So many women shared their stories with me as I was reporting Liberty Lost. And not every story made it into the show, but there was one that really stuck with me. It was from a woman named Anna Smith. In the middle of Anna's senior year of high school, she turned 18, a milestone most kids are excited about. But for Anna, who was in foster care, turning 18 meant that she aged out of the system. Even though she'd been living with her foster family since she was 12, they told her that she couldn't continue to stay with them. Legally, she wasn't their responsibility anymore. I have no guidance. I have nowhere to go. I'm on my own completely. So I'm homeless. I'm living in my car. Anna was working multiple jobs. She'd head right from school to her shift at Papa John's. She'd close up the store and then drive to her overnight shift at Steak and Shake. After work, she'd drive back to the high school, park her car in the senior lot, and try to catch a couple hours of sleep before first period. I got busted by the assistant principal, Mr. Herring, and he was just concerned. And he's like, why are you sleeping in our senior parking lot? Anna was determined to finish high school. She wanted to go to college. Her assistant principal and a few other teachers wanted to help her. Ms. Velez or Mr. Herring would come out and wake me up for school. They were my alarm clocks. And they would bring me breakfast every morning, whether McDonald's or Burger King or something they made at home or whatever. They would just always make sure I had breakfast. I ended up graduating high school. May have been homeless, but I did it. After graduation, Anna was making it work. She stayed with friends or in short-term rentals. She kept working, sometimes three jobs at once. And she had a boyfriend at the time. He loved Star Wars. He was a geek and nerd like me. Their relationship didn't last long, just a few months. But during that time, Anna found out she was pregnant. He was like, I'm not going to have anything to do with, you know, whatever, whatever. Anna thought, okay, I can figure this out. Her foster parents were devout Christians, and Anna had picked up on their teachings, so she didn't want an abortion. She just needed to find the right support system, like the one that helped her finish high school. Her older cousin told her about a friend whose daughter had gone to the Liberty Godparent home. I didn't really know what I wanted, you know? So I was like, well, maybe this place in Virginia will help me figure that out. But I wasn't thinking adoption. I was thinking like, how am I going to be responsible for this baby coming in? But once she got there, Anna had the same realization that Abby, Tony, and Zoe had. It didn't really matter much what she wanted. The godparent home was more interested in helping her place her baby for adoption than helping her become a mom. I remember only having one parenting class, and that was it. We had a lot of adoption classes. We even went on, like, quote-unquote field trips to potential adopters' homes. Basically, they want to show you the ugly side of parenting and the beautiful side of adoption. Two weeks before she gave birth, Anna chose a happy Christian couple from one of the scrapbooks at the godparent home. And when the time came, she signed away her parental rights and placed her daughter for an open adoption. A lot of the girls who went through the godparent home were awarded scholarships to Liberty University after they left. And Anna was interested in one of those scholarships, but she got something else. Oh, I got a Mercedes Benz out of it. Not a scholarship, but an old car that the home had received as a donation. and just three months later, the car broke down. It was a foreign old antique car. There's no way I could afford to, you know, get that. So I had to sell it to a dealer for like $500 or whatever. That's what I got for placing my kid for adoption. And when it broke down, it was like a whole like domino effect. It's like I couldn't get to work. And once I couldn't get to work, I lost my job. When I lost my job, I couldn't pay rent. When I couldn't pay rent, I didn't have a place to live. A few years later, her open adoption closed. Anna's story stayed with me. She's tough. She's a go-getter. But she wasn't offered the resources or support needed to parent her child. In the end, it didn't really seem like she had another choice. It's a familiar story for anyone with eyes on the adoption industry. When people have resources, when they have support in their lives, if you give people what they need to make parenting possible, they're not relinquishing their children. When it comes to stories like Anna's and the stories of so many other women who place children for adoption, I really wanted to talk to one person, Gretchen Sisson. Her work on adoption goes beyond individual stories to really show the bigger systems of power and hidden forces that drive adoption in the United States. I got a chance to sit down with Gretchen to get a big picture view of what needs to change about adoption in America. move you. