Adoption is a feminist issue because it is a reproductive rights issue. It is an issue about the value of women as mothers and who has "earned" the right to be one. It's about how the states supports or does not support women who fall outside of the "good mother" rhetoric. It's about privilege. It's about class.And look at this article, Feminist lens on adoption, in the Minnesota Women's Press, by Katie Leo, an adult Korea adoptee (I stuck it in my "Favorites" months ago, and Dawn's piece made me go looking for it today):
Right now the dominant voices in our cultural discussion of adoption are those like the NCFA who perpetuate stereotypes about the women who place their children and the women who receive them. It's a conversation that tries to erase the presence of the women who give birth to those children by pushing t-shirts that equate adoption with pregnancy thereby obliterating the origins of adopted people. The way we look at adoption – especially domestic infant adoption – is a manifestation of our Madonna/whore complex where birth mothers are saintly sinners – angelic enough to give away the babies they aren't good enough to keep.
We feminists need to start looking at adoption in new ways. We need to let the first mothers among us speak about their experiences past and present because their voices have been missing from our discussion. In the blogosphere we have feminist thinkers like FauxClaud, like Suz, like Jenna. They can tell us how Juno will likely feel five years from placement, ten, twenty or more.
I am part of a growing number of adult adoptees who view adoption as a feminist issue, part of a continuum of reproductive rights. This perspective extends to the right to raise one's child the same importance as the right to choose whether or not to bear one.OK, let the Feminist Anonymous meeting begin. "My name is Malinda and I am a feminist." Are you? If so, reactions to these articles? If not, reactions to these articles?!
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Over the years the social justice argument for adoption has proved increasingly problematic for many. In her article "Birth Mothers from South Korea Since the Korean War," scholar Hosu Kim states, "Although it often has been understood historically as a humanitarian effort ... I argue the practice of intercountry adoption is a radical example of global inequality played out at the site of actual woman's
bodies and often pits two women-the birth mother and the adoptive mother-against
each other in a struggle to claim a legitimate motherhood."
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I believe that if the spirit of feminism creates solidarity between women across social, economic and racial barriers, feminists should work to remove the obstacles that render women around the globe so powerless, rather than using their situations as a reason to take their children from them. We should also question adoption language that carries implicit judgments of who makes a legitimate mother. Other issues to address are using children as a commodity, and racial coding of mothers and children. And we should work toward the extension of reproductive rights to include the rights of women to raise their children.