Abortion Gang

Where should I start with this article? Fox News Commentator: Stop Abortions By ‘Celebrating’ Teen Pregnancy‘

The entire story represents a collision of bad soundbites, all of which perpetuate myths about different reproductive choices — and the liberal Think Progress commentators are just as much at fault as the conservative Fox News pundits.

To sum it up for you: Fox News contributor Nina Easton says we should “celebrate young women who bring a baby to term and find an adoptive parent” as a way to reduce abortion (to Easton’s credit, she also says we should make birth control more widely available). Think Progress writer Aviva Shen responds by misrepresenting Easton’s words — which are really about celebrating adoption — into something about “celebrating teen pregnancy.” Shen then uses some alienating adoption language (using the term “birthmothers” to apply to young women who change their mind about adoption and end up parenting — they’re just mothers!) and rounds it would with some heavy stigma on young parents (misrepresenting data on dropout rates and poverty, for example, and portraying young mothers as “vulnerable” and “entrapped”), while simultaneously condemning Fox News for stigmatizing abortion.

Neither of these narratives are helpful.

Yes, stigmatizing abortion is bad. Abortion is common and necessary, and women who need and want abortions should not be shamed. Conversely, though, both the challenges associated with adoption and the flaws in the adoption system are routinely glossed over, as Easton’s comments illustrate. Adoption is not a choice that should routinely be vaunted as superior to abortion or to parenting without a very careful consideration of individual context.

And yet, stigmatizing young parenthood is just as problematic as either stigmatizing abortion or celebrating adoption. As we’ve seen in New York (and everywhere, really), portraying young parents alternately as scapegoat and victim serves no one well. It doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy, and it just makes it less likely that young families will receive the support they need to be successful.

Ultimately, both Easton’s and Shen’s messages, though counter to each other, are problematic in the same way: they attempt to paint one reproductive choice as inherently better than another, which serves to stigmatize those “lesser” options. We cannot argue that adoption is always better than abortion any more than we can suggest abortion is better than parenthood. Instead, we must work to make sure all people have the freedom and resources at their disposal to freely choose the best option for themselves — and stigma of any stripe will only work to diminish such freedom.

The most surprising thing to say about the adoption plots in Paul Weitz’s new film Admission (starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd) is, really, how routine they seem. Six years ago — before Juno – it would have been remarkable to find a movie revolving around a birth mother and her story. But now, after Juno, 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, Glee, The Baby Wait, a birth mother story seems run of the mill. In fact, while waiting for Admission to being, there was a premiere for The Big Wedding, (starring Diane Keaton, Robert DeNiro, Susan Sarandon, and many others) whichalso features a birth mother meeting her son’s adoptive family for the first time. Have we had enough of these stories?

I’m all for Hollywood to keep trying, since I feel like none of these representations have quite gotten it right. This isn’t surprising — movies are about being sensational and dramatic, and less about real-life complexity. The problem with Admission is that it manages to make adoption both a narrow and overwhelming part of the story. When Portia Nathan, an admission counselor at Princeton, discovers that an applicant might be the son she placed for adoption, this possibility seems to tap into some innate, essential well of motherly imperative. She begins empathizing with the frantic parents of other applicants, trying to hold random babies in stores, and bulldozing her way through the admissions process (without even a nod to professionalism) to ensure that her son will be able to attend Princeton. It looks and feels like an implosion, but the viewer is left to wonder if this is because of a recent breakup in which her boyfriend left her for his pregnant mistress, because of some unnamed and unrealized desire to parent, because of her own fractured relationship with her mother, because of her inability to know her own biological father, or because of watching her new romantic prospect interact with his adopted son. The adoption is addressed directly only occasionally, and often frantically, so we don’t have a clear understanding of what the impact has been on Portia’s life. What is the movie trying to say about adoption? Even after watching, I’m not sure.