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash Liberty Lost. That's audible.com slash Liberty Lost. From Wondery, I'm TJ Raphael, and this is a special episode of Liberty Lost. Quiet now, my darling. Morning's drawing close I'll sing until the sun comes up Then I'll have to go Today I'm going to dive deep into the adoption industry with Gretchen Sisson. She's the author of Relinquished, The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. She's a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the foremost experts on adoption in the country. She says that women who place their children often share one thing in common. Adoption always happens because people don't have power over their own lives to change the circumstances of their own lives. As part of her research, Gretchen spent over a decade collecting hundreds of interviews with women who placed their children for adoption. And over and over again, she found that so many women, including those who already had kids, were choosing adoption because they didn't feel financially secure. They didn't have access to stable housing. They didn have access to child care They didn have access to a safe or stable partner or co They didn have the support of their own families Some of them had been in the foster system themselves and didn have a network of care around them. What was true for all of them is that they continued their pregnancies with the intention of parenting, and they were hoping that something would materialize, right? The women in Gretchen's research wanted their babies. They were holding out hope that things would come together before they gave birth. Maybe they'd be able to land a new job where they could make more money, or their parents or communities would come through to help them with child care, or maybe they'd be able to find a cheaper place to live. But for all of them, that didn't happen by the end. Adoption was really about, can I afford this child? Most of them were already single parenting, but they didn't feel they had the capacity to raise another child. And I should be clear, most people who are pregnant and struggling with poverty or temporary financial constraints, they parent. Adoption is always the least common choice among any group of women. But it was for this group of women that that became the breaking point. Yeah, I want to talk more about that breaking point because what you're talking about connects to this distinction you make in your book. You talk about reproductive rights and reproductive justice. I think a lot of people are familiar with the term reproductive rights, but they may not be familiar with the concept of reproductive justice. So how do you define that? So the core idea of reproductive justice goes beyond one of reproductive rights, because reproductive rights are really about legal access to reproductive choice. So do you have the right to have an abortion or not? Is that legally accessible? Is that legally available? where you are. Reproductive justice came out of the thinking of Black feminist leaders in the early 90s, and it takes into account the circumstances of people's lives that enable them or constrain them in making different reproductive choices. So it brings poverty into the equation. Access to resources is something that can enable people to have a different sense of what their options are. And that's where you see that when people have resources, when they have support in their lives, if you give people what they need to make parenting possible, they're not relinquishing their children. And we have this idea that people are choosing adoption. But in fact, most women that I interviewed who did end up relinquishing very much wanted to parent their children. And that is where adoption as it's currently practiced in the United States is fundamentally at odds with the values of reproductive justice. I'd love to talk a little bit about how the right frames adoption as an alternative to abortion. the quote-unquote pro-life movement, talks a lot about how women regret abortions and live with guilt. But your research found that mental health outcomes are actually worse for women who place their children for adoption. Can you share a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, my research outside of adoption is really on abortion in the United States. All of this data shows that abortion is safe and necessary and good for women in their communities, that abortion does not cause long-term mental and emotional negative impacts for women, that abortion actually supports women's mental health, that it supports their ability to leave bad and violent relationships, that it leads to better economic outcomes, better bonding with their current children and their future children. And the anti-abortion movement will still always say abortion is bad for women. It leads to physical injury, lifelong regret, and psychological and emotional damage, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary. Everything that they argue about abortion, I believe, is more true about adoption. I have seen the extended, prolonged grief that these mothers go through, the way that they are traumatized by the separation from their child, the manipulation, the coercion, the profit motive that drives this industry. Everything they say about abortion is far more true of the practice of adoption in the United States today. Adoption is never appealing to women. Right. It's not something most people who get pregnant do. I think I've read that only about 1% of women place their children for adoption in the United States. But in some communities, there is this cultural attitude that it's the only solution to unplanned pregnancy. And when I was talking to some of the women who were at the Liberty Godparent home, they talked about these cultural biases that steered them away from single motherhood or accepting government benefits, that these things weren't acceptable for good Christian girls. Can you talk about that interconnectedness between conservative Christianity