Gilead begins: domestic supply of infants

[WarriorNewAgain]

The first thing I thought if when I heard roe v Wade was the impact on and creation of more jobs such as in social work, fostering and care.

The patriarchy exploits and makes money from womens bodies in a variety of ways.

BREAKING: In a brief re abortion, Supreme court Justices Amy Coney Barrett/Alito's Draft, said US needs a “domestic supply of infants” to meet needs of parents seeking to adopt - that those who would otherwise abort must be made to carry to term - giving children up for adoption.

twitter.com/drgjackbrown/status/1522737305710067715?s=21&t=t5iuUtG2SMD8VJwL4ovx3w

mrshoho · 07/05/2022 20:34
That wasn't my intention at all @PerkingFaintly . I was wondering if the 1 million women seeking to adopt included transwomen. Seeing 'domestic supply of infants' fills me with dread

I did realise what you meant, and the worry about babies being a commodity.

MrsTerryPratchett · 07/05/2022 20:39
The issue is these very clean arguments don't reflect RL. So yes, if there are happy, cuddly newborns, which the mums are now happy to give up at birth to loving homes...

But, these are babies who would have been aborted, so less than ideal situations. More babies with; disabilities, addicted mothers, mothers living without antenatal care, mothers living in prostitution, illegal immigration status, abusive places, young mums, older mums, ND or disabled mums, more risks of birth injury or addicted babies and on and on. More babies from closely related people Sad.

The clean arguments also don't take into account that women and girls don't carry in isolation. So many will be forced to keep the baby after birth, because abortion is private but pregnancy is obvious. Those with abusive partners can't give them up, they have to stay.

It's dystopian.

I agree.

I don’t think there’s much merit in trying to say that the babies will be defective and so not adopted. The evidence isn’t really there, newborns really do always get adopted I think.

It’s obviously a gross argument (that women should give birth in order to supply the adoption need) and honestly I wouldn’t bother engaging with it in this way.

"supply of infants" is an utterly abhorrent phrase, sickening.

Just like surrogacy this is the purposeful creation of babies who will be separated from their mothers with all the trauma that involves

I don't think it automatically follows that babies who would otherwise have been aborted will have been disadvantaged.

In the UK for example teen pregnancies are at their lowest ever, which is a good thing, but when it happens, girls from middle class families are likely to terminate the pregnancy and working class girls to continue with it.

I don't think it's incredible that there will be girls in both socioeconomic groups who want neither an abortion nor a baby. Giving a baby up voluntarily is almost unheard of now. There is no stigma to having an abortion nor keeping the baby- the stigma now would be "how could you give your baby away?"

I do think if you (general you) are giving women a free choice that the option of adoption from birth should be on the table, if that is a genuine, uncoerced choice.

Anyone else finding it ironic that one of the batshit things a lot of the Republican QAnon Trump zealots kept shouting about was that they elected Trump to fight the secret child trafficking rings?

@Fridafever the stats don't agree with this - & this will be particularly the case if more women/girls are forced to carry through their pregnancy. I KNOW of cases of seriously disabled & extremely prem babies who were in permanent foster care & were never adopted in this country. &, by the way, I would never ever use the word defective in relation to a child.
Anyone who has had contact with the care system (as I indirectly had) could tell you that even new born babies who had issues were less likely to be adopted.
Most people who want to adopt have an image of a healthy baby - caring for a child with a disability even when you give birth to that child is hard.

That tweet is way out of context and inflammatory nonsense. The Opinion is listing arguments made by pro-lifers as part of the summary of all the arguments for and against Casey. Domestic supply of infants is not one of the reasons given for overturning Roe v Wade.