What it does do, however, is place adoption in the context of a bigger sense of the unknown. Portia does not know her father, nor does she know her son. These disconnections prevent her from connecting with her mother in any meaningful way. We don’t know if Portia wants to be a mother, and perhaps she doesn’t either. In the end, it was this rootlessness that came across most strongly, and contrasted most sharply with the repeated classification of Portia’s life as stable and boring — but it was also what was glossed over most frequently for the sake of comedic purpose. In the end, the metaphor, whether intended or not (and it probably was), between adoption reunions and the college admissions process is at least partially true: the sense of putting oneself out there, of hanging one’s future on an unknowable verdict rendered by an unknown person, highlights how vulnerable adoption can make people.

Here’s hoping that the next birth mother movie — because goodness knows, it doesn’t seem like we’ll have any shortage of them — will find a way to give more space to this complexity.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the dismay generated by New York Human Resources Administration’s new campaign, which sloppily attempts to “prevent teen pregnancy” by shaming young mothers and inaccurately touting adverse outcomes for young parents and their children.

The blogosphere has erupted against this campaign, with some of my favorite responses from Miriam Perez (who was actually brave enough to try the texting services accompanying the ads), Brittany at Advocates for Youth (who accurately stresses that communities with high birth rates need support, not shame), and my friend Natasha Vianna (whose post on ThePushBack.org is so excellent you should definitely to read it):

It’s this very concept of shaming teen moms that drives us into a deeper hole of isolation. I didn’t want to tell anyone that I was a teen mom, I didn’t want to ask for help, I refused to apply for any aid, and I put myself in unhealthy situations so I wouldn’t have to face the judgment of others. It was horrible. Yet, no one ever bothered to talk to me about the occurences in my life that led up to my pregnancy. Or what my life was like before becoming a pregnant teen. No one knew that I was already depressed in high school. No one knew that I already faced many of the adversities that teen moms face too. My life may have been exactly the same if I hadn’t become a teen mom but no one cared to look at me until there was a baby involved (that no one really cared about either).

If you are genuinely interested in seeing teen pregnancy rates decrease,  encourage your school, city and state to provide comprehensive sexual education, increase access to birth control and emergency contraception, provide youth with honest (non-bias) answers when they have questions, and be the support teens need… THEN you will see your numbers decrease. Until then, good luck to NYC with this horrible ad.

But public service announcements like these aren’t new — hence my surprise at the outrage here. Problematic messages like these have been around for a long time, and young parent bloggers like Natasha and PRYMFace (Promoting Respect for Young Mothers) have been writing about them for a while.

I decided to bring all of these advertisements together, in one place, to drive home the point that, while the new NYC ads are terrible, they aren’t out of the ordinary. Take a look at these posters. As reproductive justice activists, we should not tolerate young parents being subjected to these narratives, especially in their own communities. Our response should not be limited to this new campaign, but the narratives that surround young people and their reproductive choices more broadly. Let this outcry be a way for us to begin doing something better.

There are many good arguments that any shows about these intensely personal, extremely fraught decisions are exploitative. How can an expectant woman considering adoption make a free choice when everyone is already calling her a “birth mother”? How can she have the space to make such a decision with a camera in her face? And how could she ever change her mind without looking like a villain on primetime television?

Tann removed children from safe, loving, but frequently poor, homes. She did this by taking them from doctors’ offices and telling their parents they were sick – and after selling the child, telling the parents the child had died.  She fabricated reasons to take them directly from the home “for the child’s welfare.” She stole the children of single parents from nursery schools.  A criminal with a flair for manipulation, she frequently placed children in adoptive homes with many of Memphis’s more powerful figures, so that they would feel an obligation to uphold the legality of the adoptions.  Across the country, Tann arranged adoptions for actress Joan Crawford, writer Pearl Buck, and New York governor Herbert Lehmen (who, as governor, closed adoptee’s access to their original birth certificates).

Many of the secretive policies around private adoptions in the United States have roots in the precedent that Tann set, and in the laws and court decisions that she worked (and bribed) to push through. Sealed birth certificates? High payments from adoptive parents? For-profit business models? Lack of birth family rights? The direct transfer of children from poor families to richer ones – for the good of the child? These are all part of her legacy.

