The Blog

2021-

2021-12-04 b
MANIFESTATIONS OF MALEVOLENCE II

Better dead than adopted, argues New York Times opinion writer

Adoption presents a major problem for militant “pro-choicers.”

It’s an attractive and life-affirming alternative to killing a child in utero, one which offers to make good on the “rare” in the promise of “safe, legal, and rare.”

So, naturally, some on the pro-abortion side of the fence have turned their sights on adoption, going so far as to argue it’s not only problematic, but possibly even worse than death. Abortion is apparently too important a sacrament to be supplanted by any reasonable, or less lethal, alternative.

The New York Times this week published an opinion article titled “I Was Adopted. I Know the Trauma It Can Inflict.” Its author, Democratic strategist Elizabeth Spiers, argues adoption is not just more “dangerous” and “potentially traumatic” than abortion, but “infinitely” so.

For whom exactly is this true? Not for the child — when a mother and her child go into an abortionist’s office, only the mother comes out alive — and even then, it’s not a sure thing. (See, for example, Kermit Gosnell .) So, then, it must be the mother, whom Spiers effectively argues loses her right to set the value of her own child's life as she likes (either at 100 or at zero) when she chooses adoption.

“The Right likes to suggest that abortion is a traumatic experience for women — a last resort, a painful memory,” Spiers writes. “But adoption is often just as traumatic as the right thinks abortion is, if not more so, as a woman has to relinquish, not a lump of cells, but a fully formed baby she has lived with for nine months.”

If you can believe it, Spiers’s argument comes in the context of attacking Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has adopted children of her own, for promoting adoption. Yes, we're doing this again — liberals attacked Barrett in 2020 during her confirmation hearings for the fact she is a white woman with two adopted black children from Haiti. Even worse, the New York Times op-ed argues against things Barrett never said during this week's oral arguments regarding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban.

“As an adoptee myself,” Spiers writes, “I was floored by Justice Barrett’s assumption that adoption is an accessible and desirable alternative for women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. ... What she is suggesting is that women don’t need access to abortion because they can simply go do a thing that is infinitely more difficult, expensive, dangerous and potentially traumatic than terminating a pregnancy during its early stages.”

Between the ludicrous assertions and the outright hubris, there is a lot to unpack in this op-ed.

First, when she argues Barrett makes adoption sound too easy, Spiers commits the fallacy of equivocation. Barrett this week referenced the infant safe-haven laws on the books now in all 50 states. These allow any mother to leave her child at the nearest fire station, no questions asked, and Barrett wanted to know whether the parties to the litigation believe this has changed the balance of burdens on parents since the Roe v. Wade era. These laws are proof adoption is, in fact, easier and even cheaper than abortion (free, actually) and completely accessible to anyone in desperate circumstances who needs to give up a child. Yes, adoption is a lengthy and expensive process, but even if it's always a hard decision, it's as easy as crossing a street for the birth-mother making the choice.

Second, it is a bit rich for Spiers to accuse Barrett, who, again, is a mother to multiple adopted children, of having a tenuous grasp of the complexities of adoption. The “as an adoptee” appeal to her own authority is a bit too cute, as if to say a child once born has a more complete perspective on upbringing than his or her parent — you know, the person who handles all the adoption paperwork, child-rearing, early education, and the at-times thorny integration of an adoptee into a new family. By the same reasoning, should we start listening to infants for their expertise on neonatal health?

Also, just so we don’t lose sight of what’s being argued here, Spiers is quite literally arguing that, sometimes, death is preferable to being adopted because adoption can be hard on children given up for adoption.

You know what else is hard on children? Death.

Spiers continues, saying she resents “the suggestion by people like Justice Barrett that adoption is a simple solution. I resent it on behalf of [my biological mother], who found the choice she made traumatizing and still feels that pain, 44 years later. Even when an adoption works out well, as it did in my case, it is still fraught.”

It’s important to note Spiers whiplashes back and forth between characterizing unborn children as mere “clumps of cells” and living, breathing human beings throughout the pregnancy. At each stage, she adopts (no pun intended) whichever perspective is more suitable to the point she is trying to make. She is trying to have it both ways.

“While pregnant,” she writes, mothers “will undergo the bonding with a child that happens by biological design as an embryo develops into a living, breathing, conscious human. And then that child will be taken away." So, because unborn children are fully human and alive, we should not adopt — but because they are mere clumps of cells lacking humanity, it is both safer and less harmful to kill them.

“What Justice Barrett and others are suggesting women to do in lieu of abortion is not a small thing," Spiers concludes. "It is life changing, irrevocable, and not to be taken lightly. It often causes trauma, even when things work out, and it’s a disservice to adoptees and their families, biological and adopted, to pretend otherwise in service of a neat political narrative."

“Irrevocable”? Does she believe there’s a return policy on abortion?

In short, Spiers seems to be wishing she hadn't been born. I cannot say for sure she feels this way, but surely, the thought occurred to more than a few readers of her op-ed. (read more)

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