I would rather jump through a glass window than talk to literally anyone about reproductive politics.
Given the choice between a very normal and appropriate conversation about reproductive politics and a glass window, I will be in the bushes out front, picking glass out of my torso.
That is because when I was 17 I got pregnant by accident and placed my baby for adoption.
As such, I have two options during these conversations: Stay quiet about my intimate familiarity with unplanned pregnancy and the difficult choices that come with it, or speak up and make everyone uncomfortable.
If my conversation partner is pro-life, I get to watch their eyeballs spin as they think back over our discussion and try to remember if they said anything suggesting that people like me are irresponsible or immoral.
If they are pro-choice, I get to watch steam pour out of their ears as they wonder if it was rude to imply that my 9-year-old son was once a zygote.
The sudden appearance of a birth mother in conversations about reproductive politics makes people uncomfortable—and who can blame them?
Usually, if birth mothers get mentioned at all, they are people we talk about, not with.
By inviting birth mothers into our conversations, we risk complicating the stories we tell ourselves about adoption and the people who participate in it.
Left Behind
For nine years, I kept my adoption hidden from almost everyone in my life, and it was incredibly lonely.
“Coming out” as a birth mother has been a healing journey for me, but it has not made the loneliness go away.
In fact, it has made me painfully aware of the near-total absence of birth mothers in media, politics, religion, family, academics and medicine.
That absence can be traced back to some deep-rooted societal discomfort with the institution of adoption.
For a long time, stigmas about infertility, illegitimacy, genetics and sexuality drove all three members of the adoption triad—birth parents, children and adoptive parents—to keep adoptions a secret.
“Coming out” as a birth mother has made me painfully aware of the near-total absence of birth mothers in media, politics, religion, family, academics and medicine.
Then, attitudes shifted. Today, U.S. culture largely celebrates adoption as a way to form new family ties.
Religious communities, particularly Catholic and Protestant Christian, played an important role in normalizing and encouraging adoptive families.
Meanwhile, adoption was ensconced in contemporary pro-life rhetoric.
If women get abortions because they do not want to be parents, the thinking goes, adoption is a life-affirming alternative.
But there is a problem. The cultural acceptance we rightly extended to adoptive parents and children was never extended to birth parents.
Birth mothers still feel pressure to keep their experiences secret, and that pressure speaks volumes about where our goodwill starts and ends.
While adoptive parents may enjoy telling new friends or coworkers their family’s origin story, I cannot talk about my adoption without sucking the air out of a room.
While most everyone can rattle off a handful of adoptive parents or children they know personally, few people can name a birth mother.
In fact, I have never met another in person, and I have been one for almost a decade.
While most everyone can rattle off a handful of adoptive parents or children they know personally, few people can name a birth mother.
In fact, I have never met another in person, and I have been one for almost a decade.
Erasing Loss and Silencing Grief
Adoption’s move from hushed-up transaction to mainstream ministry relied on its portrayal as a positive, happy thing. And it is a positive, happy thing.
Adoption creates entirely new families bound by a powerful love. But adoption is also a sad thing; a parent and child, whatever the circumstances, are separated.
Some birth mothers willingly relinquish children because they are not ready or do not want to be parents.
Others are coerced into relinquishing children because of social pressure from families or communities.
Still, others are unable to parent their children because they lack resources, lack support or are dealing with addiction or other hardships.
Reckoning with birth mothers in all their complexity is tough. So, we usually do not bother to do it.
Instead, we take the beautiful dynamics of adoption, with its sadness, joy, gain and loss, and package them into simple, one-note stories: A heroic teenager spurns abortion and gives her baby a chance at life.
A pitiful, fallen woman abandons her child.
A weak-willed teen in an oppressive religious community has her choice made for her.
In all of these cases, to introduce a flesh-and-blood birth mother—her grief, her love, her courage—would ruin the story. Continue reading