and adoption? I mean, I think, you know, as I said, it's about poverty. But I always say if it's not about survival, relinquishment is about salvation. And for those women who have been told that they sinned by having a sexual relationship, by being pregnant, they need redemption for themselves and their child. And adoption is a way of accomplishing that. Hard to quantify like anything in private adoption, but up to 80% of infant adoptions are likely through religious-based institutions. And I think for a lot of people, they lose sight of how much adoption is non-secular in this country. Like how much adoption facilitation is a religious practice for a lot of people. And how many evangelicals view adopting as a way of living the gospel? So as much as relinquishment is about redemption, adopting is viewed as a way of building God's family in your own home. I mean, almost all of the women I interviewed came from evangelical or Christian fundamentalist families. And in a lot of those communities, the only resources they feel like they can access are faith-based maternity homes, crisis pregnancy centers, or adoption agencies. And as I've reported this story, I've started to feel like the left has kind of failed to support poor and vulnerable pregnant women who do want to have children. You know, Planned Parenthood is a household name for abortion, contraceptives, STD testing. But there's no household name for women to consider if they're looking for help to keep and parent their children. So there was an article in the fall of 2021, I believe, after SB 8 had passed in Texas. So abortion was effectively very constrained in Texas already. And it was about a maternity ranch in Texas. Yeah, I remember that story. And it was a really powerful story about this woman who was building this ranch where expectant mothers could come, they could stay, they could help each other, raise their children, they would have the support of each other and the church. And I did an interview about that story. And the journalist, who was wonderful, but definitely coming from like this sort of left perspective, said like, this sounds so dystopian. And I said, it sounds amazing, right? It sounds like what so many mothers who are struggling during their pregnancy need, support, community, resources, faith, hope, right? All of those pieces there Do I believe that that should come tied with the strings of conservative religious ideology Like no clearly But we don understand the things that are like fundamentally appealing that here is a place where you and your child can survive. Now, this very closely mirrors the maternity homes that are committed to separating mother and child. So I don't trust them. But like, let's not lose the thread of mothers aren't going to there saying, like sell me on the idea of adoption. They're going there because they don't have access to these types of supports other places. And I think this is true of crisis pregnancy centers too, right? And we criticize crisis pregnancy centers saying like, oh, you go there and they'll only give you five diapers and you have to attend Bible study to go. And I say, it's still five diapers. Where else are you going to get five diapers in some of these communities? Yeah. I mean, I feel like depending on what kind of counselor you get at some of these religious-based maternity homes or crisis pregnancy centers, I mean, it seems like it can really be a toss-up. You know, it's sort of a roulette wheel, depending on what your counselor believes in a certain way. To be clear, like, I'm not trying to defend crisis pregnancy centers, right? They are manipulative, deceptive places. But the reason that they have been able to stick and grow in so many communities is because they can meet a need. If they weren't also meeting the need, if they weren't also providing services, then they would, one, they would cease to exist, right? And the anti-abortion movement would stop investing in them. They invest in them because they're able to grow because people need what they have to offer. And if we had a viable social safety net for everyone, they would not have the same appeal that they do for a lot of people. Thanks to Audible, our presenting sponsor. There's something powerful about hearing a great story told well, whether it's helping you understand your world or letting you escape from it completely. That's the magic of Audible. Their collection of audiobooks and exclusive content is like having countless storytellers right in your pocket. The best part? These stories fit right into your life. Whether you're stuck in traffic, going for a walk, or just taking some time for yourself, Audible turns everyday moments into opportunities for discovery. Take Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, a witty, moving story about a brilliant woman fighting for her place in a world that's not ready for her. It's the kind of story that'll make you laugh out loud one minute and feel all the feelings the next. Ready to find your next great listen? New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash liberty lost. That's audible.com slash liberty lost. So, Gretchen, I know that some state lawmakers are doubling down now on incentivizing adoption. and Project 2025, the policy platform championed by members of the Trump administration, it states, quote, alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support. But in your book, you describe adoption as one of our few bipartisan issues. And it seems like there is support for diverting funding towards adoption on both