It isn’t for Erin Yellow Robe. Yellow Robe lives on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota. One day a social worker called to tell her that she was going to be arrested for using drugs, and that her children were going to be taken into foster care. Even though Yellow Robe denied ever using drugs, even though the threat was made based on the accusation of one person (who turned out to have a grudge against the family), and even though her mother was willing to care for the children, they were taken away – in violation of both logic and the Indian Child Welfare Act. Yellow Robe was never arrested. The Crow Creek tribe, to which Yellow Robe belongs, has lost 33 children to white foster homes. There are only 1,400 people on the reservation. An NPR investigation indicates that approximately 700 Native American children in South Dakota are removed from their homes every year under similarly dubious circumstances.

Unlike the in Tann’s story, though, these removals and adoptions are public ones, meaning they are conducted by the state through the foster care system. This is no longer about one dangerous woman; it’s about an abusive system.

“Choose life” is a favorite slogan among those who, of course, focus only on the “life” part while ignoring the “choice.” For those women who do choose life, the vast majority are also choosing parenting. Yet, for those women who are pregnant but don’t want to parent, anti-choicers offer one seemingly simple solution: adoption.

But it’s not simple, not even close. Historically, adoption in the United States was built on stigma, shame, and frequently coercion. When faced with unplanned pregnancy, young women had no good options. Single, nonmarital motherhood was shamed to the point of invisibility – it virtually did not exist among White, middle-class women. Women who wanted to have and raise their children were ostracized from their families and communities, and were told their children would be taunted on the playground as a “bastard,” and were denied information about public services that might have helped them establish greater self-sufficiency and venture out on their own – a feat which would have been an anomaly, with or without children. Women could also choose to have an illegal abortion, if they knew where to find one and were willing to take a serious risk with their health and safety. And finally, there was adoption, which before Roe v. Wade was the most common response. (At least among White women; black women almost always raised their children. Single motherhood has a longer history of acceptance in Black communities, and there was no market for Black children, and thus no financial incentive for the adoption industry to reach out to Black women.)

Adoption before Roe v. Wade was predicated on emotional and financial coercion. I have interviewed many women who were funneled into maternity homes where they wished and begged for better options, where they were shamed and ridiculed by those purporting to “help” them, and where they were promised they would walk away after giving birth and soon forget about their child.

I spoke with these women nearly half a century after their adoptions, and they were still traumatized.

These abuses are anti-choice, and today’s adoptions have evolved from this anti-choice history. In some places, at some agencies, adoption has evolved far more than in others. But there are still many, many fundamental problems with the way the adoption industry is set up. (Please note that I am specifically discussing voluntary domestic adoption here – international adoption has further complications, and foster care adoptions are a whole different story. Because adoption is so complicated and good discussion of it requires such nuance, I’m limiting the scope of my discussion to be able to do it some amount of justice.)

So, what does pro-choice adoption look like?

1. Pro-choice adoption is not-for-profit. Yes, adoptions will always cost money – there are legal fees, medical fees (if the mother is uninsured), and travel costs that the agency, and consequently the adoptive parents, usually cover. And the level of post-adoption services that birth parents and adoptive parents deserve will require skilled professionals to administer them. This is not about making adoption inexpensive; it’s about removing any potential for profit-motive from the adoption system. (Yes, there are still for-profit agencies and private lawyers. How will this influence their ability to present young women with whom they’re working with all the available options?)

2. Pro-choice adoption should be open. Open adoptions, where there is ongoing contact between birth family and adoptive family after the adoption placement, are essential to improved outcomes among all members of the adoption triad. Openness is not just for the benefit of the birth parent – it also helps the child know where they came from (which all adopted people hope to know), and can increase the stability of the adoptive family by building trust and opening lines of communication. Openness is not easy. It requires a lot of emotional (as well as logistical) work. It requires trust where society presumes there should be conflict. And it requires a new idea of what a family should be – not a nuclear, isolated core, but a group of people bonded by different degrees of biology, legality, and emotional connectedness.

To achieve openness, adoption agencies must recognize that when the child is placed, their work is only beginning. They need to provide professional support in navigating and negotiating openness, in keeping lines of communication open, and helping resolve conflicts if and when they do emerge.

