RELIGION & ADOPTION: Reproductive Freedom

In which Megan tries not to spend the whole hour screaming about Dobbs whilst we discuss what adoption has to do with religious freedom.

As always, be sure to visit keepingit101.com for full show notes, homework, transcripts, & more.

____
Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

Chapters

• 1:00 Here We Go
• 3:58 Ground Rules, Trigger/Content Warnings
• 16:50 Adoption ≠ Solution for Abortion
• 29:30 Adoption ≠ Solution for Infertility
• 35:23 You Are Not Entitled A Child
• 58:51 Homework

Transcript

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 0:17

This is keeping it 101, a killjoys, Introduction to religion podcast, which is part of the amplify Podcast Network, we're grateful to live, teach and record on the current ancestral and unceded lands of the Abenaki and Wabanaki peoples, as well as the lands of one federally recognized native nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and seven North Carolina state recognized tribal entities. Increasingly, though, native folks are pushing us to forgo land acknowledgements altogether and focus on action items. Let's start with land back. And as always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.

Megan Goodwin: 0:49

Yeah, what's up? Nerds? Hi, hello. I'm Megan Goodwin. I'm a scholar of American religions, race, gender and politics, and I just, I can't wait to get into this. Hi, hello.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:00

I'm Ilyse morgenstein Fuerst, a historian of religion, Islam, race and racialization and South Asia. And as a friendly reminder, I'm an adoptee. Nerds. On that note, we have a treat for you today.

Megan Goodwin: 1:15

Sounds like a big promise. Are we doing something fun today? What are we talking about?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:19

Oh no, we're in our fourth installment of religion, of the religion and adoption series. What's up? I'm so excited.

Megan Goodwin: 1:26

Um, I have, I have a question, though. I

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:35

What is it? What? What's your question? What can I help you with?

Megan Goodwin: 1:38

I--Okay. First of all, I love you. I love you so much. But and and also, your idea of fun seems different than mine.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:55

I don't understand what you mean, right? So we're on our

Megan Goodwin: 2:00

fourth episode of talking about a system that steals children. From families and shows us white supremacy and white Christian nationalism slash supersessionism in real time and in like, ongoing and horrifying, so horrifying ways. And like this particular episode, we're talking about how adoption and reproductive justice get all mixed up for reasons of checking my notes, right? Okay, good, more white Christian supremacy and also classism and racism and misogyny and ableism. How do I put this is, is this fun for you? I mean,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:33

I guess when you put it that way, yes,

Megan Goodwin: 2:37

Ilyse, my beloved girl.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 2:41

What look talking about, the things that we think and study and research and teach about, it is fun when the content is a stone cold bummer, which I will remind you, is 100% of the time.

Megan Goodwin: 2:55

yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Lay on killjoy. Shall we get into it? These episodes have been, they have been long and Yelly. Yeah, they have and let's!, okay okay, okay, all right. All right. Nerds, here's the lesson plan. We've talked to you about how religions see parentless or guardianless children, and how we personally fit into these conversations. We've talked about religious freedom as a major element in the adoption industry and around adoption law, we heard from Dr Courtney Lewis about the Indian Child Welfare Act and the unique ways native histories and lived realities fit into our conversation about adoption and religion in what's now the US and today, oh boy. We are ending on a real banger, adoption, religion and reproductive healthcare and justice.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 3:58

Before we dive into this episode, we do need to do some ground rules work. Yeah, my dear.

Megan Goodwin: 4:04

yes, please. Yeah, okay. I agree. You know, you know, my brain loves it when we we set an expectation. So this is one of those topics that makes people really uncomfortable and often angry and sad and loud and yeah, this has the potential to poke at some really intense bruising, so I think, if I may, but we need to be clear about what this episode is and isn't at the top with some renewed content warnings and explanations, like our other adoption episodes, this one might hit hard If you're an adoptee or an adoptive parent or have experienced the brutality of a system that deems some people fit for parenting and others not likewise, since we're talking about repro justice and access to abortion as well as infertility, this is a Venn diagram of highly charged emotional stuff, and we just want you to know that. Before we get moving.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:01

Absolutely and honestly, dear nerds, it's really important that we tell you from the jump that we are peddling facts, not feelings. Or when we have a feeling, which we will we're going to name it as a feeling. So the difference between this makes me feel awful versus this awful thing happens, and here's some receipts. Yeah, so here are some hard truths that we're going to fill in for the rest of this long episode with facts. If these feel too overwhelming to you, tap out. No love lost. Take care of you. We'll see you next time.

Megan Goodwin: 5:35

Yeah, we feel that these are hard facts to sit with. So I'm going to suggest we take a deep breath and we brace ourselves for truths that make our stomachs hurt. Ready, okay,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 5:50

fact the first: adoption is not a solution for abortion, which is, incidentally, not a problem

anyway. Fact the second: 5:58

adoption is not a solution to infertility.

Megan Goodwin: 6:08

Okay, we're gonna come back around to both of those statements in like 30 seconds. But if you're not in a place to hear those very fact based arguments, this is your cue to turn us off. High recommend any podcast Joel Kim booster is on, but maybe today, this particular podcast is not the pod for you. All right, so throwback our lesson plan for today, IRMF, is to show that while we might think of adoption as part of an equation along abortion and infertility, that way of thinking is fully and utterly problematic, and acting on that is fully and utterly problematic.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 6:41

Yeah, and we've already said this, but I genuinely think of this as a Venn diagram of cruel disingenuousness. Folks who are pregnant and do not want to be pregnant have several options, but frankly, one of them is not staying pregnant until that pregnancy resolves itself in a birth.

Megan Goodwin: 7:04

no

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:05

that is forced birth, full stop. If you cannot stop being pregnant when you want to not be pregnant, that is forced birth, even if the outcome doesn't include forced parenting. Forced birth is still foul, still awful, still sexist, still misogynist, and frankly, evil, and it does not attend to the biological realities that those forced-to-be-born children experience.

