Sunday, December 7, 2008

Adoption as a feminist issue - the right to mother?

There's a great article on adoption in the Twin Cities Daily Planet today written by Korean adoptee Katie Leo:

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.

...

As a woman dealing with the pain of my own infertility, I did not want to think through all these questions when I first considered adopting a child. Frankly, I just wanted to be a mother. My decision not to adopt after realizing that adoption was in conflict with my political beliefs is my personal choice. I do not condemn all adoptive parents, my own included, whom I love profoundly. Nor do I condemn adoption across the board. I do think, however, that we need to reframe our discussion of adoption. And though this story is about international adoption, I believe this discussion should include domestic adoption and foster care.

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.

Check it out.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. I appreciate your talking about a neutral article. I try to find happy news to read but haven't been succeeding much lately. Lines like "Please take care of my child." make me feel for the author of the article.

2. Should the RSS feed have your name beginning with a lower case "L" in the creator field? The change happened between October 22nd & 24th, 2008, but I'm just noticing it now.

lindsay said...

I've been having trouble finding truly happy news for awhile now... ever since I started looking, really. I suppose joyous things aren't exactly considered traditionally news worthy.

As for the letter change, I did that around then because on my personal blog, I changed layouts and it wasn't necessary to have it capitalized anymore. Also personal preference, I suppose.

Anonymous said...

I think I found a couple news sources (for a start):

1) The Happy News community on LiveJournal.

2) Amnesty International Good News (success stories)