What about the women who would choose a closed adoption? I acknowledge that there must be some birth mothers out there who prefer closed adoptions, but I have met and interviewed many, many birth mothers over the years, and I have never met one. Futhermore, among those who were initially interested in a closed adoption but were encouraged (either by the agency they were working with, or by the adoptive parents they chose) to have a more open adoption, they welcomed and appreciated the openness after the adoption was finalized. Perhaps most tellingly, none of the women I’ve interviewed have wanted less contact with their child after the adoption. We should respect a woman’s desire for a closed adoption, but we should also recognize that it is easier to have periods of limited contact in an open adoption than it is to open up a closed adoption – working towards greater openness preserves more options for women throughout the course of their lives, as they live out the adoption.

Finally, there should be some legally enforceable degree of openness. Some states allow this; some do not. This prevents either party (though it’s usually the adoptive family) from completely ceasing communication with the other, especially without legitimate concern for the child’s safety or well-being. (Please remember that no adoptive parent would be forced to actively include an abusive or seriously unstable birth parent in their child’s lives; enforceability would simply require that they – at minimum – maintain some level of contact with their child’s birth parents.)

Openness is not easy, and it will not solve all of adoption’s problems. But it is a necessary first step.

3. Pro-choice adoption recognizes the problems with adoption’s past and present and seeks to fix them; specifically, it advocates for open records and against child-trafficking.

Currently in many states, adult adopted people who were raised in closed adoptions do not have access to their own original birth certificates. This denies them access to their own legal records and to their own original identity. Those in support of keeping records closed say that birth parents where promised anonymity – this is fundamentally untrue. In fact, most birth parents were never promised anything (other than, of course, that they would forget) and were forced to make the promise that they would never search for their child. In my experience, most birth parents want to be reunited with the (now adult) children they placed for adoption. In states where records are open, birth parents are allowed to place a hold on the records if they wish to maintain the secrecy around their adoption; less than 2% have done this.

Regarding child-trafficking, there is much to say that goes beyond the scope of this post. I will simply state the manipulative adoptions, child stealing, and baby selling are not solely in our past (particularly in international adoption), and that advocating for their investigation and prohibition is absolutely necessary to a pro-choice concept of adoption.

4. Pro-choice adoption supports unbiased counseling. This one is pretty intuitive, but adoption counseling should not be solely within the realm of anti-choice advocates working out of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (the modern-day equivalent of the maternity home). If a counselor doesn’t feel comfortable providing a woman with accurate information about abortion and parenting, that counselor has no business talking to a woman about adoption.

5. Pro-choice adoption does not glamorize or create a martyr out of the birth parent. Birth parents are simply people trying to make the best out of an incredibly difficult situation. Narratives that present them as especially selfless, as “giving their child something better” makes, by inverse, the mothers that choose to parent selfish or even irresponsible. While it’s true that many birth parents do choose adoption because they want their child to have a different life than the one they can provide, this usually (but not always) boils down to two things: having two, married parents and money. If we consistently frame two parents as always better than one, we’re stigmatizing single mothers. And if we’re framing more money as always better than less – well, then should we all just be transferring our children to a family with more means? All of these narratives create martyrs of birth parents in a way that also highlights their inevitable shortcomings and denies them of any capability.

There are other, more specific policies and practices that can go in to building a better, more pro-choice adoption industry. I’ve refrained from discussing all of them because I’ve already said a lot that I hope you’ll think about, and because there’s less consensus (within the birth parent community) over those specific ideas than those that I have chosen to discuss. For example, pre-birth matching: some birth parents find it coercive to have to select adoptive parents before the child is born, it can create an obligation which they must fulfill and denies them the room to freely make a choice once the baby arrives; other birth parents find it necessary to select adoptive parents while they’re still pregnant in order to feel in control of the situation and be able to make a long-term plan and discuss what the adoption will look like. This one example highlights how diverse birth parents are – they are not a homogenous group, and they certainly do not agree on everything. This is just another reason why we must focus more on listening to their experiences, not just within the context of adoption, but in speaking to a larger, reproductive justice framework.