Megan Goodwin: 7:36

Yeah, okay, already, this is a lot.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:39

I'm so sorry to have done this too. Your face is so priceless, I might have to, like, not look at you, because you look so pained, and I just want to take care of you, but also I shouldn't. I'm the adoptee.

Megan Goodwin: 7:52

You are the adoptee, and I should look pained by a painful system. This is fucked up. So, all right,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 7:59

Oh right. I just smoothed right over that again. Yeah, okay, okay.

Megan Goodwin: 8:02

I'm gonna feel my feelings, and I feel that this is fucked up, because the facts say This is fucked up. Yeah? So okay, I hear you saying that adoption is not a solution to unwanted pregnancies, but this one's really counterintuitive, since the regressive response to unwanted pregnancies is always to suggest adoption. So what does it mean to say adoption isn't a fix or a solve for preventing abortion? Why is this the very first fact that we want to lay down for this episode?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 8:29

All right, I'm actually gonna like, I gotta gather myself so I can go in order, because this is convoluted and contradictory and it feels hypocritical or anachronistic or something, but I swear to God, it's not Yeah, yeah. Okay. Take your time. Okay? In conversations about adoption, especially in conversations where abortion is seen as an evil, bad thing or even just an undesirable or unfortunate outcome, and therefore adoption is seen as a solve to that evil or unfortunate thing we are never thinking about the child, never the child is an object in this equation. And I don't even mean the way that a baby can be bought and sold. These are slightly but not functionally different, perhaps. I mean the idea that you can take a baby moments after it is born. In this particular version of adoption, solving abortion, you can take that baby away from the person that birthed it, and that baby will be like, literally fine, with zero ramifications. That framing is, frankly, it's a little fucked up, yeah, and it's actually not how any of this works. It is a fantasy.

Megan Goodwin: 9:44

yeah, okay, i this will shock you. I have many thoughts, but I think I want to hear more from you on this. So can you expand?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:53

Okay, okay,

Megan Goodwin: 9:54

I know you got data.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:56

How about we start with this?

Megan Goodwin: 9:57

There it is.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 9:58

How about we start with this: It is absurd to me that we sell bio parents on the importance post birth of skin to skin contact, of immediately bonding with your newborn, of the way infants need a, b and c sounds so they can feel comforted outside of the uterus and now in the real world, or the way that we sell bio parents on knowing about your own puberty and how it informs your child's puberty, the risks that we all take for granted of genetic diseases being a major reason to be informed about our own bodies. Frankly, the way insurance companies allow people to get scans based on medical history that adoptees never fucking have. We sell bio parents on all of this, and I know because I am a biological parent twice over and we pretend like that infant taken from their parents uterus and put in someone else's arms can go through all that without ramifications, both immediate and long term. Now that should sound logically cuckoo crazy, but it's also medically stupid, because let me just list out some medical facts for you, Yeah, we've got so much to go over, so I don't want to get

Megan Goodwin: 11:11

please!

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 11:11

and I'm going to put all these in the show notes, but there are numerous medical studies published in like the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics journals like actual medical surveys that state that there are health disparities between adoptees and non adoptees, which appear over the life of the adoptee. Some of these factors include the stress it causes newborns to be separated from the birthing parent, about the unique medical care of adoptees at any age, in light of incomplete or missing medical records, there's disparity or facts around infant adoptees being more prone to colic, which, if you've never experienced a colicky baby, good on you. But if you have, you know what the ninth circle of hell is. It is that. There are facts around adoptees being more prone to PTSD and cptsd, to say nothing of perfectionism and OCD. There are studies about adoptees needing medical care that reflects their status as adoptees but not having access to it. There are long term mental health disparities that last the life of the adoptee, and those mental health disparities increase if the adoptee had been in multiple placements or without a placement for longer periods of time, or, importantly, are of differing races from their adoptive parents. And we know that adoptees are subject to quite a lot of medical screening, but that is not for their benefit. Those are for issues of public health, especially in the case of international adoption, or in the interest of suitability, as in maybe this child isn't well or able enough to be adopted outright. All of this is to say Megan, we, as a community and a society, pretend that the handing over of a literal baby--again, if we're thinking about adoption as a solution to abortion, we are imagining the passing off of an infant. We are pretending that that passing off is maybe easy or hard or emotional for the birth parent, we assume it is joyful for the adoptive parent or parents, and we stop there. In reality, though, that adopted child bears the mark of their adoption in their bodies, statistically speaking, even if everyone is doing their best and loving on this kid, infinitely. Adoption, fundamentally re scripts that child's life, socioculturally, absolutely, but biologically to a very particular degree.

Megan Goodwin: 13:58

nobody. Nobody thinks about the kid as a human bogged down here, but I think the piece that we're going to just come keep coming back to over and over again is adoption is a system that doesn't take adoptees seriously as humans, as vulnerable humans who deserve respect and to be thought of as person, it is something to be passed from one adult to fully human. It just it's, it is a thing that I know, and yet every single piece of this just underscores that, that the adoptee is not another, and that is hard to know.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 14:51

Yeah, I want to be clear as we kind of move through our data of like things that are hard to know. I. I am not anti adoption. We are not anti adoption. So I'm gonna say that with my whole ass chest. Ilyse Rian Morgenstein Fuerst, sometimes known as bug, sometimes known as mama, occasionally known as blank, is not anti adoption. What I am, and I think what we are as a podcast, is really anti the system of adoption, which renders adoptees like me invisible, even when they are also insanely commodified and celebrated. You can't just claim that an infant knows its mom when it's born, which is a quote from the delivery nurse when I met my firstborn child, and also claimed that it's no big deal for that very same infant to be placed with someone else at some other time, maybe in the future. Logically, I really hope everyone can hear how fallacious that is. Ethically, I hope you hear how fucking crap that is and factually, it just doesn't line up with medical study after medical study after medical study. It just doesn't hold water,

Megan Goodwin: 16:10

right? Adoption is traumatic for an infant that's taken from its biological parent, and that trauma lives in the body, right? So, as we've been saying across these episodes, adoptees are so often missing from the conversations about adoption precisely because their testimony can and often does totally derail our mainstream understanding that adoption is good and like noble even. But I want to get deeper into why we're insisting that adoption isn't a or the solution for abortion as our first like debunking moment, oh, it's an incorrect flashback, bless,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 16:43

yeah, let's do that.

