Could I call myself a feminist and social justice advocate and still adopt? I realized that for me, the answer was no.
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.In her book “Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States,” feminist historian Rickie Solinger examines adoption through this lens of reproductive rights. She states, “I believe it is crucial to consider the degree to which one woman’s possession of reproductive choice may actually depend on or deepen another woman’s reproductive vulnerability.” In other words, how might an individual woman’s right to choose adoption actually exploit another woman’s lack of rights?
http://www.womenspress.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=3238
Adrienne,
This doesn’t exactly seem like your response for this week, but I’ll reply to it anyway because it’s so interesting. I love Rickie Solinger’s book, Beggars and Choosers. All of her books are great! Her point here that some women’s reproductive choices take advantage of other women’s reproductive vulnerabilities is so true. And with surrogacy and egg donation I think we can see that especially clearly. Actually when we talk about international surrogacy, it’s perhaps the clearest — at least here we have the language of “choice,” and so some women who are involved as surrogates, for example, can frame their choices that way, even if others might not see it that way. In India, by contrast, the choice rhetoric isn’t there as prominently, and so many women talk about having to do it for their husbands, their families, their children’s education, etc.