I wanted to reiterate that there are some agencies out there that are actively working towards pro-choice adoption, but adoption still has not been embraced as a core issue by the larger choice community. This National Adoption Month I encourage you to consider the ways in which your concept of choice is accountable to women who choose adoption, and how we can work to build a better model of a respectful, safe, accessible, pro-choice adoption system.

My last post on breastfeeding, and finding ways to support both nursing moms and formula-feeding moms, seemed to make few people happy.  It’s likely my fault – it wasn’t my debate to enter.  However, I felt that, as someone who works as both a birth-rights activist and a strong supporter of breastfeeding and as an abortion-rights activist and a strong supporter of choice that I could somehow contribute to the discussion.  I learned a lot from the response: don’t use the word “jerk” in the title of a blog post, even in the abstract; it alienates people.  Don’t go for brevity over nuance when the topic requires that nuance.  And, at the end of the day, recognize when the people who disagree with you on the details are ultimately on your side.

The most startling feedback I received, however, were comments to the effect of (and I’m paraphrasing, but not exaggerating): “Feminism doesn’t support breastfeeding and motherhood because it requires women to stay home for longer after giving birth and recognizes biological differences between men and women.”

I was shocked and disappointed that someone could think this, and that they could use something I’d written as an example of this.  At first I dismissed it as an extreme response, but similar sentiments kept cropping up: feminists parents do seem to feel marginalized from the rest of the feminist blogosphere. This post on The Mamafesto yesterday drove home the point for me, and I really encourage you to read it.

The thing is, my idea of feminism is absolutely contingent upon the acceptance of motherhood, of birth, of breastfeeding, of parenting, of stay-at-home moms.  In fact, this is where my feminism began, with a focus on motherhood not only as a source of personal fulfillment, but of public activism.  Many women are empowered by motherhood, not only for themselves, but also out of the desire to create a better world for their children.  Much of my daily research and work focuses on not only the rights of parents (breastfeeding support initiatives, healthcare reform, paid maternity leave, paid sick days, affordable childcare) and soon-to-be parents (adoption reform, infertility insurance coverage, birth advocacy, childbirth education, labor support), but the rights of those parents on the margins that are frequently told by society that they should never, never parent: young (teen) parents, very low-income families that receive public benefits, undocumented immigrants, etc.  These issues are not superficial or tangential to my feminist belief structure: they are the crux, the very heart of the issue.

The thing is, I know I’m not the exception.  I suspect most feminists, even young feminists, even feminists who aren’t parents or don’t want to be parents, feel this way, too.  But for some reason, we’re not doing a good job of communicating that and making our conversations inclusive of feminists who are parenting.

I am very sincerely discouraged that feminist parent bloggers feel they’re excluded or marginalized because of the form their feminism takes, and I’m even more disappointed if my earlier post contributed to that in any way. I am going to take it upon myself to more actively try to include discussions of motherhood in my writing, and I encourage others to do the same.  While I stand by the points I made in my earlier post – that we should support new mothers who breastfeed as well as those who formula feed – the primary point I was hoping to make was that we should ultimately support women and trust them to make the best decisions for themselves.  These beliefs are what unite us as feminists, and remembering what bring us together is always more important that arguing over the smaller things that may divide.

Last week, there was a FULL OUT FEMINIST BATTLE in the blogosphere over breastfeeding.  I found it, quite frankly, pretty disheartening.  We fight for abortion access for all women, even those who don’t want and won’t have abortions, and we don’t judge women for whether or not they choose to have abortions – and, as activists, I don’t think many of us struggle with this.  So, why can’t we fight to better support nursing mothers, to break down systemic discomfort and misinformation around breastfeeding, while at the same time accepting, without caveat, mothers who formula feed?