Megan Goodwin: 16:50

All right, so as our rider dies, know we've already talked about religion and reproductive justice, or access to abortion and birth control care in Fifth Season, Episode 502, and you know that this pod is extremely pro abortion on demand. We love abortion. We are fucking ecstatic about bodily autonomy in theory anyway, since we live in a country that has never actually granted pregnable people actual bodily autonomy, this is largely theoretical, but it seems nice, yeah, yeah, and we're gonna keep fighting like hell to get there, right? Okay, so abortion fucking great. Abortion is literally not a problem. Abortion is healthcare, and thus abortion requires no solution. SCOTUS, on the other hand, but I digress, right? So definitionally, adoption cannot be a solution to abortion, because abortion is a solution to being pregnant when one does not want to be pregnant.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 17:48

And frankly, as a society, we can and should argue that the only solution to being pregnant when you don't want to be pregnant is abortion.

Megan Goodwin: 17:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the thing, right? Adoption cannot be a solution to abortion, because, as we've already said, A, of all, abortion is not a problem, or, sorry, abortion is only a problem for theocratic lawmakers. And B, of all, adoption does not solve the problem of not wanting to be pregnant. So how do these separate issues wind up all swirlled together in our Uteri? It's horrifying, right there, smacking the computer about my horror. Yeah, stop us, as if you've heard this one before, nerds, I think it's swirlled together, because patriarchy and imperialism and in this country, absolutely white Christian nationalism. The answer, frankly, is just about always white Christian nationalism. And so we conflate adoption and abortion in a post roe world. So we lost roe with a Dobbs decision in 2022 it's still fairly recent, still real sore. We conflate adoption and abortion for a couple reasons. So before 1973 before Roe, the mess of adoption and abortion was another matter altogether. If you listen to the adoption and religious freedom episode, you'll remember that the pre roe mess involved the stealing of babies outright.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:04

Sure did

Megan Goodwin: 19:06

baby scoop. But from 1973 to 2000 or 2022 when we had national access more or less to abortion, sort of, kind of, during this period, a ragtag team of unlikely bedfellows banded together to insist that unwanted pregnancies can and should yield children for people who want them this other, worser a-team included the adoption industry, anti abortion advocates and people struggling with infertility and later, same sex couples seeking to expand their families with Children, all of whom were eager to, dare I say, scoop up any--I'm never letting that go. The baby scoop era has just destroyed my brain--So they're scooping up any spare, unaccounted for infants, domestically supplied or otherwise, whose existence resulted from unwanted pregnancies.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 19:57

It's a classic supply chain scenario. Yeah, Megan, I I kind of sense a list coming on.

Megan Goodwin: 20:03

You know me so well,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 20:05

my memory is long.

Megan Goodwin: 20:11

Yeah, okay, okay, all right, so after Roe in 1973 you see a real shift in language and realities around unwanted pregnancies before, when abortion was illegal in the US, birthing centers for unwed mothers proliferated, the idea being that you could check in pregnant, hide the end of the unhideable Pregnancy, give birth, recover, hand the baby over and return your previously scheduled life. Lots of these homes for unwed mothers were run by Christian and especially Catholic organizations. Many have since come under fire and scrutiny for their roles in coercing, cajoling, or just straight up lying to pregnant or recently pregnant women so they could acquire the baby.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 20:49

Yeah, that's exactly what happened,

Megan Goodwin: 20:52

which, like, almost makes me want to ask my mom where she gave birth to her first child, but that would mean, like, require me talking to her, so I and the nerds at home will never know This is not the time. Check out episode 502. For more of them this mishegoss, I'm really trying to keep it in my pants. But after Roe when you couldn't just punish people for having become pregnant, when they didn't want to be pregnant, as if that's a one woman sport, women are just like, Oops, got a pregnant.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 21:31

I budded by accident.

Megan Goodwin: 21:33

My bad! right? So during the period after row, so post 1973 opposition to abortion was a big part of how conservative white Christian politicos came to be known as the Moral Majority, or the new Christian Right, including, fascinatingly, Catholics, for the first time in US history, being invited to play politics with white evangelicals. Again, we don't have time to get into this For more, please see my published works for these dudes and dudes here includes that expletive deleted Phyllis Schlafly abortion was a problem, and not only because it let hussies such as myself Huss about, presumably without consequence, but also legal constitutional abortion, it meant that suddenly there weren't enough impregnated hussies popping out unwanted babies whomst could then be snatched up by Nice white Christian folks to raise in nice white Christian homes. These hussies, with their Supreme Court backing and their access to reproductive health care, were in short, fucking up the supply chain. This conservative white Christian political movement needed to give unwilling pregnant people a way to remain pregnant but not have to parent. Enter adoption. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 22:45

