by Adele

Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist studying infertility, abortion and adoption. She decided to publish this book about her research on adoption decision-making during the 2021 Supreme Court oral arguments for overturning Roe v. Wade, thus trashing the nationwide right to abortion. Conservative justices claimed eliminating abortion would not force the burden of parenting upon women because they could simply surrender their babies for adoption. Even liberals tend to present adoption as a positive choice and as common ground in the abortion debates.

ADOPTION IS NOT A SOLUTION

Sisson contributed to “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion” (2021) by Diana Greene Foster, PhD. One finding was that 91% of women denied an abortion decided to parent, only 9% choose adoption. Her current book also shows women do not tend to choose adoption as an alternative to abortion. They choose it as an alternative to parenting, but only under duress. 

Her work builds on Ann Fessler’s research from her book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade (2006). Both authors interviewed over a hundred birth mothers and included some interviews in their books. The women describe the situations leading to the relinquishment of their infants and its negative impact on their lives.

Fessler’s subjects surrendered infants during the 1950s and 1960s. They had little to no choice due to social pressure, most being unmarried, often teenagers. Relinquishment traumatized them, but media depictions of modern adoption claim it is now a mostly positive experience. Sisson’s subjects relinquished infants between 2000 and 2010 and varied in age, race, and economic class. They had relative legal and social freedom to make reproductive choices.

NEGATIVE VIEWS OF THOSE WHO RELINQUISH THEIR BABIES

Sisson shows how this supposed choice to relinquish actually comes under high pressure from circumstances. Some initially decided adoption was their only option to give their babies better lives. Interviewing them ten years later, Sisson found all had more negative views of adoption in their own cases and in general. “Kate” stated, “I don’t know anybody who would, all things considered, choose to place their kid for adoption. It has a lot to do with external factors that are not in their control. If I had a choice to change those external factors, I would have changed them up and parented.” Even the supposed reform of maintaining contact in “open” adoptions was often more complicated than expected and subject to the will of adoptive parents.

Interviewees discuss adoption agencies’ numerous unethical tactics. They target vulnerable women with advertising appearing on mobile phones in response to the phone’s location. A woman may receive adoption advertising after visiting a crisis pregnancy center or a drug treatment facility, or if she uses a pregnancy application. They manipulate and coerce women considering adoption during pregnancy and childbirth. 

Sisson’s research led her to study birth mothers and adoptees forming the adoption abolitionist movement. They recognize for-profit adoption as a form of human trafficking that treats children as commodities. 

Rooted in slavery, white supremacy and colonialism, modern adoption originated in removing, often forcefully, Black and Native American children from families and kinship networks. International adoption agencies take advantage of war and disasters without changing the situation. They just remove children from families and cultures, as Russia is doing to Ukrainian children today. Abolitionists are often affiliated with the Reproductive Justice movement, a human rights framework created by Black feminists.

Sisson explains, “Abolition is about creating the conditions under which adoption, as it is practiced today, becomes obsolete.” Some organizations provide peer support and emergency help to new birthmothers. Their ultimate goal is a justice system that finds ways to keep children in their families, sometimes under guardianship arrangements. Currently, tax money funds right-wing projects like anti-abortion centers and tax credits for adoptive parents. Instead, it can support projects proven to work in other countries and in the U.S. under the 2021 American Rescue Plan. These include universal basic income, parental leave, affordable housing, and access to employment, healthcare, education, drug treatment, and childcare. This movement of survivors shows we can resist commodification of people and instead create a society of truly human connection.