Recently, U.S. Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett suggested that child placement through adoption makes Roe V. Wade a moot point. And there are pleny of myths that point to this seemingly painless transaction. But as Katherine Joyce, a writer for Salon, states, “the suggestion that adoption entails nothing more than several months of inconvenience before women can wash their hands of the entire ordeal profoundly fails to understand how relinquishment affects parents.” It also fails to convey the trauma that is experienced by adoptees when, even as newborns, they are removed from their first families. And to be so
In May, the Petrie-Flom Blog at the Harvard School of Health covered the issues of Adoption, Family Separation and Preservation, and Reproductive Justice, tackling such issues as adoption reproductive justice, perpetuations of adoption myths, and the racialized history of the practice of adoption among so many other timely and well focused examinations of the problematic issues child placement through adoption raises.
I was honored to be invited to write about Native American transracial adoption, highlighting some of the findings from my research. And to be part of a triad that dicussed the issues of the Indian Child Welfare Act (author Kathryn Fort) and policies and practices in the Indigenous community from relinquishment to family preservation (Lauren van Schilfgaarde, Cochiti Pueblo) was inspirational.
I hope you take time to read the amazing essays from this really important symposium of adoption and social justice. Thank you Gretchen Sisson for the invitation to be part of this really important work.
