#adoption is not a solution to abortion

[babe-con-el-poder]

In a far away land....that used to be ruled by empires and trade routes to places beyond the southern hemisphere, I was created by a young, beautiful, somewhat lost but well loved woman.

She worked hard to care for others' homes and children. She was friendly and sweet and so unassuming that noone realized she was pregnant until she was about to give birth. But sadly, she knew the baby she would bear would not be safe with her. She had no financial means or quiet home to take la niñita to so they may live a warm and happy life together. There was no welcoming of her new daughter by her family because she knew the unfair shame of being alone and pregnant. She was desperate. And heartbroken.

I was born only 5 lbs and came to the world very early. I stayed in my mother's arms only a week then was brought to my permanent new home. I was more than a lifetime removed from my mother's world. I was surrounded by English speaking white people in a very cold but beautiful countryside. There were gorgeous farms and lots of safe places to play outside. Nothing like the crowded city my mother and her family lived in. But she ached for me. Finally, as her heart began to somehow heal slowly, she had a chance to live closer to me. She was promised a chance to watch me grow and flourish in the English-speaking world.

But life is hell. And I learned this lesson before I could really understand what it fully meant. My mother died tragically in a fiery car accident in my first year of life. If I had not been sent away I would have also perished with her.

Her legacy is ME. She is my guiding light. Her voice has protected me in the darkest hours. I still wonder why me? Is there a why? Does it matter? How could I have survived this insanely tragic beginning to my story and continued on as normal?

I know so much from living this story. I know that we take every moment for granted. I am a transracial, transnational adoptee. I sit in my power having learned from grief and loss as my very first life experience. And I'm here to share and learn.

[pbs-theundeadmaggot]

I fucking hate celebrations so much all it is, is a reminder of how unwanted I am. I mean fuck my own mother traded me in like a piece of junk as soon as I was born. There was no first milestones or mediocre talks about what your child’s been up to or how amazing it is that they slept through the night. In fact I cried every single damn night, at 5 I was crying myself to sleep while I waited for anyone to hear me.

Spoiler, I’m still waiting.

With my birthday coming up it’s especially hard, I literally have no friends and there’s the expectation of partying and having fun when in reality all I do is sit in my room day by day, alone and rotting away. I have no-one and even if I did have someone I’m not sure I’d even be able to really connect with them. Hell I can’t even tell my mum I love her or show her an inkling of affection because the fear of being rejected and losing that person is too much to even comprehend.

I mean how sad is it that at 5 I’d figured out that it’s easier to show you don’t care, so there’s no expectation and pressure, then to care. I learnt to live silently and thrive in my own pain and suffering because truly nobody cares, nobody fucking listens and I’m just so sick of everything.

[thatonebasicfan]

Radfem: we need abortion because both the adoption and foster care systems are very corrupt and children are often abused!

You're saying that every child who has been adopted or fostered should be dead

The reason why there isn't a lot of adoption/foster reform is because of abortion

Though there are definitely foster/adoptive homes that are horrendously abusive, Christians and Catholics are far more likely to adopt and foster, and over all, they tend to be less abusive. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. But Christians usually are very generous and want to help those that are needy.

[immortalfornow]

*gently nudging mother w stick* what if when we vent our mutual frustration about bodily autonomy in the usa we didn't call me a woman and backpedal into 'femme-presenting'. what if we just decided to acknowledge that transmascs and gnc folk are also impacted by the supreme court rn. just a thought.

[joelsgreys]

to do the right thing l masterlist

Postoutbreak! Joel Miller x Pregnant! Female Reader

summary: When you find out that you’re pregnant, getting rid of it seems to be the only option you have but when it doesn't go as planned, you think of another solution.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. BOSTIN QZ ERA. AGE GAP (reader is in her 20’s and Joel is in his 50’s). ((TW)) pregnancy, mentions of abortion, childbirth, adoption. PLEASE SEE INDIVIDUAL TAGS AND WARNINGS.

MOODBOOD FOR AESTHETIC PURPOSES ONLY, READER HAS NO PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION.

part i

part ii

part iii

lean on me

perfect to me

loved her first

[genderqueerdykes]

I'll preface this with saying that if you don't feel like dealing with this topic then feel free to delete the ask.

So I have a question regarding the "kink at Pride" debate. Isn't the most viable solution just having two events; i.e. one venue hosts an "all-ages" type and another separate one where everything is allowed?

I ask this because I recognize the contributions that people with kinks have made and I don't agree with the exclusionist mindset, but I'm one of those people who does have trauma surrounding kink. I hate feeling excluded because of that (after all, I'm queer and I've struggled just as much as the next queer person) and I want people like me to be able to participate just as much as those who helped make history. There are those who are able to reconcile their trauma, but many of us can't.