yeah, enter adoption. Indeed. Megan, I'm gonna say something that I've said in a few places now, and that I have said for a long time to you and anyone who will listen, because this moral majority framing of unwanted pregnancies as an opportunity to flood a market with wanted children, just not by the people who made them is so hella fucked and so demonstrative of how fucked our society is. It's just this. It's just a false relationship between abortion and adoption. And the thing is, is that in a fully functioning realized society, there should literally be no orphans, no unwanted children, and therefore no adoptions, period. Yeah, in a fully functioning realized society, people who can reproduce would have easy access to reproductive technologies so that no pregnancy would be unwanted, whether accidental or coerced. In a fully functioning realized society, people who chose to give birth would find societal safety nets in place like healthcare, childcare, guaranteed and/or thrivable income. In a fully functioning, realized society, children who had parents who could no longer take care of them for whatever reason, medical, maybe like addiction or medical like they die, or trauma, like abuse, yeah would not be seen as a systemic issue to fix, but rather a harmed and vulnerable child to care for. Yeah, claims that abortion are evil. They're just bankrupt and stupid, and I gotta be honest, and I'm coming for you goyim, um, they're fucking backward and barbaric. They are fundamentally incorrect. But claims that adoption solves abortion make me see red, because in a fully functioning society, predominantly women, though not exclusively, would not have to choose between their lives, livelihoods, bodily autonomy, bodily health, or raising a child, which is insanely expensive, demanding and inevitably affects every single aspect of a parent's though, especially the birthing parents life.

Megan Goodwin: 24:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what feels so disingenuous about the link up between abortion and adoption is that it ignores the material reality of people who are seeking abortions. Overwhelmingly, people who are seeking abortions are already parents. And when I say overwhelmingly, I mean the majority, 60 plus percent, of people who seek out abortions and get them are already parents. They have more than one child. Usually, they do not have the resources, which is money, obviously, but also time, attention, bandwidth, to raise a child. Well, they are not ending a pregnancy because they hate kids or they don't want kids. They are ending a pregnancy because, overwhelmingly, they already have at least one child. They know what it is to raise a child, and they don't feel that they can do what needs to be done to care for another child. Well, the overwhelming majority of people who seek and get abortions do not, do not, do not regret their choices. Some might wrestle with it in a variety of ways, but statistically, based on survey data, most people who get abortions simply do not regret the choice immediately or years after the procedure. There are more people out there regretting JK Rowling tattoos than there are regretting their abortions

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 26:20

well, and as the news has hit in the last day, Amber Thurman, a black mother who started a medical abortion using pills, was denied care in Georgia because that abortion did not fully clear, so she had unviable, dead fetal tissue in her uterus, which caused sepsis, which caused an eight day ramp to death. And so anyone who is telling me, anyone who was saying anything except Wow, what a what a barbaric system. You're wrong. She would not have regretted that abortion. She would have regretted having a child, yeah, and now her son has to regret that a system was happy to kill his mother, yeah?

Megan Goodwin: 27:04

Well, and some of the conversation that I've been seeing pop up around this is like, sepsis is an infection. 100% of folks who cannot get pregnant, who show up with an infection to the hospital get treated for that infection.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 27:17

That's right, but because it was self inflicted, it wasn't allowed, but I have news for you. If you attempt suicide, the hospital is required to treat you. Yeah? So we've already done a reproductive justice episode, but when you see the Venn diagram of horror, I want you to know that dead mom was preferable to aborted fetus.

Megan Goodwin: 27:42

Yeah, no, that's horrible. It's horrible. Here's the thing, very few people who have abortions regret having abortions. This is not actually the case with adoption,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 27:56

not at all.

Megan Goodwin: 27:59

And this is something that I learned because of the research that you did for us the literature over the last 40 years so one or ago, is pretty clear that birth parents can experience both satisfaction and confidence in their choice to relinquish their child, and also a hell of a lot of regret and sadness and rage and anger. Mothers who relinquish their children report over a wide range of surveys some regret about that decision, and that is made worse by sociocultural factors like coercion, Age of pregnancy, how successful or not their life has been since they gave birth, educational status, class and tellingly, religious guilt or shame.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 28:34

Yeah, so Goodwin, what I hear you recapping for us or saying for us is that the overwhelming majority of people who seek and receive abortions never regret their choice if they're allowed to live afterwards, wow, but a majority of people who give up their biological children for adoption do regret that choice. Yeah.

Megan Goodwin: 28:54

I mean, that's again, we can feel however we want to feel about that, but those are the facts that the research gives us, we can't claim otherwise. It is just that simple. Abortion is good, actually. Adoption is complicated for everybody involved. That's a fact,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 29:15

however complicated it is, it is still not a solution to abortion, nope. As we transition into the next the next data point, Megan, I just want to revisit the sense of a fully functioning realized society, because in a fully functioning realized society this false dichotomy wouldn't have to exist in the first place, because we would not have orphans or unwanted pregnancies and we would not have a baby trade fixated on making sure parentless children existed in relationship to demand. Yeah. Goodwin, I gotta say, as we make, like, a hard left, this is going to be the part where folks are going to be big, big, mad, or, like, maybe and, or deep in their feels.

Megan Goodwin: 30:12

yeah, yeah. I mean yes, because this is a segment where we're going to talk about infertility, which is, it's so, so hard. And I want to name that that grief is really real. Not being able to add to your family when you want to can feel like a betrayal on so many levels, especially for CIS het couples, or for couples where one partner can theoretically get pregnant. That body horror, my body should be able to do this and can't or won't. That horror is a real, true thing to grieve. I And we as a podcast do not want to dismiss or minimize that rage and grief and frustration and sorrow, so let us take another deep breath before we share another hard truth. All right, here it is, adoption is also not a solution to infertility. Some of you are going to feel that statement of fact in your bones. Some of you are really fucking angry at me right now for having said that, and your feelings are valid. You should go ahead and feel them, and also your feelings about infertility while so so valid and so, so painful. Those feelings are not facts. Here is a fact. Adoption is the solution to a child without a permanent home, without permanent caregivers. That's it, and that's all end up. One of the hardest parts in thinking critically about religion and adoption is that so often wanting to adopt, to grow a family comes from the absolute best parts of ourselves, the truest and purest desire to love and care well for another, an unimaginably vulnerable human being, that, to my mind, is humanity at its absolute most human, and I honor and I cherish and I celebrate that desire. But again, adoption is the solution to a child without a permanent home, without permanent caregivers. Finding a child a permanent home and permanent care is the problem adoption tries to solve. Adoption is not and should not be a solution for adult humans who just want something real, real bad, even if that want comes from the best places in us. Adoption is not a fix for infertility. Infertility has other solutions, or, in many cases, frankly, no solution. That's hard, that fucking sucks, that's devastating. And we both have people that we deeply, deeply care about that have struggled with infertility that is very real, and we mourn with them. It feels so, so unfair, because it is unfair. Life is not fair. You cannot fix infertility or injustice by acquiring a child through a harmful, unjust system based in white Christian nationalism, no matter how pure your intentions are, and no matter how much you love the stuffing out of that kid, adoption is a harmful, violent, racist system perpetuated by white Christian nationalist thinking that is a fact, a hard, sad, infuriating fact.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 33:14