sides of the So yeah, have you had the opportunity to talk with lawmakers about your research? I mean, I talk to a lot of policymakers. When I do talk about adoption, I am reliably the first person to ever talk to them about adoption. Wow. I am the first person to be knocking on their door or calling them on the phone and saying, I don't think the federal government should be subsidizing the adoption industry through hefty tax credits. And they're like, wait, what are we talking about? on, right? Because this is just not like, what do you mean? We all love adoption. I had a conversation with one member of Congress who's very progressive and is a co-sponsor of the adoption tax credit. I said, I feel like this is out of sync with a lot of your values. And she said, well, I just think adoption should be more accessible to middle-class families. And I said, is adoption supposed to be about sourcing babies for people who want them or finding homes for children who need safety and stability. You know, in the private adoption industry, we have 45 families waiting for every infant that's available. And when you provide government subsidies for the cost of adoptions, when you make adoption more accessible, you are just continuing to fuel that demand, which incentivizes the agencies and the other brokers and the other players in this space to generate supply. This is basic capitalism, right? High demand, you have to go out and find more supply, except the supply in this case is human children. And that's where you get into these really coercive practices in the industry. Adoption is not an industry that's supposed to go out and find babies for people who want to be parents. It's supposed to be about giving children security. And so if those are your reasons to subsidize adoption, because my adult constituents want this, that's fine. But like admit that that's what you're doing. And she didn't, she didn't get it. And I think that that's okay. That's the one that I need to get better at my job. But two, more voices joining that conversation and challenging this idea and saying, let's hold up. Adoption is a fundamentally conservative institution. It is often predatory. And we need to take a deep look at this without just blanketly assuming that this is a common ground that we have. Do you think the Dobbs decision will have an impact on adoption moving forward or has it already? We do not have any hard data to suggest that the number of adoptions has increased because of Dobbs. All that being said, when you constrain people's choices and circumstances, including through legal prohibitions on abortion, you are going to increase the number of adoptions because adoption is a path of constraint, right? It's what you turn to when there isn't something else available. So that could be because we have lost the child tax credit, because we don't have a social safety net, because you don't have access to abortion care. Anything that constrains the options that are open is going to increase the number of adoptions. Something that I have thought about as I've been working on this project is that there are some people who are experiencing infertility or queer couples and they say, you know, well, this is the only way I can have a family with adoption. And so what do you say to people in that situation? There's no good answer here. I remember after a book reading that I did last year, a woman came up to me and sort of at the end of the signing and she was quite quiet. And she said, do you think it's possible to have ethical adoption? And what I said is as long as we're commodifying people, And as long as this industry is rooted in inequity and often exploitation, I don't believe it's possible. And she said, you know, my husband and I have been trying to conceive for many years. It's not working for us. And I have to grapple with the thought that we might not ever be parents because I am not comfortable with adopting. And what you want to say in that moment, and I as a stranger who doesn't know her is, oh, no, it's okay. You the exception You are so well and you would be such a good mother that your good intentions and your individual moral framework can override the systemic injustices that are at play And I don believe that true And I do know that that means that some people who would be wonderful parents might not have the opportunity to raise a child, but no one is owed a baby. And I think that that is hard. Like, and I feel it, you know, I'm a mother, I have three children. They bring me tremendous joy and satisfaction. And to say not everybody gets to have access to this is uncomfortable. And I think it should be, but I think we can sit with that discomfort and hold all of these things is true. And the other thing that I say is that we always need more people to care for children. Not every parent is going to be able to raise every child whom they give birth at every point in their lives, right? We live in a country with a drug epidemic. We live in a country that incarcerates people at extraordinarily high levels. We live in a country with chronic poverty and insufficient investments in housing and that doesn't do a lot to make access to stability possible for many vulnerable people. And I think Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin just today said, I don't think we have a responsibility to care for other people's children. And I think that that's where we're going when you talk about the political conversation is like, do we have a responsibility to take care of each other? And I believe that this