It’s footnote #46

The sentence it belongs to starts on p33 and states
”Americans who believe that abortion should be restricted press countervailing arguments about modern developments. They note that the attitudes about pregnancy of unmarried women have changed drastically; that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy; that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases(43); that the costs for medical care associated with pregnancy are covered by insurance or government assistance(44); that States have increasingly adopted “safe haven” laws which generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously (45); and that a woman who puts up her newborn for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home(46).

footnote (on p34).
(46) See, e.g. Centers for Disease Control, Adoption Experiences of Women and Men and Demand for Children to Adopt by Women 18-44 Years of Age in the United States 16 (Aug 2008). (“[N]early 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e. they were in demand for a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent.”); Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, Adoption and nonbiological parenting; https ….and so on.

Sorry but my cut and paste not working. Link to text of draft opinion.
www.politico.com/f/?id=00000180-874f-dd36-a38c-c74f98520000

Fridafever · 07/05/2022 21:23
I don’t think there’s much merit in trying to say that the babies will be defective and so not adopted. The evidence isn’t really there, newborns really do always get adopted I think.

amp.theguardian.com/social-care-network/2015/mar/04/prospective-adopters-urged-to-think-of-the-child-not-the-disability

Very young children can usually find adopters within four months of a placement order being made. We know that for children over four, or those in sibling groups or from black and ethnic minorities, the process can take longer. But it is children with disabilities who find it hardest to find prospective parents regardless of age,”

No, disabled newborns don't get adopted. It is a regular occurrence that commissioning people refuse to take disabled newborns, who are genetically their own flesh and blood, and instead leave them with the gestational mother.

If people will do that, they're not going to take home an unrelated disabled baby. They'll just wait for the next baby to be placed for adoption, that doesn't look as if he or she will be disabled

I know someone who has adopted three very disabled children, will full knowledge of their disabilities. I would consider a child with a disability.

Discovereads · 07/05/2022 23:24
From footnote 46 posted

“They note that the attitudes about pregnancy of unmarried women have changed drastically; that federal and state laws ban discrimination on the basis of pregnancy; that leave for pregnancy and childbirth are now guaranteed by law in many cases(43);”

Paid leave for pregnancy and childbirth in the US is almost non existent compared to ours: it is for very a short time indeed.

Then the baby has to be put in a very expensive nursery a few months after birth if the mother is going to be able to work.

I have a relative who had a baby there last year and was shocked. She is in a relatively privileged socio economic group and had been in her very good job 10 years. She only had 4 months with her baby before having to return to work, and that was not all paid for at all.

This below is 2015 so may be somewhat out of date but gives an indication of the US attitude of not really supporting pregnancy and childbirth adequately:
www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/united-states-maternity-leave-facts

40 percent of women don’t qualify for the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) which grants 12 weeks of protected job leave, unpaid, at the federal level.

Only 12 percent of women in the private sector have access to any sort of paid maternity leave.

There is no federal paid maternity leave — it’s left to the states to figure out.

25 percent of women are forced to return to work within 2 weeks of giving birth to support their families.

WildCoasts · 07/05/2022 23:49
I know someone who has adopted three very disabled children, will full knowledge of their disabilities. I would consider a child with a disability.

They and you are good people.

The problem is that there are more disabled children whom no one has wanted to adopt than there are people like your friend.

I should think that in the US it would be especially difficult to take on the care of a disabled child because of the massive health care costs. (Unless there is some scheme for the state to pay in these cases. Is there one?)

@ScrollingLeaves
Yes the reasons of Americans in favour of restricting abortion are ridiculously overstated fluff. You are quite right that maternity leave is abysmal and most women are not even eligible for the 12 weeks unpaid leave in the FMLA.

I was posting the context of the draft to show that the tweet in the OP stating
In a brief re abortion, Supreme court Justices Amy Coney Barrett/Alito's Draft, said US needs a “domestic supply of infants” to meet needs of parents seeking to adopt - that those who would otherwise abort must be made to carry to term - giving children up for adoption.

Is pretty much a gross misrepresentation of what the brief really says. To the extent, the tweet is fake news imho.