Yeah, ooh, hearing all that in your voice instead of mine is like doing a thing. But look Megan in a fully functioning, realized society. Yeah, child, a child without parents, an orphan, would not exist for all the reasons I said before, but mostly, mostly because we, the community around that child, would find it morally, ethically and structurally corrupt to just accept wholesale that some kids just don't have permanent caretakers or homes. Yeah? Like, I want us to have a deep pause for a second we accept that there simply are babies and children with no one to care for them, we just accept that, yeah, and that's fucking depraved societally, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just like, the genuine revolution is not matching up those babies with people who want one real bad, like they're a fucking care bear or, like, a Tickle Me Elmo,

Megan Goodwin: 34:23

I was actually in a edge in a Cabbage Patch Kid situation. Since I'm old enough to have participated in the first baby scoop Cabbage Patch moment, I had one of the very first and, like, cabbage

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 34:35

patch has really fucked

Megan Goodwin: 34:36

me up. Yeah, I mean, but trying to stay on target, I just this country hates kids so damn bad, like it just fail kids at every single goddamn opportunity. And frankly, I think in large part because we don't think of them as fully human beings. They are possessions. They are problems to be solved, but they are not humans with inherent dignity. Right, and even putting aside this staggering levels of abuse that happen in foster systems and adoptive homes, nothing about the system puts the child first, nothing about this. Focus is on the child who is a vulnerable human being growing up in ways meant to ensure their survival and flourishing. And I hate that a lot. I hate it so much.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 35:23

Yeah, but like to continue with my little rant, yeah, in a fully functioning, realized society, people who wanted children would have medical, financial and social supports to explore treatments like IVF or strategies like surrogacy or to work within open, fluid, adoptive practices that reflect best care for the child and the child that will become an adult, while also attending to the very real circumstances in which a birth parent may not Be able to raise that child primarily like for real in a fully functioning, realized society, just as there would be no Guardian list children, so too there would be supports for people who struggle with the very real and extremely devastating complications of infertility.

Megan Goodwin: 36:17

But Goodwin, yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 36:19

in my idealized utopic, fully functioning, realized society, prioritizing a child and understanding that adoption is neither a solution to infertility nor abortion still means that people who cannot reproduce biologically might not get to have a child at all. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 36:39

and this is where I see things get like really fucking ugly for you, frankly, particularly on social media. But it's not just ugly to you. Elise, it is truly unfathomably vicious toward adoptees talking about how what they went through the system that processed them and trafficked them has harmed them, like the vitriol on Twitter and Tiktok when adoptees speak about their own experiences from their own experiences, and then the number of people who cannot have their own children just dog piling about How insensitive it is that adoptees would criticize adoption, it's so it's so hard and so rage inducing to watch. But guess what? Sometimes bodies do not do what we want them to do, at least. I bet you load like your joints to stop deteriorating. I would really appreciate that. That'd be great. I feel like that would be great for you. I myself, personally, would love to not have MS, yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:46

yeah. I would also want that for you. Where do I Who do

Megan Goodwin: 37:49

I yell at on tic tac to make that happen? Because I'm

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 37:53

curious if it's other people with MS, I bet it is adoptees. Yeah, I'm good at being yelled at.

Megan Goodwin: 37:59

Oh, no. Anyway, bodies are kind of little bitches to us sometimes, yeah, yeah, but yeah, internalized ableisms aside, here once again, are the facts. We have grieved our bodies. We have grieved our sense of what should have been. We still do even as we try to meet our bodies where they are and help them work as best they can. But none of our grief about our bodies doing what bodies do, which is fail, entitles us to some new model. And frankly, these trolls on the internet, who I really do imagine are speaking from a place of pain and hurt and trauma, but they feel entitled. They feel entitled to a child and having been betrayed, please hear the scare quotes by their own bodies. Feel entitled to tell adoptees how that betrayal is far more pertinent than the experience of being adopted. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 38:57

and look, I've got nothing but empathy for folks managing and dealing with both the grief and the rage and, like, the physical horror, yeah, of infertility. But I have to admit, gang, I have very little sympathy, even while I can maintain empathy, knowing full well that I'll be yelled at, because this is kind of how this goes for me, and that's fine, but like literally, no one is owed a child, whether your bits work or they don't, no one is owed a fucking child. Not cis het couples managing any number of reproductive system issues that prevent getting pregnant, not queer couples who don't have the bits and parts to procreate within that relationship, not single women or men or envies who want to share their love with a small human. No one is entitled A child. A child is a person, not a toy, not a status symbol, not a life milestone to achieve, not an object, not a blankie, not a salve, not a solution. An adoptee is a human independent of whose needs they fulfill. And I hope you can hear nerds that I have, I have nothing but rage and lots of therapy bills about the way that we talk about an inability to have children as somehow the worst fate that can befall an adult, such that we start to see children and literally seconds old infants as commodities. It's, it's really, it's insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 40:37

right. Okay, so this, this is a good place to do two things. First, a note on queers, children and adoption. The second, we're going to sit with what it means to have weaponized someone's medical or relational status, the inability to have children such that someone's entire life is rendered in the service of attending to that status.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 40:56