government is pretty clear that they don't believe we do. We do need more people who want to care for children, but we just only value care for children if it happens in a parent-child context. And so we need more people who are willing to help provide care, either formally or informally in these types of settings, because there are plenty of children who need that. I just don't think that we need to legally separate them from their family of origin and legally form a new family in order to find ways of providing that. Well, so yeah, let's talk about that. I'd love to dive in a little more deeply to understand what an ethical adoption industry might look like in the US. You also talk about how other countries like Australia and Germany manage domestic adoptions. So what are some other policies that the U.S. could take up to make adoption more ethical? Yeah, I think there are policies that reform the practice of adoption as it exists that could reduce the scale of the industry, that could decrease profit motive, requiring birth parents to have their own legal counsel at the time of relinquishment, having certain requirements around options counseling and who's doing the options counseling. There's a bill in California that prohibited the ability for unlicensed adoption providers to market across state lines. There's a similar federal bill that would do that. So there are some pieces of legislation that could diminish the power of money in the equation that I think could be helpful and could reduce the number of people that can make money off of it. I think those are worth considering. As far as international comparisons, the United States really stands alone in its domestic adoption rates. Most other countries don't practice domestic adoption in the way that we do, either because they have that social safety net that allows people to parent. They have access to abortion. They have better attitudes around contraception. But they also don't have people making money off of adoptions. So most adoptions in other countries are what we would consider public adoptions. They're all kind of managed by the state, which means that people aren't making money off of the number of adoptions that they're doing either way. Plenty of other countries have really flawed histories of family separation with their indigenous populations through the Catholic Church or missionaries, that sort of thing. a lot of countries end up exporting children during times of geopolitical conflict. So I don't want to make it sound like, oh, the adoption system in every other part of the world is perfectly rosy. It's absolutely not. But as far as domestic practice, we're kind of standing apart in how we do it now. In your book, you also write about family preservation practices, which are aimed at keeping families together. So can you explain what that looks like? family preservation policies are the same policies that are going to support millions of American families living in poverty that have no interaction with the adoption industry, like affordable housing, living wages, food subsidies, early childcare, affordable childcare, early childhood education, all of those things that make parenting more tenable. I think that's a more exciting policy space than sort of chipping away at an unethical industry. I'm glad there are people who want to do that. I think that that is not a bad short-term strategy, but I think that it's only going to be successful if you are enabling families to care for the children that they want to raise. So our listeners who are going to hear this, what can they do if they want to get involved in the fight of adoption as a reproductive justice issue? Where do you recommend they begin? If you're on social media and you follow the hashtag Adoptee Voices, you'll see a lot of really incredible conversations between adopted people who are engaging on their experiences. There's also a new group called Reproductive Justice in Adoption. I believe their social media tag is RJ in adoption. And they are doing some really amazing work to shift the conversation. They partnered with Planned Parenthood to rewrite the adoption materials on the Planned Parenthood website from an RJ lens. It's a collective of both relinquishing parents and adopted people who put those together. And I think that they're putting out some really great materials. So this is a really growing conversation. I think people are ready to think about this from a more critical perspective and really want to understand it. And so I think we're at a point of opportunity of rethinking how we do this in our country. Awesome. Well, Gretchen, thank you so much for joining us. I so appreciate it. Of course. Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of Relinquished, The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. From Wondery, this is a special episode of Liberty Lost. Liberty Lost is hosted, reported, and written by me, TJ Raphael. Our senior producer is Natalie Shisha. Senior story editor is Phyllis Fletcher. Producer is Rachel Yang. Associate Producer is Mariah Dennis. Fact Checking by Jacqueline Colletti. Original Score by William Ryan Fritsch. Sound Design and Mixing by Joe Richardson. Sound Supervisor is Marcelina Villapando. Music Supervisor is Scott Valesquez for Freeze on Sync. Managing Producer is Heather Baloga. Senior Managing Producer is Lata Pandya. Development Producer is Olivia Weber. Supervising Development Editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Executive Producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.
