By Gretchen Sisson
When a draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was leaked last week, its content was a jarring shock for many. Over a few days, the surprise of the leak and the appall at the decision narrowed into specifics, and more people noticed what might have been missed in first reading: in a footnote, a passing citation from a fourteen-year-old report from the Centers for Disease Control that read, “the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth… had become virtually nonexistent.”
In coverage, this note sparked rage anew at the connection between abortion bans and increasing the supply of adoptable infants being made overt. Yet, much like those of us who study abortion in this country were not surprised by the draft of the decision, those of us who study adoption were even less surprised by this note. In the Dobbs oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett told us this was about adoption – and pre-Roe history has shown us how closely adoption and abortion are linked rhetorically, if not actually in people’s pregnancy decision-making. Yes, the Dobbs decision will also be about constraining people’s choices and controlling their lives and futures to conform to fundamentally regressive ideas about family, gender, and race. But then again: most often, so is adoption.