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. People on both sides tend to be very hostile regarding this subject... and that said I genuinely do understand the anger felt on the side of people with kinks since the talking point "kink doesn't belong at Pride at all" is an ahistorical and TERF based mindset. I just wished that the discussion around this topic was less toxic because I don't want to be exclusive to others nor be excluded myself, and unless I'm missing something it seems like the solution that would be beneficial for everyone is having those two spaces that accommodate both camps (if it is a common thing then that's good, but I've been to several areas and every event was only ever the mixed bag for lack of a better term).

hello there, i think my best answer for this question is this

it's totally okay to want to have all ages events and sections and aspects to pride parades and pride events- in my city pride lasts for an entire week and there are events specifically for kids, and elderly queer folks as well. often times during pride month there will be all kinds of celebrations and i think it's a good idea to have multiple kinds of celebrations

however, you really cannot remove the adult aspects from pride parades and other big main event pride festivals- there is free AIDS testing at a lot of pride fests, free condoms and dental dams, sexual education, other sex harm reduction education and resources, sex toy shops, info on safe gay/trans sex, information on safe kink practices, etc. removing those aspects of pride could be downright dangerous for some who rely on this type of harm reduction

i understand that you have trauma and that you want to express boundaries, that is good- if witnessing kink upsets or triggers you, it's okay to want to avoid it, but pride is going to have displays like that because it is in fact a protest. it is not family friendly, it never has been and it never will be- it spawned in response to police brutality that was happening within queer bars. it is designed to shock you and make you think.

pride is an event that has historically been kinky and included a lot of people proudly displaying that they live alternative lifestyles because they are heavily important to a lot of queers. the san fransisco pride parade is lead by the lesbian leather motorcycle club, Dykes on Bikes, and has been since the late 1970's.

i think it's very odd to focus on kink in specific when there are other traumatizing things that come up at pride- people discuss abortion, abuse, being arrested, beaten by the police, being denied rights adoptive rights and healthcare, and so much more. pride will always have something that will make people uncomfortable, because it is a protest in the street to talk about the brutal reality of our lives

again, as i stated, i am fine with children's, all ages, etc. pride themed events being held but main pride parades, festivals, etc. are in fact designed to be protests, meaning provocative and brutally real. they're not just for waving rainbow flags and saying "yay we love being gay!" it's okay to know your own limits and boundaries but i think that if you know that that's upsetting to you, you may just not be suited for an inherently political event, and that's okay. hope that helps, take care, stay safe

[redditreceipts]

I'm very pessimistic about the oppression of females.

I think males are biologically predisposed to create patriarchy. The solution would be to reduce the male population to 8% (through abortions for example) and bioengineer them to destroy these biological predispositions.

yeah, it's an interesting idea. I personally don't really think that they are biologically predisposed to do that, I think that patriarchy is dependant on the principals of ownership in our society, and when the social construction of ownership changes, the oppression of women changes as well. I don't really see much proof for a biological predisposition of patriarchy. we could look at our nearest ancestors, chimpanzees and bonobos, but they both have very different ways of displaying sexually dimorphic behaviour. and who's to say that homo sapiens sapiens didn't evolve in a completely different manner somewhere along the way? there have also been a lot of matriarchal societies in human history, or at least societies that have not been patriarchal (because the term "matriarchy" is disputed in ethnological circles I guess)

but even if it's the case that men are biologically predisposed to create patriarchy, I think we can adopt other methods to reach the same "bioengineering" goals (and these are actually realistic and applicable today).

Let's assume that the tendency to create patriarchy is genetically predisposed in men, then we could "genetically change" them in the following ways:

encouraging women to only have children with men who lack oppressive behaviourial patterns

encouraging the abortion of a fetus if the father is an asshole

mandatory castration of all sex offenders

this way, the "patriarchy genes" would just not be passed down. and look in the animal kingdom: female peacocks found males with blue feathers, a crown and a beautiful tail sexy, and the males complied. female baboons found that ugly ass blue and red nose sexy, and what did the males do? they evolved to have it. if female birds can get their men to get crazy dances to perform for them and to evolve in every color of the rainbow, then female homo sapiens should get their men to behave imo

[butch-reidentified]

ima go ahead n answer both these at once if that's good w yall.

here's the referenced post for anyone who missed it.

I've posted a LOT about adoption before. feel free to search #adoption, #ethical adoption, #adoptee or #adopted, etc in my tags for those posts. if you can't find them bc Tumblr is shit at searching lmk and I will try to dig em up. I have a Google doc of organized/categorized Tumblr links because of the search function being such a joke

anyway that said. what I meant is that it is sooo obvious to most adoptees from a young age that it's a consumer industry and we are a product for sale. most of us who always knew we were adopted have that horrifying realization very very young, far too young to know how to deal with it. yes I am glad when other people figure this out too but it's a bit irritating for non adoptees to act like this is some mystical wisdom they alone could've uncovered when it's part of the trauma inherent to adoption to realize you were purchased 🤷

