Since the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, protests have erupted across the country. Many protesters have come prepared with signs, and while some signs have been a delightful comfort in trying times, others have been, well, this: creeps who look like the smiling antagonists of a Jordan Peele movie, offering to adopt the babies of those who are inevitably forced to give birth.
As this god-awful sign makes the rounds on Twitter, I want to address this couple or anyone else gleefully sharing similar messages: Don’t offer to adopt my forced baby, you shameless, creepy fucks. And for the love of god, don’t stand outside clinics waving these signs or shouting similar messages at people who could be seeking abortion care for unthinkably difficult, agonizing reasons—or any reasons, really.
To be unequivocally clear, people who oppose fundamental rights to bodily autonomy and health care shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of children, let alone be allowed to raise them. They’re the purveyors of a movement that wants rape victims—including children—to give birth.
Abortion bans, with or without rape exceptions, perpetuate unthinkable violence and trauma. To now smugly capitalize off this violence and trauma and (obviously disingenuously) offer to “adopt” babies from forced pregnancies is ultimately emblematic of the anti-abortion movement’s trademark depravity—and, of course, it trademark, faux generosity. These are, after all, the same people helming “crisis pregnancy centers” that require pregnant people in need to complete Bible classes to earn “free” diapers.
Ignoring, for a moment, how people who oppose children’s bodily autonomy have no business raising them, it’s not like “pro-life” people are adopting, anyway. The glaring hypocrisy certainly hasn’t been lost on pro-abortion rights protesters—as one pointed out, more than 400,000 children are currently in the foster care system:
Of course, callous invocations of adoption don’t just gloss over the staggering physical and emotional toll of forced pregnancy and birth, or how criminalization of abortion will inevitably contribute to higher maternal mortality rates. It also ignores the racist, imperialist violence that many features of our current adoption system are fundamentally rooted in.
Nonetheless, there’s a reason you’re about to hear a lot more from giddy anti-abortion freaks frothing at the mouth to get their talons on your forced babies: They’re tired of being called hypocrites. That’s why they recently lied to the Atlantic about their plans to advocate for all kinds of policies to expand America’s shameful, anti-family social safety net.
Whether through mass adoption or robust family leave and child care programs, abortion opponents have no real interest in addressing the problems they know they’re creating. Their movement is rooted in white supremacy and classism; their bans purposefully target poor people and keep them poor. And even if the “We Will Adopt Your Baby” couple singlehandedly adopted all 400,000 children in the U.S. foster system, or the government suddenly met all basic needs and beyond, that wouldn’t in any way mitigate the violence and cruelty of forced pregnancy and birth.
I always knew the inevitable fall of Roe would be devastating—but nothing could have prepared me for the unbearableness of smiling anti-abortion couples smugly offering to adopt our forced babies.