In the last entry, Jenna said in part:

This is where I stand on a lot of reform issues. I think less women would place if they were FULLY informed about the ins and outs of adoption. I think that, in itself, is what is needed: full disclosure of all the issues that surround adoption. I believe that because I was lied to and/or deceived by our agency because I wasn’t informed that OA’s were not legally binding in our state. (And a billion other errors.)

Exactly. I keep writing my way around to this in my book notes. See, I think sometimes reformists (and certainly anti-adoption people) say every adoption is a bad adoption and that’s too simplistic. At the same time, pro-adoption people are simplistic because they say, “Not every woman is unhappy with her choice and that’s proof that the complainers are unreasonable.”

This is going to be hard to word correctly but I’m gonna try.

In the very broadest sense when we’re talking about policy, it doesn’t matter if an individual woman is happy with how her adoption went down; what matters is whether or not she was treated ethically. Some women who had unethical adoptions are happy with their decision (we see them all over forums) but that doesn’t mean that we should be ok with poor ethics. In other words, happiness is a poor measure of ethics.

What’s hard is figuring out what good ethics do mean and I think it’s a mistake to tie them too closely to personal outcomes.

I don’t think I’m saying this right.

I do think that if adoptions were done more ethically that there would be fewer adoptions (as does the adoption worker I spoke with this week). But that doesn’t mean they would disappear. I struggle with this. Because adoption (as it’s done today) is built on injustice, I question the ethics of adoption period. At the same time I do believe that even in a just society there would be adoption. At least as long as there is fallible birth control there will be adoption — there needs to be adoption (just as I believe that there needs to be the option of abortion).

One of my issues with antiadoptionism is that it paints a rigid image of motherhood. Not every mother wants to be mothering. As a feminist, I support a woman who chooses not to be a mothering mother. The way the world works today, women who are mothers but who are not mothering are sexual suspects. I reject this point of view. Taken to the most extreme, this idea that mothers who are not mothering are anti-feminine is why we can’t get decent childcare in this country. Real women want to stay home with their kids and tend the hearth, right? And real women never walk away from their children. Women who do ought to be punished.

Women internalize this and place their babies. And when they suffer from regret, they take this on as part of their punishment.

This is what I mean about adoption being a feminist issue.

Taken individually, I cannot make a Christian woman keep her baby if she believes it is God’s holy command that mothers stay home with their children and she knows she will not be able to do this. If she feels her baby is better off with another family, I can’t force her to parent anyway. This woman might place through an agency that is less than ethical and feel ok with her decision. But this doesn’t make the adoption ethical nor does it make her decision wrong. Only she can say it’s a wrong decision although we can all say it’s unethical. Do you get what I’m saying?

One of the chapters I wanted to have in my book (and I’m not sure if I will, just that I want to — I’ll have to see what the book wants) is that why Jessica placed is irrelevant. What is relevant is if she was well-served. (Writing the book is my way to find this out.) Whether or not Jessica — or any woman — feels her adoption is a mistake is one thing; whether or not she was truly well-served by the system is another. People want to know why Jessica placed so they can decide whether or not the adoption is a good one. But you can’t tell that by knowing why Jessica placed. In a corrupt world, a good adoption can only be defined by the woman who placed. (The child’s experience is their own experience — it is separate from the woman who placed. A good — or bad — adoption from a child’s point of view will not necessarily reflect his or her first parents’ points of view.)

My argument is that the adoption system — because it is predicated on injustice because I am a feminist and think the patriarchy needs to be taken down — is unjust because the world is unjust. So on the one hand, I think it’s impossible for adoption ever to be just kind of like I think we’re all inherently racist. It’s kinda not so helpful when we’re talking about real change to get all meta like that, you know? So on the one hand I’m totally meta but on the other hand I know that practical change is important while we overthrow the patriarchy.

Within this unjust world, I don’t feel like it’s my place to individually tell women what to do. Like my work at shelter, I had to do the everyday work anyhow. It’s not so helpful to stand around theorizing when women needed immediate food and shelter.

In adoption reform I think it’s really easy for me to get caught up in meta and forget specifics. I also think it’s hard not to focus so closely on specifics that we forget that women have a right to free will in an unjust world.

Does this make sense? (I’m deliberately using some religious verbiage here to try to write it more clearly. I don’t think I’m succeeding.)

As I work on this book and talk it out with people they sometimes say, “Is Jessica happy with the adoption? Because that’s all that matters.” On an individual level, yes, that’s all that matters. And I would never try to tell Jessica how to feel about the adoption — whether she’s happy, sad, furious, indifferent, whatever. But on a broader level, it doesn’t matter how Jessica feels — it matters whether or not her treatment was ethical. I cannot control an individual woman’s feelings; I can control how ethically I treat her. I have doubts about the ethics of the system but this doesn’t mean I think Jessica ought to feel a certain way about her experience.

Clear as mud?

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