You know, doing the fact check as the OP asked for . Have you followed the draft to read that section? It starts on page 30.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol8krO5SSdc Dr Suzanne Forbes Vierling on how men make money from the bodies of women. Can never be unheard.

There are not more people wanting to adopt than there are children to adopt.
There ARE more married couples wanting to adopt healthy Caucasian infants than there are infants to adopt. I adopted three children as a single parent and had to go international in order to get toddlers.
Two of my children - now grown and married - are seeking to adopt. The Hague Convention made international adoption impossible unless you are Angelina Jolie. The waiting list for healthy children under are four in eleven years. However, if you are willing to adopt mentally or physically handicapped children the waiting time is less than one year. Whether they admit it or not, criminalizing abortion is going to help adoptive couples.

@Discovereads
Amy Coney Barrett/Alito's Draft, said US needs a “domestic supply of infants” to meet needs of parents seeking to adopt - that those who would otherwise abort must be made to carry to term - giving children up for adoption.

Is pretty much a gross misrepresentation of what the brief really says. To the extent, the tweet is fake news imho.

You know, doing the fact check as the OP asked for . Have you followed the draft to read that section? It starts on page 30.

No, I hadn’t read it all but will. Thank you very much for explaining, and also for the fact check.

This is the flimsy justification for what is in effect enforced, unpaid surrogacy. Pregnancy costs are now covered (I thought not 100%), women mostly get a smidge of maternity leave, it’s no longer illegal for desperate women to anonymously hand over their baby and the icing on the cake, babies get adopted so no worries there . These poor women. And poor babies. Women’s rights are going back decades.

The American foster care system is notorious for how badly children can be cared for/abused, as there just isn't a strong enough desire to look after unwanted children properly. With the likely increase in the number of children in the care system, due to parents being unwilling or unable to look after them, this is only going to get worse.

I actually just wrote a post about this. That quote is from a footnote (on page 34 of the draft) supporting the phrase that "a woman who puts her new-born up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home". The draft is not saying the US needs a 'domestic supply of infants', it is saying that because there is a lack of infants up for adoption (aka a lack of a 'domestic supply of infants'), a woman who puts her child up for adoption (as opposed to having an abortion), should not worry about whether or not the child will be adopted.

What about the mental health outcome of a baby born to rape: either if they ever find out, or is their mother has to keep a secret from them?

Yes I taught a child in this situation. The social worker told me in order to explain the mh issues the mother had in being a mother and relationship between her and her son. I'm sure it's not the case in many situations but for that child it was clear there were difficult attachment issues. I've never worked with a child with such sadness.

Thank you for those clarifying the context.

At the same time it's important to discuss the wider implications of the wade v roe revelation. I saw some self proclaimed "feminists" on twitter saying life is sacrosanct, end of.

But what about the quality of life thereafter?

And I have known social workers who've battled infertility who would not consider adoption.

Surrogacy would still exist.

The timing is interesting, with Ukraine and its surrogacy industry now off limits.

The timing is interesting, with Ukraine and its surrogacy industry now off limits.

I thought exactly this but was worried about sounding like conspiracy theorist

I don't know about the timing. This has been on the cards since the Republicans fast-tracked Coney Barrett onto the Court in the dying days of their presidency – and indeed was the motivation when McConnell stonewalled the appointment of Merrick Garland for months back in 2016.

So it may just be when they got round to it.

But the stink raised by this has made me pay more attention to the adoption industry in the US. I was already aware that there were issues.

Eg, this is something that needs to be looked at more closely, and indeed the Polish authorities are investigating:

Ex-WA far-right Rep. in Poland with Ukrainian kids
apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-washington-adoption-international-adoption-31461361ab59338dad21dd0dccbf62df
“I asked him (Shea) many times, ‘What are you going to do with these children?’ and he told me that it’s not my business,’” Weronika Ziarnicka, an aide to the town’s mayor, said.