I'm not against adoption like some adoptees are, but I could write ESSAYS on my criticisms of the industry and how it SHOULD work. in fact, I have written essay length posts about it in the tags listed above. but ultimately nobody gives a fuck & NOBODY of any political orientation wants to hear that adoption perhaps isn't the utterly selfless flawless silver bullet solution to unwanted kids that everyone treats it as. yet statistically we KNOW most adoptees are extremely damaged by it, the research is there but nobody talks about it. nobody likes you if you talk about it. the walls go up real quick.

one of my favorite things is how adoption seems to be the ONE area that absolutely nobody respects lived material experience about. even loads of leftists/radfems who are always going on and on about the importance of listening to people's real, lived experiences will aggressively talk over us adoptees if we dare have the audacity to critique adoption/the adoption industry or acknowledge that it's fuckin traumatic even for an infant being yanked away from the only stimuli you knew for 9 months and put somewhere where you can't recognize yourself in anyone or anything for the next 18+ years. and that's best case scenario! scenario where they don't abuse you or spend your childhood guilt tripping you because they oh so selflessly took you in when nobody wanted you and now look how difficult you are, crying all the time n shit... just as 1 common experience I know many share from my own life and talking to other adoptees.

but nearly every time we try to talk about this, even if it has nothing to do with criticizing the adoption industry and we are JUST tryna get painful shit off our chest, some non adoptee or 8 is/are gonna jump down our throat (and often even say all the same shit our parents guilted us with as kids lmao)

it's also 1000% a feminist issue bc SO many mothers are forced into adopting out a kid they wanna keep, or adoption being available is used to justify forcing women to give birth instead of aborting an unwanted pregnancy when those women would otherwise choose the latter. not to mention the designer baby shit & the preference for white male babies... and the fact that it's human beings being literally sold as a good. Just because it's legal and isn't outright sex slavery or "forced labor" (tho adopted kids are so often viciously abused and often in those exact ways) doesn't make it right to buy or sell a human being, doesn't make it not human trafficking. & I say this as an adoptee who was ALSO trafficked as a teenager.

[secularprolifeconspectus]

Pro-Life Rescue & Direct Action: The Importance of Invading Abortion Clinics

Non-Violent Direct Action is Proven Effective

From Ghandi’s Indian Independence Movement to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights Movement, to Serbia’s student-led resistance Otpor! and more, two things are consistently linked with the success of movements: a commitment to non-violence and the necessity of risking arrest. That’s because only when people are willing to take risks and make sacrifices, can the institutional power of an oppressor be challenged and delegitimized. Seeing other people getting directly involved in a movement motivates participation. There is a science to non-violent struggle and social revolution that has been documented by political researchers such as Gene Sharpe. From privileged people interposing their bodies between Black protesters and the police who brutalize them during the Black Lives Matter movement, to tenant networks mobilizing to blockade around the homes of vulnerable neighbors at risk of eviction by their landlords, leftists have proven these tactics save lives and advance change. If we want to see success in the anti-abortion movement, then we must follow proven social science.

Rescue is Necessary to Dismantle Big Abortion

Because we will never outspend the abortion industrial complex, the only way we can win is with people power. Abortion rescue disrupts the progress of abortion violence and applies pressure to those complicit. It viscerally agitates the public to reckon with abortion's violence. It reduces violence on the fringes of the pro-life movement by providing a non-violent outlet of expression for frustrated individuals. Non-violent abortion rescue interrupts injustice against prenatal people without unjust action and disarms the abortion providers without harming them. Parents seeking abortion as a solution to an unwanted or crisis pregnancy have bought into the lies of Big Abortion, and rescue unsettles that narrative. Rescuers hope to save not only the child, but also their mothers, families, and communities. Rescue is intervention intended to free even the abortion workers from the cycle of abortion violence. During the era of the late 80’s and early 90’s, it’s estimated that 60% of mothers with appointments for abortions on the day of a rescue never rescheduled.

Rescues Challenge Unjust Laws

We can’t let the reality that the law is on the side of the oppressors dictate what we ought to do. Our goal is to change that reality, not to live with it! Opposition to rescue implicitly affirms that the choice to kill is permissible. We have no ethical obligation to follow unjust laws; in fact, we may challenge unjust laws with civil disobedience. We must use our bodies as shields to stop the main aggressors of abortion from hurting the babies because law enforcement upholds the violent status quo of the state. When a rescuer is sentenced to jail, it is an opportunity for non-rescuers to hold the entire legal system accountable each day for the murder it protects until it is as safe and legal to protect children as it is now safe and legal to kill them.

Rescuers Save Lives in Prisons

If you are pregnant and incarcerated, you are the forgotten of the forgotten. Pregnant prisoners are either pressured into abortion, mistreated into a miscarriage, or forced to suffer a dehumanizing birthing experience, and predatory adoption agencies lie in wait to take and profit from their babies. Pro-Life activists imprisoned for rescue are presented the unique opportunity to advocate for better conditions for pregnant prisoners, to defend the lives of their unborn children, to organize support for their families from the outside world, and to serve grieving post-abortive women behind bars. Even incarcerated women deserve better than abortion. Thus abortion rescuers continue to rescue even while in prison.