I love starting with queers have had a good one. Same

Megan Goodwin: 40:59

All right, because we haven't picked enough fights already today. Let's talk about queerness and whiteness and the way that white queers are often not willing to confront their own positions of privilege. Again, this shit is tricky. Experiences of privilege and oppression can and do overlap. We talked about this 1 trillion years ago when we tackled intersectionality in season two. This episode is already a hell of long, so I'm not going to do my whole rant about the way that HRC gays sold out act up and many, many other queer political goals to focus on getting their wedding announcements in the times, but they did, though, I know, but I shouldn't have giggled like that. Well, I think what I want to say is that none of us, not one of us, is owed the human products of someone else's human body, no matter how much oppression we have faced, no matter how badly we might want a certain kind of family. Kratos is a lot of things, and one of those things is an imperative to rethink family and kinship. Many of us have had to fight so hard with everything in us to create family and kinship networks because our initial situations did not want us to be us. Got to me too, but we are us, Blanche. We are and we became us by finding new ways to make family, to create a home for who we really are, whatever else it is, adoption is an exploitative system rooted in white Christian nationalism. This is a fact, and it queer people. So many of us have worked so so hard to distance and heal ourselves from churches and other institutions rooted in white Christian nationalism. We don't need to participate in an unjust and exploitative system to create families. Creating families is what we do. So if your argument about adoption is, but I really, really want a kid, and how else do I get mine? Please go to a corner and just have every single seat.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 42:56

Yeah, I have for a long time, thought that adoptees and queer folk, those are not mutually exclusive. Bubbles are really good at building families, yeah, because we know that biology actually doesn't mean shit, except medically, right?

Megan Goodwin: 43:12

Except medically

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 43:14

at the same time, I'll say like totally as a response to this, nothing feels as painful as when specifically gay men come for me on the internet as a homophobe, yeah, because I really question the entitlement to systems of adoption. Yeah, I have never once done anything except advocate for queer couples to be able to adopt. I do think that that is absolutely true, yeah, but, but I also know that no one is entitled A baby, yeah? And when I watch, frankly, some of my dearest friends complain about how expensive it is, the way that my stomach falls out of my ass is intense, because rolling your eyes about some disposable income that you're using to pick out a baby is really fucked up and insensitive, and no amount of societal hate or threat to your bodily autonomy entitles you to aggrieve someone else's

Megan Goodwin: 44:23

well. And I think, I don't think I articulated to myself until this very moment, this very today, is that for so many of us, the experience of being queer is an experience of not being wanted by your family, by the family that birthed you. So to tell other people who were not wanted or able to be kept by the family that birthed them that their feelings are less important, their experiences are less important. Their trauma is less important than your desire to make your own family. That fucking sucks. I hate that. I hate that a lot bad.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 45:01

It's really bad. I, for real, cut someone out of my universe because they insisted that being gay was way more traumatic than being adopted. And I was like, I don't really think we win at misery poker, no. But also, your insurance company is not denying you a a mammogram, right? Because you don't have a history of breast cancer to prove right, like structurally and materially, there are things that I experience that unless you're also a gay adoptee, you're not experiencing as part of the system of hate against you. But no one wins at misery poker, and also you certainly don't win a fucking baby, right? A baby is not a prize. It's not up for auntie, yeah, it is not up for auntie, yeah. And also, if a baby is purchasable, I just, I have questions about your feelings about enslavement. Goodwin, you said the second thing we need to talk about, since we're already I hear myself getting ranty. Keep us on the outline. Okay, the second thing you said we needed to talk about after we let the queers go first is that we have to sit with the fact of infertility, or simply an inability to have kids, and how that erases actual children. Yeah, yeah. Say more.

Megan Goodwin: 46:21

Okay, well, so I'm this first came up in a conversation about abuse that happens in families. I have been sitting for years with something that friend of the pod and my personal best bet, Lissa Harris, said that in conversations about caring for or protecting children, somehow the children never get to be people. The children are always instead the football in a game they never asked to play. So when we talk about caring for children, we never actually include children. Children never get to be people on their own or even imagined as future adults. And honestly, a lot of the conversation about adoption as a solution for infertility strikes me this way, like it's all too convenient in this narrative, a birth parent doesn't want the child, so, like, just as calmly pregnant, because that's totally easy on a body for nine full months, and then just casually, after having done nine months of literal hard labor, just casually hands over the product of that labor. IE, a human child which doesn't know anything. And I, you know, whatever it's it's just there. And then this baby solves all the problems of the recipient of the baby, and infertile, or well healed, or whatever, a couple or individual. And the baby here is just, like, it's just, it is a football. It is being handed over. There's no imagination of the baby being a human person. It's like, you had extra pie,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 47:51

yeah? And you're like, a really good sharer, yeah? And I have to say, that incidentalness, yeah, is really painful. Yeah, it's why I never engage trolls, but will absolutely seek and destroy, usually, a random woman struggling with infertility Who is screaming on the internet at an adoptee, and often that adoptee is an international adoptee, which means they're usually a person of color, because, of course, race and gender matter here too. It's also just all of that, that narrative of like, perfectly willing birth mom who, like, makes it through one of the most dangerous things anyone does with their body, unscathed, no problem, no postpartum depression or anxiety, no infection, like all of that. The passing of the baby is this like angelic thing that you could put in one of those fucking precious moments, little porcelain stick dolls. It's just all in the service. It's lies in the service of white Christian nationalism. We said we'd get back to the top. So here we are, gang fulfilling our promises. Hmm, in 2008 the CDC issued a report about the adoption experiences of adoptive or would be adoptive parents. It is the most recent survey from the CDC on this problem. And it's it's grim Megan. It is grim in part because it feels really painful to me. This is a feeling, not a fact. It is painful to read a section of the CDC report that lists what adoptive parents would want in a child, literally titling the table of relevant data quote characteristics of the child that women would prefer or accept when considering adoption.

