Tag: termination of parental rights

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Flipping the Script: Adoption and Reproductive Justice

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By Kimberly McKee

Adoption is a reproductive justice issue. Pretending otherwise ignores how adoption is used as a red herring in anti-abortion arguments. A recent invocation of this faulty logic occurred in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s questions during the November 2021 oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Coney Barrett’s statements implied that the option to relinquish infants vis-à-vis adoption rendered abortion availability unnecessary. This line of thinking is one with which I am familiar, as both a Korean international, transracial adoptee, and a critical adoption studies scholar. 

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Adoptee Rights and Adoption Annulment

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By Gregory Luce

Annulling or legally ending an adoption is not a new concept, but it has rarely applied to the benefit of adopted people. Instead, informal practices, as well as specific legal frameworks dating back more than 100 years, have long-supported a “right of return” policy for adoptive parents who no longer feel an adoption is beneficial or even desired.

Activists within today’s adoptee rights movement, however, are working to establish a right to end a person’s own adoption by building on what has long existed in the law for adoptive parents, but refocusing it on the specific demands for autonomy of adopted people, particularly those who do not view adoption to be in their best interests.

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Striving Towards Ethical Adoption Practice

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By Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander

In the United States, the practices of adoption are rarely oriented towards the goals of anti-racism, child-centeredness, and reproductive justice.

In this article, I present a model that strives to fulfill these goals. At Pact, an Adoption Alliance, the non-profit organization where I work as agency and clinical director, our mission is to serve adopted youth of color, and our approach to domestic infant adoption emerges from 30 years of serving Black, Latinx, Asian, and multiracial infants and their families. Based on our work with adopted children and adults of color, first/birth1 and adoptive parents, and adoption professionals, I will share our tenets of ethical adoption practice.

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Understanding Transracial Adoption: Life-long Transformations, Not Frictionless Transactions 

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By April Dinwoodie

I took a long, slow, deep breath when I heard Amy Coney Barrett, the adoptive mother of Black children, describe adoption as a “frictionless alternative to abortion.” As a Black/bi-racial transracially adopted person in mid-life, adoption has been and continues to be many things, but “frictionless” isn’t one of them.  

On the contrary, being adopted into a white family and raised in a majority white community has been filled with the tension between the realities of what I was experiencing and feeling, and what others thought I should be. For me, Amy Coney Barrett ridiculously over-simplified the most intricate experience of identity one can have, being born into one family and raised by another. This is especially complex when the separation includes differences of race, ethnicity, and culture. 

What I have learned over time is that Amy Coney Barrett is not alone in her desire to categorize adoption as uncomplicated and a good solution for everyone connected to the experience. What I have also learned is that this kind of thinking more broadly is unrealistic and often results in gaps in services and support for all parents (expectant, birth, and adoptive) and leaves adopted persons without the tools they need to navigate this lifelong, transformational journey.  

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A Birthmother Reflects: The Perpetuation of Adoption Myths

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By Angie Swanson-Kyriaco

During opening remarks for Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on December 1, 2021, Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated that the “obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy” and the “burden” of parenting are eliminated through adoption.

It is no surprise that a conservative, anti-abortion, adoptive parent would have an over-simplified opinion about adoption, expectant parents, and birth parents. In her remarks, Justice Coney Barrett demonstrated a common lack of understanding about the complexities of adoption, and a blithe unawareness about adoption ethics and the need for adoption reform.

As someone who worked for over a decade in the field of reproductive health and rights, and now as the executive director of one of the only nonprofit organizations in the country that exclusively serves first/birth mothers who have relinquished infants for adoption, I know both how detrimental the lack of access to abortion can be, and how significant the lifelong impact of an adoption can prove.

And, as a first/birthmother, I have a deep personal understanding of the significant trauma of placing my own child for adoption, and the lifelong grief and ambiguous loss that follows relinquishment. 

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