Rescues Affirm the Equality of the Preborn

By taking the risk to rescue, you practice solidarity with the preborn and parents who believe abortion is their only option. You have the power as a privileged born person to put your body between the powerless and their oppressors, between an abortion provider and a helpless child. How do we show the world that fetuses are the same as us when we are nothing like them? The answer is simple: we make ourselves more like them. When rescuers stand in solidarity with the preborn, they become as vulnerable as the preborn are. If we say that a woman needs to sacrifice her lifestyle, relationship, body, and future for her unborn child, then we are hypocrites if we’re not willing to do the same. When we rescue, we are willing to sacrifice the same to prison for her child, ergo rescue is solidarity with moms too. Some people will never affirm the humanity of the preborn. It’s our job to do so by being physically intolerant of abortion through rescue.

Rescue is a Direct Act of Love

The preborn deserve to have someone show up for them. An attempt to rescue a preborn child may be the only act of love they ever receive before they are murdered. They have no one else as they are taken legally to their deaths. The success of a rescue is not determined by how many babies were saved that day; it's determined by how many babies were loved. If you were facing death, wouldn’t you want someone who loves you to stand physically with you to the last possible second as well? Your presence in their moment of suffering matters. The preborn deserve to have someone witness them as full people at least once in their life.

If Abortion is Murder, then Act Like It

Do your actions reflect the reality that the preborn are people equal to ourselves? Rescue fully expresses what it means to understand that the preborn have the same humanity as us. Our sacrifice forces others to see the humanity of the preborn, because if they aren’t people, why would we risk jail and potentially worse for them? If the preborn have the right to life, then we have a responsibility to make sure their right is respected. Rescue offers a final tangible act of love to a child as they are being taken away to be exterminated. If you KNOW the preborn are people and abortion is murder, then ACT LIKE IT!

How to Support Rescue

Not every pro-life person can be an abortion rescuer. Factors like finances, family, disability, and racialized police brutality prevent many folks who support rescue from feeling confident in participating. Luckily, there are many ways the pro-life community as a whole can participate in rescue without being a rescuer!

Sponsor a rescuer financially. If you can't rescue, donate to a rescuer who will do it for you! As rescuer Herb Geraghty said, "let us be your hands and feet". Offer monetary and emotional support to the families of rescuers.

Do jail support. Demonstrate in front of police stations, courts, jails, and prisons that are holding rescuers. Write to the rescuers frequently. If you are on a legal team, offer your local rescuers pro-bono defense.

Share rescue stories on your social media in a positive light. Comment on news stories that frame rescue badly. Make videos about rescue and why you support it.

Do culture jamming around clinics frequented by rescuers. Make posters and wheatpaste them to sidewalks, sharpie pro-life messages to the backs of signs, put rescue stickers on the alley walls around the clinic.

Help organize the rescues. Do research about the clinics for the rescuers. Keep the rescuers updated about police scanners while they perform a rescue. Coordinate supplies, donations, first-aid, and legal defense. Be there with food before and after rescue.

Learn More

Quotes About Abortion Rescues Rescue and Police Violence The Rescue Movement (Documentary) The Brutal Truth Dragonslayers Defenders of the Unborn Wrath of Angels Shattering the Darkness All the Rescues Essential Roles in Social Movements Types of Abortion Rescue Historic Abortion Rescues Media Bias Against Abortion Rescue Joan Andrews

[fictionadventurer]

Would you be able to tell me more about how pro-life positions are beneficial to women?

I have been becoming more pro-life over the past year because I see edges of this argument online, but I don't know enough to try to clearly explain it to myself, much less to other people. One point someone brought up that helped me see this differently was that abortions are a band-aid solution to sexual abuse and help make it easier to hide sexual violence. And I have also seen the point people make that companies would rather provide abortion care than maternity leave because it keeps people working.

I'm curious if you have other thoughts that can help me affirm this point both to myself and to others? I think there's a lot of vitriol around how people speak about women in abortion discussions, and it can make it hard for people who are on the fence to engage. And having more examples of how pro-life advocates care for women would make it easier to enter into the conversation, especially with people who take a feminist approach to the topic.

(I also want to affirm that I'm asking this in good faith, as someone who wants to learn sincerely, and I hope you might respond sincerely too. I'm taking it for granted that a fetus is also a human, so I'm more interested in how to bring up this other part of the discussion with people. If this is a topic you know less about, that's all right too.)

I tend to approach abortion debates by keeping a laser-focus on the fact that the fetus is a human and a person, because we need to remind people that no problem that the mother faces justifies killing an innocent human being. That said, the pro-life position is infinitely better for women in a bunch of different ways. I'm not going to provide sources, because there are lots of better blogs devoted to that kind of thing (@prolifeproliberty is one that's coming to mind), but I can provide a few talking points.