Megan Goodwin: 49:44

End quote, so like you're at the Crate and Barrel outlet and sure that baby has some dings, but I guess it'll do, yeah, what

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 49:49

would you accept? What would you accept putting that in Oprah terms for a second, what is the least you would accept? Oh. Are you fucking kidding me? And this is a survey run by our government about women who are seeking to acquire a dinged up Crate and Barrel plate. Okay, look, here's the thing I know. I'm a hot commodity. My husband is lucky to have locked this shit down 20 years ago. My parents locked it down 41 years ago, Mazel getting it on the ground floor. But the anguish, like the actual anguish, it causes me to read a list of desirable qualities that would make a child worthy of consideration, not acceptance, not adoption consideration. I will keep you on the list. This is like, when you buy a flight and it's like, compare options. Do you want more leg Oh, that scene doesn't come with more leg room. I think I'll pass

Megan Goodwin: 50:55

it's just it's messed up. Yeah. And it's

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 50:59

evidence to me that we do not live in a fully functioning, realized society, but it is also evidence to me that we are never thinking about the product of that exchange. That child who might have been desirable, or might have had eight out of 15 desirable qualities, eventually grows up into an angry 40 fun, 41 year old professor of religion. Not all yes, but some of us,

Megan Goodwin: 51:26

yes, you do. Yeah. Okay, so in that same CDC report, like I needed another reason to be fucking disappointed in the CDC. But let's do this. We get a phrase that made many around in 2022 before and after the Dobbs decision disenfranchised half the damn country. Look at us tying adoption and abortion and infertility together, bringing it together. The 2008 CDC report has this line in it, this little gem, nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 that is, they were in demand for a child, whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually non existent, domestic supply of infants. That phrase blew up the damn internet when a memo leaking the Dobbs decision was made public. In that memo, Justice Alito cites this very CDC report. Let's unpack this like it's a story time from yesteryear, keeping it 101, what the CDC said in its adoptive it, what the CDC said in its study of adoptive and want to be adoptive parents, is that in 2002 nearly 1 million women wanted to adopt, but there were no available us sourced babies to fill that demand. These bitches are just trying to shop local. Why are we mad at them? Because

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 52:50

I'm sorry, there's a really serious part of the podcast.

Megan Goodwin: 52:54

This is what we do, just like there's no way to read domestic supply of infants. That is not about supply global

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 53:02

is hilarious when applying to

Megan Goodwin: 53:05

you want them to have organic babies, and then Alito citing this is part of the No More abortions ruling in Dobbs. We've been trying all episode to Parson dissing ambiguous adoption, abortion and infertility and the Supreme Court and the Centers for Disease Control, they don't see them as separate issues. The issue is, ladies overwhelmingly white, ladies overwhelmingly white, Christian ladies want to adopt. Where are their organic, local, free range babies?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 53:37

Yeah. Look, the reality is barring abortions and saving children in the biggest scare quotes you ever seen are fundamentally Christianity. That's just Christianity wholesale, and the ideological constraints surrounding adoption are rooted in these religious precepts, all of it, every single part of it, presumes to prioritize adults, yep, even for the wild goyum, who think abortion is bad because that so called Child fucking fetus might have been saved, but then isn't so it goes to hell like, Look Megan, I'm not one to come for people's theology. I do this for a living. I think all theology is a little wacky, wacky, but that the child that never took a breath of air is also somehow going to hell, and that's everyone's fault. I look in the mirror like we need to have some deep thinking about the illogic of that and, frankly, the cruelty of that. But fine, that's a separate Ilyse feelings issue,

Megan Goodwin: 54:42

how Elise feels about the pope coming to you spring 2025

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 54:48

anyway, the not feelings piece of it is we have needed to unpack how tangled these ideas are, because of the US is history and ongoing relationships with Christian. Imperialism full stop.

Megan Goodwin: 55:02

Yes, yes. I need you to know that I am trying so hard not to utterly lose myself in dog screaming and the way that this decision is smothered and covered with white Christian nationalism, plus now I get to be mad that it offers adoption as a solution to abortion, which, as we damn well know, is not a problem that needs solving so much as healthcare for people who don't want to be pregnant, but that is taking up all my energy, so we should probably land this plane. Yeah, yeah. All right. So we're going to do a shorty episode that sums up this religion and adoption mini series nerd. So stay tuned for that. For now, let's just underline the episode's main points. Point the first adoption in what's now the US, no matter what else it is or could be, has always, always been about making sure that nice white American Christian families can raise the maximum amount of nice white American Christian children, which is why point the second, especially after roe codified the constitutional right to abortion in 1973 regressive white Christian nationalists fought hard to insist that adoption was the solution to the problem they thought abortion was and point the third, this is also how the proposal of adoption as a solution to infertility also really picks up steam. Yeah,

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 56:13

and that Venn Diagram of horror still does not tell us anything about the people who are directly and primarily the inheritors of this system, the domestically so everyone in theory, gets what they want, except the domestically supplied, or frankly, internationally supplied, hoarded versus

Megan Goodwin: 56:36

adoptee. So exotic, right?

