. So when you say Adoption not Abortion, are you really thinking of the child and the family? Do you realize which is more cost effective? Or are you just determined to group some women as unqualified mothers when really, they just don’t have as much money and therefore less access to things like birth control, abortions, etc.? How long will we demonize the working class, encourage grief without offering adequate support? Why do you support pro-life choices when the children that result from those coulda-been abortions grow into confused adults when their adoptive parents don’t know how to approach such heavy topics?

I’m tired of having to explain that I don’t, in fact, wish I had been aborted, that I’m happy with the family I have, and yet I’m curious about where I came from, and I support the women who choose to abort their pregnancies. But I’ll be explaining it the rest of my life because these narratives about family and what they should look like go far far back in our history. The narrative that groups adoption and abortion all together leaves a gaping hole—that hole is the emotional expense that birthmothers, adoptees, adoptive families, and foster families pay.

And that shit can’t be wrapped up in a stupid slogan.