All things being equal, yes, medically speaking, breast is best. But here’s the thing: all things are never equal, and frequently circumstances can drastically change what the “best” thing is for mother and baby.  For women and babies for whom nursing goes well (and, yes, both mother and children need to have biology, preference, and temperament on their side), there are quantifiable health benefits to nursing, and many women report really bonding with their baby while they nurse and truly enjoying the experience.  But things are rarely so simple.  For example, blogger Melissa has written extensively about not breastfeeding her twins.  In her post, Breast is Not Best, she writes:

I was a hormonal, terrified mother who had finally given birth to live children and what do you think happened to me when I looked up at the wall where the “breast is best” posters were hung (they were every few feet on the walls in the maternity ward and NICU), and was told by a medical care professional that it was better to continue with the IVs rather than start formula?

We luckily had an excellent neonatologist who knew what was best for our twins, and she stepped in and not only had the nurse reprimanded and removed from the twins’ care, but she explained that while breastfeeding is wonderful, it does not trump getting our twins off IVs so they could learn how to swallow and put on weight.  That to keep to a mantra that does not take into account specific situations is to cause damage.

Even in more typical circumstances, breastfeeding can be a challenge.  It can be painful; it can be impractical; it can be exhausting.  And, most fundamentally – even if none of these reasons existed – there will be some women who just don’t want to.  We cannot make these women feel like second-rate mothers for the way they choose to feed their children.  We must trust women, and we must trust them in this decision.

If we want more women to have access to the choice to breastfeed, we have some work to do as activists.  We need to provide mothers with information not just about the benefits of nursing, but with practical knowledge on how to do it: when and how often, latches and holds, pumps and nursing bras.  We need to combat the stigma women face when nursing in public (remember, women have the right to nurse their baby anywhere they are both legally allowed to go).  We need to make workplaces more breastfeeding-friendly.  When it gets tough, we need to be supportive as friends, colleagues, and partners.  We need to make sure women have accurate information on supplementing and weaning.  Importantly, we need to address those barriers without judging the women who – regardless of why – do not end up breastfeeding.  If you have trouble with this, please follow this chart:

Read more:

The Real Breastfeeding Support Team Every Mom Needs  and why it includes both a breastfeeding drill sergeant and a laissez-faire feeder.

All the Breastfeeding Support Info You Need to be Successful (although, in some cases, all the information in the world just won’t be enough).

Ask the Lactation Consultant anything you want to know about breastfeeding, and get an expert opinion.  She’s on Twitter, too.

Blacktating.com, breastfeeding news and views from a mom of color.

Mama Knows Breast, on breastfeeding in the real world.

My favorite books on nursing:

At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeedings and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States by Linda Blum (Best non-instructional book on the topic, in my opinion.)

Nursing Mother’s Companion by Kathleen Huggins

Ina May’s Guide to Breastfeeding by Ina May Gaskin

Confession: I watch 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom like it’s my job (because it kind of is).  I pay careful attention to how teen pregnancy and young parenthood are portrayed in the media, because I think it’s incredibly important how we think about these young women and their families; their portrayals provide insight into how we, as a society, think about teens and sex, relationships, reproductive choice, and public support for families in need.

Two years ago, I had Glee on that list of must-watch shows because Quinn Fabray, perfect-cheerleader-turned-Glee clubber was pregnant.  Despite the convoluted conception story and contrived “Who’s the father?” subplot, I actually liked the way Glee handled Quinn’s pregnancy.  Her friends at Glee club came together and supported her, and those that rejected Quinn (her own mother, the cheerleaders) were the bad guys.   At the end of the season, Quinn placed the baby, Beth, for adoption – without a lot of clear development about why she made that choice – and then no more.

Last season, Quinn wasn’t 16 and pregnant.  She was a birthmother.  And the adoption was hardly ever mentioned.  Quinn walked away from the adoption, didn’t look back, didn’t grieve, didn’t communicate with her daughter’s adoptive mother.  Instead, she recreated her former golden-ponytailed self with Cheerio tenacity.  To be frank, I stopped watching the show for a while because I was so frustrated they’d turned Quinn into a Juno.

That’s right, a Juno.  In my analyses of how birthmothers (and sometimes birthfathers) are portrayed, I’ve come up with four clichéd, awful stereotypes, which are not mutually exclusive.