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 56:38

Because in that equation, a pregnant person has to remain pregnant, they are forced to give birth, but they are not forced to parent. Okay, partial victory, the infertile person. Couple, whomever gets a baby, the baby is, in theory, the problem that has been solved, except none of it actually attends to the ongoing medical and sociological issues that adoptees face, including, but not limited to basic things like not knowing if their mother had breast cancer or developed breast cancer or colon cancer or mental illness or had a mustache that they got waxed a lot like none of that longitudinal genetic information gets passed on in the system of closed adoptions currently operating in the United States. But also none of the like this matters who you are and what your history is matters gets erased for adoptees and only adoptees. Yeah, we care about it with folks that are immigrants. We care about folks that aren't. We care about it like those questions are primary in an American setting, and adoptees are supposed to just blip it out. Well, you should be grateful that some should be grateful that we all just aren't dumpster children. Yeah, I say dumpster children, because in the 80s, there were all these women who wanted abortions but couldn't have access to them that were dumping fetuses or born born infants into dumpster. There was like a rash of this happening. And every adoptee I know that was adopted in the 80s had this experience of someone being like, well, the alternative was the dumpster. I just and

Megan Goodwin: 58:22

and the way that that story is offered, not as, oh my god, we have failed as a society, because this is the only option. It's either you get traffic to another family or you get put in the trash. Not, oh my god, what if all children deserved care and were being provided for by the state in which they lived. Like this is a you problem, yeah, and not a systemic failure completely. Wowie. Wowie.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 58:52

I mean, we could talk for days, but I think it's time to wrap it up. Nerds, you have some homework. Yes, homework. What homework? I have a bunch of things to recommend. I every single time we cited a medical fact that was a medical study for the purposes of transparency, because I know this will make people heated and bothered. I will put every single one of those medical studies into our show notes. Now full disclosure, not all of those are available to everyone because I use my university library login to search actual medical journals. But if you're someone who wants the facts and wants to reach out to me and hit me up, you are absolutely welcome to do that, but I will be citing the things that we cited without attention to what was publicly available. Yeah, things that are easier to get include Rebecca Randalls article in sojourners, which is titled for decades, churches forced unwed mothers into adoptions. It is from just a last year. There is a really great article. It's an academic article, but it's by Alice diver last year. It's called genetic stigma in law and literature, orphanhood. Adoption and the right to reunion. There is a really fabulous brand new book came out February or January of this year by Sun Ah layborn, whose book is called out of place the lives of Korean adoptee immigrants. It's a brilliant book, like for real, full assignment, if you're interested in American history, immigration, Asian American identities, or adoption. And then there's a bunch of books by adoptees themselves. Because why not let us speak? Nicole Chung has a really fabulous book called all you can ever know. It's won every award ever. She's really fabulous. She was also on a podcast with a colleague of mine I met as part of my Fulbright named Paul Lee, who hosts a podcast called divided families, about families who find themselves divided for any number of reasons. And they did an adoption episode with Nicole. It's a great episode. There's also Barbara Gowans blending in, crisscrossing the lines of race, religion and adoption, which is directly relevant to all of us. And then there's a few books in the self help realm, but that get but self help books get tossed around when we talk about adoptees, and they are almost always about, how do you deal with infertility while also adopting a child? How do you mourn that that child doesn't look like you? And my answer to that is, fuck off. Yeah, don't adopt someone if you don't understand what they look like. And also, welcome to my life. I have blonde haired, blue eyed children, and I am Brown. I am all of you at best, and so like, like, you are not guaranteed nothing, even if your genes are up in the mix. So a of all shut up. But self help books have their place. Here are two that I actually think are valuable, and they are written by an adoptee, which I think is important, named Sherry Eldridge. One is called 20 life transforming choices adoptees need to make. And the second, which I actually have read, is 20 things adopted kids wish their parents do so. And also, we want to recommend hard this land podcast by Cherokee writer and activist Rebecca Nagle. They have a, there's an there's an episode specifically about Native children being used to undermine native sovereignty. Yeah,

Megan Goodwin: 1:02:08

well, actually, the whole podcast I was going through, like, the most recent one is very specifically, like, leading up to the Supreme Court case that was threatening to undermine ICWA. But like, across the entire podcast, they were talking about the ways that US institutions use native children to undermine native sovereignty. So fabulous, very relevant to our interests and our rage. I will also say too, just to briefly lighten things up a tiny little bit that I have been texting Ilyse frantically for the last two weeks because I binge watched loot on apple plus Joel Kim booster, who is a comedian, in addition to being a really smart advocate for adoptees, in particular, gay international adoptees, is a main character in the show. And I thought, like, early on, I was like, Oh, we're going to talk about adoption for a hot minute. That's cool, but it's it's actually a runner in the show of him trying to figure out what kind of relationship he wants with his adoptive parents, whether or not he wants to look for his bio mom. And it's just, it's really thoughtful and really smart in a way that, like silly comedy is not often. So I was really delighted to see that. Not that I was surprised, but I was delighted.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:03:18

Yeah, and we recommend his essay, his, like very old toast essay about adoption, first episode. So I recommend Joel Kim booster across all platforms, all

Megan Goodwin: 1:03:27

of them, yeah. So you can find us across all social media. We're still on Twitter, reluctantly, whilst it Shambles forward, we're on Insta, we're on Tiktok, we're on Facebook, and if none of that domestically supplies your infants, we have a newsletter. You're welcome. You can join via our website, which is keeping it one, oh one.com. Drop us a rating or review in your podcast, your choice. You got me good. You did. I was really proud of that one.

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst: 1:03:54

If, after all that, after all this episode, if, after all this force part mini series, if after this very long semester, you would still want to invite us to campus or your local bookstore to talk pod or religion is not done with you. Our new book out with Beacon Press, please, please, please reach out to us or Caitlin Meyer and Our incredible marketing team at Beacon. All of this is on the website, but just so you heard it, we would love to come visit come get in touch with us early and often so we can make that happen, and with that, Peace Out nerds

Megan Goodwin: 1:04:24

and do your homework. Sounds syllabus? You

Unknown: 1:04:47

one of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the other? Be. For I finish my song.