The biggest benefit a pro-life position provides to a woman is that she doesn't have to live with the fact that she killed her own child. People understand on an instinctive level that a woman is pregnant with a baby; they can try to gloss over it with rhetoric, but the truth remains that the woman pregnant with a human being with its own separate life to live, and abortion violently ends that life. Abortion regret is a very real thing; there's a vast increase in depression and suicide in post-abortive women, and these women often can't get help for such regret, because people deny that it exists, or because "it was her choice".

A pro-life position is also infinitely more empowering to women. Abortion supporters look at a pregnant woman and tell her, "You can't do this. You can't raise a child. You can't have a career. You can't get out of poverty. This will destroy your life." The pro-life position tells a woman that she can do this. She's strong enough. She's smart enough. Both she and her child can have fulfilling lives, because we can help her. The pro-life community provides tons of resources to help women get the supplies and medical care and support that they need to either raise the child or to find adoptive parents to help raise it. Abortion only gets rid of the child--it doesn't solve any of the other problems that made it so difficult for the woman to have a child.

Abortion is also the single greatest tool to allow men to sexually abuse women. The pro-abortion idea that men are against abortion because they want to oppress women is laughable. Men get no benefit from a pro-life position. Abortion allows men to sleep around as much as they like, and if they get a woman pregnant, they don't have to pay child support--they just pay for her abortion and go on their merry way. No concern for her mental or physical or emotional health--just convenience for him. Abortion turns both woman and child into objects for a man's pleasure, to be disposed of when they're not fun anymore.

I could go on for ages, but to keep this simple, I'll just list a few other points:

Abortion greatly increases a woman's risk of breast cancer, and can cause fertility problems later in life.

The abortion pill is extremely dangerous, especially used unsupervised, because it can cause extreme bleeding and other complications.

Abortion allows sexual abusers to hide the evidence of their sexual abuse and keep women trapped longer. This includes human-trafficking and prostitution situations.

Women are often pressured into abortion because of lack of support from their family or community. People might be willing to help her pay for the abortion, but if the woman chooses to have the child, people are unwilling to provide long-term support--it was "her choice", so she has to bear all the responsibility. A decision for abortion made under that kind of pressure isn't really concerned about "a woman's choice."

As you said, employers are far more willing to pay for abortion than they are to provide much more expensive maternity leave, health insurance, etc. It can serve as another tool for employers to oppress workers.

Abortion supporters are often so focused on increasing access to abortion that they put women at risk. They have shot down and repealed bills that require abortion clinics to be licensed and inspected and to meet certain minimum medical standards. They've allowed teenagers to get abortions without parental notification, even though they're legally not competent to make other medical decisions, and the abortion procedure could put the teen's health at risk (plus this can cause teens to be trapped even longer in trafficking situations). They shoot down measures that would require women to be given more information about the abortion procedure and other options--even though informed consent is a cornerstone of medical ethics. If abortion supporters were truly concerned about women, they would be willing to put some of these common-sense protective measures in place.

[compassionatereminders]

Yup I understand your thoughts as well about the abortion but makes me wonder what would those parents do if a kid gets hit by a car for example and the kid can no longer walk... just adopt the kid because they don't want a disabled child anymore? There are a lot of disabilities you can get later in life from accidents and such.

Would they no longer love their kid anymore? That's what I wonder. Because that ex classmate said such kids should be born and it kinda sucks she says this to me when my sister is disabled.

Sorry if I annoyed you or anything just wanted to know your thoughts and thanks for answering. I was a bit pissed off at that ex classmate since my younger sister got bullied a lot.

No I completely agree that it is wrong, toxic and potentially abusive to devalue a child because they aren't abled, because anyone can become disabled at any point, but I don't think that the solution to that problem is to force ableist people to raise disabled children

[homosexuhauls]

Feminists who make sensible, reasoned arguments in favour of autonomy and have calm debates with the anti-abortion crowd are amazing and I admire them and of course we need them to continue educating and informing, for the sake of the women and girls on the fringes of the discussion especially.

But ffs I do not CARE if the foetus is alive, or a person, or a baby, or anything else. If something is in my body and I do not want it there, it is not staying inside me. I am not a vessel. I am not obligated to grow a new human with my own body and its resources.

"Consent to heterosexual sex is consent to pregnancy but also if you're raped don't blame the ickle baby and abort." Sure. Hence abortion. Hence contraceptives. Solutions are invented when there are problems to be solved. Whether those problems are natural or created or even self-inflicted is irrelevant.

"Mothers have an obligation to their children." And yet, those who seek abortions should be prepared to choose adoption as a satisfactory alternative. So which is it, are we dutiful mothers from the moment of conception or are we supposed to be happy performing unwanted reproductive labour for adoptive parents? Are we cattle or are we dogs?

"You're killing your baby." I don't care if it's an endangered Amur leopard cub tbh, it's not staying there. I am not a mother and I do not want to reproduce. I have seen motherhood. I think mothers are incredible, as a group and often as individuals. I also think unwanted motherhood is the cruelest fate imaginable, for both woman and child.