1. The Juno, brought to you by the blockbuster movie that shaped a generation’s opinion of birthmothers as people who make an adoption plan, walk away, don’t look back, and conclude “I think he was always hers.”  While there are some women who might choose closed adoption and move on quickly with their lives, I’ve spoken with a lot of birthmothers, and I’ve never found them.  (This doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  I’m sure they do.  But I think they are a minority.)  In fact, the walk-away-and-forget myth is a dangerous one for women that was used to justify coerced adoptions during the Baby Scoop era before Roe v. Wade.

2. The Crackwhore, brought to you by American conservatives.  Most usually, the crackwhore (and I cringe to write that word, believe me) stereotype is used not in voluntary adoption placements, but in instances where social services intervene and place children in foster care or public adoptions.  Despite this difference, the stereotype is used to portray birthmothers as epitome of the bad mother, incapable of caring for and wholly unworthy of raising her children.

3. The Birthmartyr, brought to you by Dr. Drew and the folks at 16 and Pregnant.  When Dr. Drew says the young women who choose adoption are “so incredibly mature” and “selfless” and turns to the birthmother dealing with post-adoption grief and tells her to “move on for the good of her child”, that’s the birthmartyr trope in action.  On 16 and Pregnant, the young women who chose adoption are self-sacrificing heroes, while the young women who chose to parent are (according to Dr. Drew) immature and poor decision-makers.

4. The Baby Stealer, brought to you by Loosing Isaiah and every adoptive parent’s worst nightmare.  As open adoption (where birth and adoptive families have ongoing post-adoption contact) becomes more and more common and society continues to not understand that relationship, the continuing presence of the birthparent is seen as a threat – either metaphorical or literal – to the bond between adoptive parent and child. Indeed, open adoption should (and often does) foster a relationship of mutual trust and respect between all the child’s parents that alleviates any such worries, yet we still represent birthparents as constantly scheming to regain custody of their child.

On last night’s episode, Shelby, Quinn’s daughter’s adoptive mother returns and invites Quinn and Puck (the baby’s father) into Beth’s life.  Early in the episode, I was pleased: Open adoption! An adoptive parent recognizing that contact with birthparents will benefit her daughter in the long run!  But things were messier than that, as they usually are in adoption.

Did Quinn and Puck want contact?  Because actual adoption was glossed over so quickly, it’s hard to know what the terms of their agreement were.  In my research, I’ve found that most birthparents do want contact, but they also deserve some degree of control of that contact.  Being blindsided by an adoptive mother showing up at their school, expecting them to be grateful for a brief glimpse of an iPhone photo, does not represent a mutually respectful arrangement.  Furthermore, for most birthparents, the first few years after the adoption are often the hardest.  Perhaps they needed time to process their decision more before contact was made.

Does Shelby have the right to put stipulations on Quinn and Puck’s contact with Beth? Yes, she does.  She is Beth’s adoptive mother, and she has an obligation to protect that child.  If Quinn represented a threat, or even a very bad influence, perhaps Shelby would be justified in setting limits, but she seems to be rejecting Quinn because she has pink instead of blonde hair and a snazzy fake nose ring.  If, as an adoptive parent, you want your child’s birthparents involved in their life (and research shows you probably should, to some extent), you need to accept them as a complex person with flaws and phases, as someone who is living a life different than your own.  And you need to be accepting of a young high school girl acting out by dying her hair and wearing grunge clothing – especially when, as Shelby (and all the other characters) did, you believe the behavior changes are, for the time being, her way of processing the adoption.

Of course, by the end of the episode, we realize that Quinn isn’t a Juno.  She’s a baby stealer.  She tells Puck, “I have to get her back… We’re gonna get full custody.”  Not only is this a legal impossibility, Glee has swapped one damaging stereotype for another.

Most people don’t know (or don’t know that they know) any birthparents, so they really rely on these TV and movie representations to help understand who places children for adoption. If we don’t actually know what birthparents look like, we don’t really know what adoption looks like and don’t really understand it as the complex, loving, messy, sad, and beautiful lifelong process that it is truly is.

And if we don’t understand adoption, we can’t protect it as an important reproductive choice that all women should have access to, without judgment, without stereotype, and with a clear understanding of the long-term commitment and consequences involved.