At times, I think we're living in the future. Crazy technologies exist that people couldn't have possibly imagined fifty years ago are now parts of daily life that we don't even consider. Our embrace of new technologies sometimes outpaces our willingness to think about the long term consequences of the application of all kinds of new technologies.
New reproductive technologies have allowed many people who would not have been able to have their own children to have children to parent. It is an extremely touchy topic these days, particularly in the context of an increasing number of states recognizing the legality of gay marriage and adoption.
[Standard adoptee disclaimers apply: I don't hate my parents, I don't hate gay parents, I don't hate anyone's parents, etc etc etc.]
The adoptee community has been up in arms about gay civil liberties issues because the enfranchisement of gay couples as legitimate legal families has immediate consequences for issues of adoption. It is very hard to write about and analyze the critical intersections of between LBGTQ civil rights and adoption without sounding homophobic. [For the record, I'm a supporter of LBGTQ civil rights. Greater civil rights for everyone can only be a good thing.] It would never be my intention to come across as insensitive to the very real issues that gay couples face in their efforts to secure their own civil rights, but my fear is that in their own struggles to secure legal rights, gay couples are participating in the oppression of adoptee rights.
Being recognized as legal family has huge implications for gay couples who have long been denied basic civil liberties and rights that heterosexual couples enjoy: the right to a legally recognized marriage, the right to spousal benefits in the workplace, the right to parent. Its this last point that has the adoption community up in arms. The fears are these:
First, that the increased number of legally recognized married couples unable to have their own children [for whatever reason] is going to lead to a greater number of adoptions. The fear here is that gay couples will want to adopt newborns. Adoptee rights activists have been trying to decrease the number of newborn adoptions for years now, pointing out that newborn adoptions should be an absolute last resort. Adoption should only exist to provide homes for children who need them, not for parents who want them. [See the post about the Cheerios commercial.] There is some evidence that gay couples tend to adopt children from foster care, as well as the children considered more difficult to place for adoption. Adoptee rights activists would love nothing more than for gay parents to adopt foster care kids [who really genuinely do need homes]. We just don't want an increased demand for newborns to increase the already gargantuan size of the current multi-billion dollar adoption-industrial complex.
Second, new reproductive technologies like sperm banks and surrogates are making actual biological reproduction for gay couples a possibility and raising issues about the effects of these technologies on the lives of the children created as a result of their use. Reproductive technologies sound like great news, but there are some very real fears that the demand for these technologies in the pursuit of the creation of children on demand will lead to some very serious ethical problems. Just recently came this story about a Thai surrogate who opted to keep a Down's syndrome baby twin after refusing the request of the biological parents that she abort. Renting the uteruses of poor women in developing countries preys on the poverty of women in places like Thailand and essentially turns them into breeding cows to create children on demand for cash. Its worrisome that surrogacy is now being marketed as a normal way to start a family. Sperm banks are no better, as their confidentiality policies leave children without any links to fully half of their biological information and leave them in the same place as adoptees in terms of access to information about themselves.
Third, the issue of amended birth certificates is the absolutely most sore point about gay adoption and the one that has outraged the adoptee rights community. The problem is that in their desire to establish their own civil rights, gay adoptive parents are adding support and weight to one of the most despised parts of the entire adoption process: the amended birth certificate. As most adoptive parents, gay parents want their own names on the amended birth certificate instead of the biological parents' names in their efforts to establish legal parentage. The adoptee rights community has been fighting for years to halt the mutilation of the birth certificates of adopted people and it is disheartening and disappointing to see gay parents continue to demand that birth certificates be filled with false information that does not reflect the child's biological truth. If I had one thing to say to potential gay adoptive parents, it would be this: PLEASE HELP STOP THE PRACTICE OF AMENDED BIRTH CERTIFICATES RATHER THAN DEMAND THE LEGAL FALSIFICATION OF THE BIRTH CERTIFICATES OF ADOPTED PEOPLE. EVERYONE DESERVES TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT THEIR ORIGINS.
The massive ethical problems that arise from the use of new reproductive technologies to create children for families who want them are not new to adoptees. The adoptee rights community has been talking about this for a long time. The people who are going to bear the brunt of consequences of these ethical issues are, of course, the children involved.
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