Bottom line is, there is no scenario where it is more ethical to force a woman or girl through pregnancy and birth than it is to safely terminate said unwanted pregnancy. No amount of guilt-tripping or moralising or misinformation or provocative rhetoric can outweigh my right to choose not to be pregnant.

(Also personally I would terminate myself if I couldn't access termination for an unwanted pregnancy. So I guess the foetus would still technically end up aborted lol. You ain't growing from me, sunshine.)

[milflewis]

who is sinead o’connor?

wasn’t going to answer this lol bc i’ve actually found myself feeling more about her passing than i thought i would? so apologies if this comes off a bit weird i am in a v strange place rn. btw. she converted to islam a few years ago and changed her name to shuhada sadaqat. tho she still performed under sinéad o’connor! she was an irish singer from the late eighties and was v talented. would ten out of ten recommend her music! but to me and a lot of ppl she was so much more than that.

the first time i saw a woman angry on tv it was shuhada sadaqat. it was a replaying of this video and the news station was taking the piss out of her. i was eight and i remember my grandad waking up from his nap and rolling his eyes at the screen and saying she should’ve kept her mouth shut. that he used to think she was smth worth looking at. and changing the channel to the sunday match.

she was So Angry and so so unapologetic about it. the ripping up of the pope’s picture in this video and declaring that we should fight the real enemy. was her way of talking about the systemic sex abuse that children have faced at the hands of the church for decades and how no one is properly talking about it. keep in mind this was BEFORE there was any serious investigations being done or it was being discussed openly in the media. it was not smth that was being acknowledged and any priests that were being caught were being treated as a ‘bad apple’ rather than part of a system of institutionalised abuse. she was nearly completely ostracised and blackballed. she was labelled batshit crazy and difficult and a shrew etc. you know the story. it’s always the same.

she never took it back. i remember one time where she was asked did she regret ruining her career bc the career that she could’ve had v much did get fucked by what she did and she said that it fucked up the career that ppl (her agents and etc) wanted for her. not the one that SHE wanted. that has always stuck with me.

sadaqat was also a survivor of the magdalene laundries. having been sent there for shoplifting i believe? at 18. which are a whole other story but were basically these places set up in ireland by the church and sanctioned by the government where unwed and pregnant/misbehaving and or had mental health issues girls and young women were sent to work (launder clothes and sheets etc) until they gave birth and then the child was taken from them and given up for adoption or were declared fit to return to society. there were v few records kept of who went where. a lot of children and women didn’t make it due to the conditions they were living in (corporal punishment was also not an uncommon practise used). a mass grave of nearly 800 bodies was found here in Tuam in 2017 (i think?) which caused a national scandal that has been handled and is still being handled so v fucking poorly it’s depressing. the church has yet to apologise or take proper ownership for this. neither has our government. who had at best allowed it to happen and at worst encouraged it. for context. shuhada tore up this picture in 1992. the last laundry was closed in 1996.

she spoke out about how abortion was dealt and not dealt with in this country. how we were sending people away to england to have them instead of legalising it here. an irish solution to an irish problem. she told her story about how she had them to try to normalise and create a discussion decades before it was allowed and brought into practise here.

she talked about things. this. to me. was one of the biggest things she ever did. she spoke! she refused to ignore and let it go! which in this country is pretty fucking rare rn. let alone back then. this is who she is and so much more. if you’re interested to learn more about her i would highly recommend looking her up! (she did a podcast episode with blindboy that i haven’t listened to yet but i’ve heard v good things about!) she was a pretty fucking cool person

[prolifeproliberty]

I'm not going to be completely uncivilized like some people here. Help me to understand your views. What if a ten year old child is raped, and the child would die due to birth and pregnancy? What's your stance on trans men? Are you adopting kids who were put up for adoption? Are you funding formula shortages? I don't think that consent to sex equals consent to pregnancy. I'm pro choice, and I want to engage in normal discussion, because blatantly attacking pro choicers does nothing.

I appreciate the civility. I really do need to update a frequently asked questions page though to cover some of these.

- “What if a ten-year-old child is raped, and the child would die due to birth and pregnancy?”

First, if a child (or anyone) is raped, the rapist needs to rot in jail. Maybe the death penalty - that’s a conversation we can have, but it’s not currently the norm. What we shouldn’t do is punish the preborn child worse than the rapist, since the preborn child is not responsible for the circumstances of his or her conception.

In your question you set a premise that “the child would die.” There are no situations where the outcomes are that clear. There are certainly significant risks for a young child who becomes pregnant, but the pregnancy is by no means a death sentence. With proper medical care, the child can be monitored for signs of complications, and the baby can be delivered early by c-section if needed.

There’s a very sad article on Wikipedia called “List of Youngest Birth Mothers.” Reading it will break your heart. The youngest girl on there was five years old. Five. But she delivered a living child in 1939 in Peru, with very limited medical care access.

All of the children on the list are under 11. In so many cases, especially since many of them are from before DNA testing was a thing, the rapist is never identified or convicted. It’s awful.

