#its always gone hand in hand with colonialism

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queen-mabs-revenge:

soloveitchik:

soloveitchik:

I feel like I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and probably elaborate later but adoption is not a “solution” to abortion. Pregnant people are not incubators that exist for adoptive parents, babies forced to be alive should not be commodities to buy and sell. Private adoption agencies have lobbied for right wing anti-choice policies and politicians because they know they will profit off that that. You’ll hear “there’s an shortage of babies to adopt” because in America it’s completely normalized to sell children and if that leaves an icky taste in your mouth it’s because at the end of the day it’s simply true. And they price those children by race and gender, it’s wrong, but it is simply a fact.

LOW AND BEHOLD:

I feel like it should be said America is one of the only countries this is normalized. A lot of people from other countries would give us a horrified look because this sounds beyond the pale and dystopian. But for some reason we’re made to believe it’s normal. And that’s not to dunk on my fellow Americans as much as point out that we’re fed propaganda to believe this is normal when it is in fact a hold over by private adoption agencies from Georgia Tann stealing + profiting off of the human trafficking of children.

In Ireland, where abortion was strictly illegal from 1861 up until the referendum to repeal the 8th amendment in 2018, The Catholic church profited massively from the combination of massive social devastation they created re: pregnancy outside of marriage and the legal forcing of pregnancy through institutions called Mother and Baby Homes.

“Fallen women” would be sent here to be hidden away from public scrutiny, and they were forced into unpaid labor under brutal abuse in laundries or other labor that the church-run homes would take the profit from.

But relevant to the above point specifically, the homes also made money hand over fist via the human trafficking of babies to adoption rings, mainly in the US. Babies were either outright stolen from women, or those incarcerated in the homes were coerced into giving their children to the nuns through tactics of relentless shame, abuse, and ostracizing.

Three screenshots from the RTE website. The first reads: "Shockingly, he discovered that Ireland was, in the words of one civil servant, even regarded as a "hunting ground". It was a country where childless couples could fly in from abroad and “obtain” a child born in any number of the various institutions with little or no formalities. According to Mr Milotte, up to 15% of all the children born each year in mother and baby homes were "trafficked" to the United States. He reported that, as well as those children adopted through official channels, thousands more were taken out of the country "without sanction or public recordkeeping" and handed over to foreigners." If the scale of illegal adoptions could be regarded as the last of the Catholic Church's dirty little secrets, it was — in effect - one that was hiding in plain sight.


The second screenshot reads: "The Irish Times reported in October 1951 that in the previous year “almost 500 babies were flown from Shannon for adoption". It reported that in the first week of October that year alone, some 18 "parties" of children departed from the airport, exceeding the number of official "adoption passports" issued to let adoptive parents take children out of Ireland. In 1952, the year before the Adoption Act came into force, a German newspaper reported "1,000 children disappear from Ireland" It claimed that many were “sold" on the US's "thriving baby black market".
The third screenshot reads: "It said the going price for a child at the time was $3,000, or €23,980 in today's money. When the story was challenged in Irish diplomatic circles, a desire for a retraction of the story from one senior official was soon abandoned when they received a message from the DEA in Dublin that "no action is required, especially as the article is largely correct". Later, in February 1955, an American newspaper wrote about adoptions under the headline "50 American couples buy Irish babies through international adoption ring". It claimed the couples were paying up to $2,000 - €15,845 in today's money - per child. When the article was discussed at government level, a Department of Justice official reportedly advised the story "could not truthfully be refuted".

Forced pregnancy will always stand to profit someone, and US adoption rings and their religious fundamentalists partners already have a rich history of profiting off of stealing children — born from both forced and chosen pregnancies — from indigenous, incarcerated, poor and working class women of colour, and women and pregnant people at the sharp edge of imperialist and neocolonial exploitation.

#its always gone hand in hand with colonialism #adoption #colonialism #racism #discrimination #religion #abortion #pregnancy #history #ireland #kidnapping #queueriosities 
Did you scream hosannas to your local Scarecrow?@inkdrawndreamer
Mon, 23 May 2022 15:30:59
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