- People like to treat it like it's so easy,
it's so simple.
If you don't want a child,
just give it up for adoption, right?
And it's really not that simple.
So, as I'm sure most of you guys know,
Roe V. Wade has been repealed.
And as a trans woman,
I've often felt that I am unequipped
to have some of the conversations around abortion,
but I really wanna make my position clear in this video.
Historically, when women have been able to
control their fertility,
they've been able to have upward mobility in society.
For that reason, and the fact that
I believe in bodily autonomy, I do support abortion,
and I'm pretty upset about it being repealed.
Basically right now, states can decide
whether or not they want to give people with uteruses
the ability to abort.
But obviously they're not gonna stop there.
They're gonna go for everything.
So I feel kind of like it is one of my duties
to stand up against that stuff.
So if you follow me on Twitter,
I'm doing a lot of like re-sharing of resources and things,
'cause I know that right now
there's a lot of confusing conversations happening.
But we're here to talk about some very specific thing
that I saw pop up in the conversations around Roe V Wade.
And that is this very particularly annoying sign.
I'm sure you've seen it.
Let's look at it.
So, this is a sign that was held by two people
that says, "We will adopt your baby."
Now these are people at an abortion protest,
and they're obviously wearing the shirt to say
that they would adopt the children that would be aborted.
Now, as you guys know, I'm an adoptee.
So I have a lot of feelings about this particular issue,
and I wanted to share them because for me,
the first thing I thought of when I looked at this picture
is, I promise you, I fucking promise you,
these two people would never adopt me.
Now, the reason I bring that up is because
what bothers me about a lot of this conversation
is that people like to treat it like it's so easy.
It's so simple.
If you don't want a child,
just give it up for adoption, right?
And it's really not that simple.
It's really not that simple.
What bothers me, especially about this as an adoptee,
is knowing that these people
probably would not adopt someone like me, a Black child,
without a political reason.
And a lot of times when you see adoptions of Black children
in a transracial way,
which by the way, that's what transracial means,
when a person of one race adopts a child of another race,
that is a transracial adoption.
A lot of times when you see them adopt Black children,
it does not end well, right?
A lot of times people adopt Black children
for political reasons.
We saw this in the case of the lesbian couple
who adopted six Black children,
used them to post a lot of pro-cop propaganda on Facebook,
who then eventually drove all six of their children,
all six of their adopted Black children
off a cliff with them.
And when I see stuff like this,
it does make me think a lot about
what could have potentially happened to me, right?
And I think these two people,
because they're thinking of adoption,
not in a context of, oh, I wanna help children,
oh, I wanna give children a safe home, a good home.
Because they're thinking about it
in such a political context,
I have a really hard time believing
that they would be people who would be able to
raise a child like myself and do it well.
Black children are, of almost all children,
the least likely to be adopted.
This is from an article about specifically skin tone,
and how likely and unlikely it is
for people of darker skin to be adopted.
And you see how big of a gap there is,
even between the second least likely,
Hispanic children to be adopted outta foster care, right?
And so of course, when we talk about abortion,
the people who are gonna be directly affected
by the the repeal of Roe V. Wade
are Black and brown people, right?
And there's all this other really dark, upsetting stuff
connected to this conversation.
There's a conversation about a domestic supply of infants.
There's the white nationalist conversation.
A lot of this really does seem to be driven
by a desire to have more white children, specifically.
- President Trump, on behalf
of all the MAGA Patriots in America,
I want to thank you for the historic victory
for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.
(crowd cheering)
- I don't like seeing shit like this.
I do not like seeing people pretend as though
adoption is just this easy and accessible thing,
especially for people who want to adopt.
And the funny thing about this is,
the guy who is in this picture,
whose name is Sebaldo de Weert, de Weert says,
"It's not easy for us because we are not American citizens.
"Besides the adoption process is costly.
"If you want to help us achieve it,
"we are open to receive it with much love.
"Five or whatever. Thanks."
So these are people who are not even able to adopt,
even if they wanted to adopt,
they would not be able to adopt.
And they're marching on the streets,
protesting the rights of women who live in this country
and who would be directly affected by this
to take control of their own bodies, right?
I'm sorry, that shit really annoys me.
People think about adoption as this easy thing, right?
It is a very long and costly experience, right?
I get why people are saying stuff like this.
I get how they can arrive to the point.
But I think it's worth pointing out
that when it was time to put up or shut up,
they couldn't do it, right?
They couldn't do it.
And how many people are out here saying,
oh I would adopt the kid.
Don't have an abortion, 'cause I would adopt the kid.
How many people are out there saying that right now
who 100% would not be able to?
You know what's really funny about that,
that's the reason why a lot of people
want to have an abortion, right?
Did you know that it costs almost $334,000
to raise a child from birth to 17?
It's incredibly expensive to have children.
For a lot of people it is the quickest way to poverty.
And going back to what I said earlier,
back in the day, when a woman got pregnant,
essentially it was either you figure out a way
to get rid of it in an underground way,
or for the next 18 years of your life,
you have to essentially put aside your goals and aspirations
to take care of a child, right?
It's not a coincidence that the people
who lament a loss of traditional values,
a loss of Christian values, and things like that,
it's not a coincidence that those are the same people
complaining about this.
It's not a coincidence
that the people who complain about feminism,
who are staunchly anti-feminist,
are opposed to women being able to
control their bodies, right?
These are tied together.
And so it really frustrates me to see shit like this,
'cause it's so callous.
We already see that when these kids come,
they don't give a fuck.
We already see that when these kids are born
to mothers who could not financially provide
that there's all of this energy spent
yelling at these women for being welfare queens,
da, da, da, da, da.
These kids come and then you want the mother to raise them.
And then you want to chastise them for needing assistance.
It's, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
So I hate this.
I want for people to understand
that having children and raising children
is an incredibly personal thing, and that's that.
It's not so simple and easy
as every person who wants an abortion
is going to put the children in foster care
or an adoption agency,
and then suddenly, immediately someone who wants that child
is going to take it.
It's really not that simple.
And there are so many other darker sides to adoption.
There's the issue of trafficking.
There's the issue of exploitation and abuse.
We see this all the time.
Returning back to the topic of people using adoption
as a political tool,
we all remember Myka Stauffer, right?
Who adopted a Chinese child,
made all of the social media posts about it,
about the whole process and about how amazing it was,
and then decided to re-home him
when he wasn't the adorable little Asian kid that he want.
You know, listen, I get passionate about this shit like this
because even though my parents and I have our issues,
this could have been me.
And I am thankful that I was adopted by a family
who did indeed care about me.
Because the idea of these people adopting a child
for a political reason just is completely incompatible
with what I would like to think
is the reason people are adopting to begin with.
So I just wanted to share with you guys
my thoughts about this,
because it was something that really upset me.
Long story short, I think these people fucking suck.
I think that these people fucking suck.
Like I said,
I will always support a woman's right to choose,
always support a woman's right
to be able to control their biology, if they can.
And so for me,
these things are really important to advocate for,
especially right now.