What it shows us, however, is that with proper medical care there is no room to say “the child will die” as if there’s no hope.

In a situation where a child has been raped and is pregnant, there is no trauma-free solution. Abortion will traumatize her, as will giving birth. However, some rape survivors who give birth actually find it healing and empowering - but we can’t know whether they will feel that way until it happens.

What we can do is take the path that has less death, and that’s the path of not killing preborn children and doing everything possible to protect the lives and health of both of the children involved.

What saddens me is how many people think that the “easy” answer in these cases is to kill an innocent child.

- “What’s your stance on trans men?”

I believe that biological sex is determined at fertilization, and it’s not something you can change, even with hormones and surgery. What saddens me is how many young people have become convinced they are transgender because either A) they don’t feel comfortable in their body (and who does during puberty and adolescence?) or B) they don’t feel they fit into some arbitrary cultural standard of how men and women are supposed to act. A woman who doesn’t like wearing dresses or doing feminine things isn’t suddenly a man - she just has different style, tastes, and interests. Telling her she needs hormones and surgery because she doesn’t “fit in” with cultural norms is horrifying.

- “Are you adopting kids who are put up for adoption?”

There are two different conversations here: adopting from foster care and adopting newborns whose mothers chose adoption prior to giving birth or shortly after.

In your question, it sounds like you’re talking about babies being placed for adoption by their mothers as an alternative to abortion. There are currently long, long waiting lists for those children. It’s hard to get accurate numbers, but some estimates say as many as 2 million couples are waiting to adopt newborns at any one time.

Meanwhile, there have been around 1 million abortions a year for the last several years. There are about 100,000 children in foster care who are eligible for adoption. So those 2 million couples could adopt every single child who would have been aborted and every single child in foster care, and there would be 900,000 couples left waiting to adopt, not accounting for couples adopting sibling groups.

What stops all the children in foster care from being adopted is a combination of red tape and stigma. Children in foster care tend to have higher levels of need because of the trauma they’ve been through, and some couples feel ill-equipped to handle that.

I say all of this to explain that there isn’t a lack of adoptive families. I’m not in the best position to adopt, and you don’t need me to be. What we need is better education and support for couples adopting from foster care.

Also, for mothers who choose adoption for their child before or shortly after birth, there is no foster system involved. They can choose the adoptive parents and the child goes directly to those parents.

- “Are you funding formula shortages?”

I’m assuming this question is asking what I’m doing to help parents struggling to find formula. I donate to pregnancy resource centers which provide formula as well as diapers, baby clothes, and other resources to the moms they work with.

I also share resources like La Leche League for those moms who could potentially breastfeed but need support in doing so. Obviously there are many situations where breastfeeding isn’t possible, but it’s my hope that if those who can breastfeed do, there will be more formula available for those who have no other option.

- “I don’t think consent to sex equals consent to pregnancy.”

Here’s the thing - If you willingly engage in an activity that puts a vulnerable, innocent human at risk, you are now responsible for that vulnerable human’s well-being. Sex has the potential to create a new human life, which is inherently vulnerable and needs protection and care. If you engaged in sex, you are responsible for that human being’s circumstances, and therefore for that human being’s protection and care.

But setting that argument aside, it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings, no matter how they were conceived. The choice isn’t whether to be pregnant, it’s whether to commit an act of violence with the intention to kill a human child.

I would invite you to familiarize yourself with common abortion procedures and how they are performed, as explained by OB/Gyns who are also former abortionists. These are acts of violence against children, and we cannot allow them.

[ex-foster]

Why liberal feminists are poor allies to girls and women from foster care:

1. They use foster kids as counter arguments in the abortion debate.

- this stigmatizes kids in care and suggests that they are unloved or unwanted

- foster kids end up hearing these arguments where they are used in the abortion debate and it has a negative impact on their self image and their role in the community

- the argument suggests that being a foster kid is a fate worse than death (foster kids deal with adverse childhood experiences but we should teach resilience not despair)

- abortion has been legal and available for nearly 40 years and this has not eliminated the need for foster care. Bringing foster kids in the abortion debate is nonsensical.

-they spread inaccurate information about foster care including the amount of children "waiting to be adopted" You can't just look at the statistics of youth in care and say they are all waiting to be adopted. First of all adoption is not even possible until the parental rights have been terminated. Many foster kids are in there temporarily and eventually get reunited with the parents. Second, adoption is not the appropriate solution in all cases. Some foster kids are in kinship care (a family member is taking care of the child) where guardianship may be more appropriate than adoption. There are other considerations as well including the age of the child and their wishes. Teens in the foster care system may want to pursue emancipation not adoption.

2. They ignore the link between foster care and sex trafficking.

- liberal feminists often consider themselves to be sex positive which includes a positive attitude towards porn and an uncritical view of the sex industry

- girls and women from foster care are overrepresented among sex trafficking victims.

