So… There’s a lot wrong with this. I won’t get into all of it. The only thing I wanted to address are the fact that this cartoon points out that adoption is not in the interests of the children. Adopters want healthy, womb-wet, white infants, preferably girls. An embryo is not in need of life or new parents. But adopters love them some embryo adoption because then they can pretend they’re the real parents even more effectively.
Secondly, adoption is not a panacea. It does not cure the things that create orphans. It doesn’t heal or treat disease. It doesn’t do anything to ameliorate poverty. Adoption is the unnecessary re-distribution of children.
Occasionally, a child will need substitute care, in the event of hir parents’ death (some children are actually orphans, just not 163 million of them), illness, or inability to cope. However, adoption ignores the fact that the best place for a child to find substitute care is in the extended family. The West assumes that the only valid family form is nuclear. This isn’t so.
Adopters don’t care that the money they spend on snapping up a womb-wet infant or slightly older international child could be better used to support the natural family. In the cases of international adoption, that money would support many families for many years. The West has a saviour complex. Adopters want to “save” a child, not help the natural family save themselves.
Furthermore, adoption is not necessary to help a child or family. Adoption provides ownership documents in the form of falsified birth certificates. If a child really cannot be with any of hir natural family and stranger care must be utilised, there exists permanent legal guardianship. The child gets the safe, loving home (presumably) that ze deserves, and the child doesn’t have to have hir history obliterated for it to happen.
But, really, society should be focusing on solutions to the problems, not the band-aid of adoption. Adoption does nothing to help children, families, or communities.
(Source: mysticalshamanjosh, via rabbleprochoice)