- liberal feminists fail to understand the vulnerability of girls and women from foster care including their extremely high rate of homelessness after they age out of care

- although liberal feminists often have empathy for other women when it comes to #metoo, it is often limited to women in the same social class as them. They can empathize with women who were sexually harassed at work and understand the power a male boss has over their female employee however this empathy is sometimes not extended to women who are in the sex trade. The circumstances that lead to them engaging in survival sex work is not critically examined. There is an emphasis on "choice" but not the circumstances that puts a woman in a position where they might have to consider sex work in order to survive.

3. They ignore the importance of biological sex and advocate instead on the basis of gender identity.

- liberal feminists often bully women who desire female only spaces (such as rape crisis shelters, domestic violence shelters and homeless shelters). Women from foster care are overrepresented among the homeless population and are in need of these services.

- foster kids are pushed on the path to transition (LGBT is overrepresented among foster kids) studies show that boys and girls who are gender nonconforming often come to terms with their gender dysphoria at puberty (but often discover that they are gay or lesbian as adults). Liberal feminists and trans activists often see gender nonconformity as something that requires medical intervention.

- foster kids have historically been overly pathologized. Foster kids have trauma by virtue of being in foster care. This trauma should be explored in therapy. If a teen girl thinks she is a boy, do you think her religious parents disowning her for being a lesbian could be a factor? Do you think childhood sexual abuse could be a factor? Do you think witnessing domestic violence is a factor? The affirmation model (which is required in Canada 🍁) puts foster kids on a pipeline to medical transition because alternative therapies are not permitted

[gatheringbones]

[“In the decades between 1945 and 1972, when abortion was illegal and single motherhood taboo, women who became pregnant out of wedlock faced a small range of options: a shotgun wedding, raising the child alone in the face of overwhelming social condemnation, risking death or maiming through illegal abortion, or “going away” to homes for unwed mothers for the duration of their pregnancy, where they were pressured to relinquish their babies for adoption and return home as though nothing had happened. Overwhelmingly, women chose—or were forced to choose—the latter.

Some estimates hold that, during the era, a fifth of all children born to never-married white mothers were relinquished for adoption. In the general population 9 percent of unmarried women who became pregnant gave their children up. For women who were sent to maternity homes, that rate increased exponentially, with nearly 80 percent of residents relinquishing. In real numbers, during that era anywhere from the 1.5 million mothers officially documented to higher estimates of between 6 and 10 million relinquished their infants.

Today most adoption agencies speak of that time as “the bad old days.” Adoption reform advocates have a more biting name, calling it “the Baby Scoop Era” for what they see as the massive theft of millions of children.

(…) In the 1940s control of the homes shifted to social workers—just then emerging as a recognized class of professionals—who viewed illicit sex as a pathological disorder and unwed mothers as feeble minded or mentally ill. (More specifically, they viewed unwed white mothers as pathological. Unwed mothers of color were viewed as naturally and irredeemably promiscuous and, therefore, had the mixed blessing of being less likely to be pressured to relinquish their babies for adoption, as there was lesser demand for black babies, but more likely to be coerced into other forms of reproductive control.)

Although the Christian-run homes had viewed single mothers as sinners in need of religious charity, now “professionalization” redefined what had simply been morally shameful into a social disease. “We were deviant, unnatural, had to be cured,” said Wilson-Buterbaugh. Her Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative has documented numerous sociological reports from the period that reveal the paternalistic and punitive orientation of the homes. Social workers noneuphemistically called resident birthmothers “inmates” and asserted that their role as social workers was to serve as disciplinarian parents to girls who had gotten pregnant on purpose.

In a caseworker paper presented at the 1960 National Conference on Social Welfare, Dr. Marcel Heiman made exactly that argument, alleging that caseworkers must compensate for defective parental discipline in families in which a girl becomes pregnant out of wedlock by taking on the parents’ role. “The caseworker must then be decisive, firm and unswerving in her pursuit of a healthy solution for the girl’s problem. The ‘I’m going to help you by standing by while you work it through’ approach will not do. What is expected from the worker is precisely what the child expected but did not get from her parents—a decisive No! . . . An ambivalent mother, interfering with her daughter’s ability to arrive at the decision to surrender her child, must be dealt with as though she (the girl’s mother) were a child herself.”

In light of the growing number of married couples seeking white babies to adopt as their own at the time, sociologist Clark E. Vincent, author of the 1961 book Unmarried Mothers, offered a chilling warning that maternity homes could become the hub of a market driven by supply and demand. “If the demand for adoptable babies continues to exceed the supply . . . then it is quite possible that, in the near future, unwed mothers will be ‘punished’ by having their children taken from them right after birth,” he wrote. “A policy like this would not be executed—nor labeled explicitly—as ‘punishment.’ Rather, it would be implemented through such pressures and labels as: ‘scientific findings,’ ‘the best interests of the child,’ ‘rehabilitation of the unwed mother,’ and ‘the stability of family and society.’”

“As far as people were concerned,” said Fessler, “they were bad girls, sluts, not deserving of being mothers.”]

kathryn joyce, the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption