Dr. Kristin Kirkland: When Adoption and Human Trafficking Intersect

Summary

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Cate & Ty Break It Down

Episode: Dr. Kristin Kirkland: When Adoption and Human Trafficking Intersect

Date: August 5, 2026 | Hosts: Catelynn and Tyler Baltierra
Guest: Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deeply into the intersections of private infant adoption and human trafficking through the lens of Dr. Kristen Kirkland, an adoptee, physician, and public health educator. Drawing from her professional expertise and lived experience, Dr. Kirkland unpacks the legal, emotional, and cultural nuances that link adoption practices in the U.S. to definitions and realities of trafficking—particularly emphasizing coercion and commodification. Together with hosts Cate and Ty, the discussion explores misconceptions in the adoption narrative, the psychological effects on adoptees, systemic problems (including religious influence and industry profiteering), and concrete steps towards reform.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Kirkland’s Background & Entry Into Advocacy

• Introduction
  • Dr. Kirkland is a family medicine physician trained in public health who shifted to advocacy, education, and writing after wrestling with her own adoption story.
  • Adopted in a “functionally closed” private infant adoption, Dr. Kirkland became interested in human trafficking, which later illuminated unsettling parallels with her adoption experience.

“As I studied public health, I had a special interest in human trafficking…The more I learned and the more I educated about what trafficking is and how we define it…a lot of the circumstances surrounding my adoption actually met that definition too...and the day I did, I really...wrestled with it for a good bit.”
— Dr. Kirkland (02:17)

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2. Defining & Comparing Human Trafficking and Adoption

• Breakdown of Legal Definitions (Palermo Protocol):
  • Act of obtaining a person (especially a minor) by means of force, fraud, or coercion for profit or exploitation.
  • Involvement of minors automatically meets certain criteria for trafficking.
  • Private infant adoption, shaped by industry profit and potential coercion, overlaps troublingly with these criteria.

"If a minor is involved, you do not have to prove that one of the other subtypes of act have happened...I started learning about, especially the coercion. There have been periods in history of force, and certainly there's been fraud and adoption too. But the coercion is a really big piece..."
— Dr. Kirkland (06:22)

• The Industry Is For-Profit:
  • Exploitation—or as Dr. Kirkland calls it, “identity trafficking”—relates to both financial gain and lifelong ramifications to adoptees’ sense of self.

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3. The Role of Coercion in Adoption

• Subtle & Systemic Coercion:
  • Coercion is not always overt—often subtle, cultural, and tied to industry practice (e.g., adoptive parents waiting at the hospital, agency “counseling” with biased pros/cons lists for birth parents).
  • Birth parents, especially minors, are frequently coached or influenced by authority figures, further clouding true consent.

“The coercion is so subtle and slow and methodical that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the coercion happened or how it happened...”
— Kate (07:25)

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4. "The Fog": Adoptee Psychology and Coping

• Definition of the Fog (Fear, Obligation, Guilt):
  • The “adoption fog” is a psychological state preventing adoptees from reckoning with adoption-related losses or trauma.
  • Emerging from the fog can trigger a profound, often painful reevaluation of one’s identity.

"FOG stands for fear, obligation, and guilt...it's adoptee speak for those factors that we are usually not aware of that keep us from reckoning with what adoption means for us..."
— Dr. Kirkland (10:17)

• “Fawn” Trauma Response:
  • Beyond fight/flight/freeze, some adoptees “fawn”—internalizing pressure to please, assimilate, or overachieve as a form of self-protection and acceptance.

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5. Adoption: Loss, Trauma, and Lifelong Impacts

• Birth Parent and Adoptee Loss:
  • Both adoptees and birth parents experience “hidden” or minimized losses ignored by mainstream narratives.
  • Adoption is inherently traumatic due to the severing of the primal connection between mother and infant.

“It’s like an unfolding of just trauma...We as a society would be pretty ignorant to ignore the fact that adoption is not trauma. It is trauma.”
— Kate (23:00)

• Biological Roots:
  • Discussion of maternal-fetal connections on a cellular/DNA level—scientific evidence reinforcing the psychological impacts of separation.

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6. Religious Influence & Adoption Narratives

• Spiritual Abuse, Indoctrination, and “Orphan Sunday”:
  • Many adoption stories are enmeshed with Evangelical Christian beliefs, which often reinforce “rescue” narratives, shame, and exclusion of birth parents.
  • Dr. Kirkland’s forthcoming book Orphan Sunday is the Worst will unpack these religious dynamics and their consequences.

“So much religious indoctrination that it’s a good thing to take kids from people who are ‘bad’...when I looked at who we’re labeling...it’s usually people dealing with temporary crises, like socioeconomic disadvantages...as little as a couple thousand dollars could have preserved a family.”
— Dr. Kirkland (43:18)

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7. Systemic Problems: Profit, Secrecy, and Identity Erasure

• Money in Adoption:
  • The U.S. adoption industry’s profits (from $30K–$50K per infant) and high expenditure on marketing highlight commodification of children.
  • Agencies often target advertising to vulnerable, low-income women.

“They’re spending 80% of the budget on marketing for humans...So we are, we spend, they’re spending 80% of the budget on marketing for humans. Because when you break it down, that’s what it is you’re marketing towards to acquire humans.”
— Kate (54:19)

• Sealed Records and Birth Certificates:
  • Most adoptees still lack access to their original birth certificates and records, a violation of basic civil and human rights.
  • This legal secrecy is traced historically to adoption industry power and figures like Georgia Tann.

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8. Reform, Alternatives, and Hopeful Change

• Alternatives to Private Infant Adoption:
  • Family preservation (providing parents with needed support/resources) is the top solution, followed by guardianship and kinship placements that better preserve identity and connection.
  • International models—many with far lower rates of commodified adoption—offer examples for reform.

“Family preservation is the best one we've got. And it's very possible if we would just deconstruct some of our narratives about what adoption accomplishes.”
— Dr. Kirkland (58:04)

• Policy Priorities:
  • Immediate access to original birth certificates and medical records for adoptees.
  • Mandatory grief counseling for prospective adoptive parents (especially when infertility is the motivator).
  • In adoption, impact must matter more than intent.

“I would love a little bit more of a long game in how we think about the adoptee involved and everyone involved in an adoption story.”
— Dr. Kirkland (50:17)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Intent vs. Impact:

  “One of the biggest misconceptions is that intent matters more than impact when it comes to adoption…”
  — Dr. Kirkland (20:31)

• On Closed Records:

  “It’s still a minority of states where there’s open access to OBCs… I was lucky enough to be from a state where I was able to get mine. It has a giant red void stamp on it, which felt great.”
  — Dr. Kirkland (61:35)

• On the Profound Need to Know:

  “My story before the story is told in part by the information on that form… Knowing the actual details of the story before my adoption story has helped me embrace myself a little bit more, feel more secure in my own identity...”
  — Dr. Kirkland (66:20)

• On Emerging Hope:

  “It gives me a lot of hope to talk about the hard things and envision a future where maybe those aren’t a problem anymore.”
  — Dr. Kirkland (73:59)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:17] – Dr. Kirkland’s personal and professional journey: from adoptee to trafficking educator to advocate
• [05:40] – Defining human trafficking and drawing direct legal comparisons to adoption
• [10:17] – Discussion/explanation of “the fog” (fear, obligation, guilt, and fawning)
• [23:00] – Adoption as inherent trauma and the impossibility of separating biological and psychological connections
• [43:06] – Orphan Sunday, evangelical adoption narratives, and spiritual abuse in practice
• [54:19] – Industry profit, adoption marketing, and the targeting of crisis pregnancies
• [58:04] – Family preservation and other alternatives to traditional infant adoption
• [61:35] – Adoptee access to original birth certificates and records: policy and lived realities
• [72:13] – Dr. Kirkland’s forthcoming book “Orphan Sunday is the Worst”

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Actionable Takeaways

• Listen to Adoptee Voices: Shift the focus from “saving” and rescuing narratives to centering the lived experience, identity, and lifelong needs of adoptees.
• Demand Industry Reform: Question, confront, and work to change the for-profit, secrecy-driven U.S. adoption system.
• Support Family Preservation: Advocate for policies and nonprofits that help families in crisis stay together—“a temporary crisis should not create permanent trauma.”
• Push for Rights Restoration: Support efforts for nationwide open records and the human right of adoptees to know their origins.

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Final Note

This episode is essential listening for anyone touched by (or working in) adoption. Dr. Kirkland and the hosts bravely tackle discomfort, invite listeners to bring curiosity and empathy, and call for a wholesale rethink of what ethics, compassion, and adoptee-centered practice could truly look like in America.

“Get comfortable being uncomfortable. This is gonna be uncomfortable...I think that's important when you’re talking with people about adoption.”
— Kate (30:38)

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Transcript

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[Ty (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Hello.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Welcome back to Kate and Ty. Break It Down. I have a very special guest with me today, Dr. Kristen Kirkland. I want to make sure I say it right.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yep, that's me.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

And so I want to just dive right in because we share a little bit of similarity as far as the adoption world goes. And I came across your videos on social media and it just kind of shocked me because at first I saw some comments. I mean, we're always used to seeing comments from people who aren't really in the triad at all or the constellation, saying stuff like, really crazy. But I thought it was so awesome how you just continued to, like, you know, not let that affect you. And you just kept educating with grace and understanding. And I thought that was really, really admirable. And I was like, you know, I really would love to talk to her and, like, get her viewpoint because I think it's a very unique viewpoint that you have from multiple different angles from your life. So if you could just like, introduce yourself to the people, tell them how you know who you are, what you're working towards, what your goal is and how we even got to this point.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Sure. Just a small ask, right? So my name is Kristin Kirkland. I am a family medicine physician by training. I also train in public health. And so that means that I look at health from a population view as well as on the personal level when it comes to making health decisions or looking at patterns that contribute to our life. Because as we know, our health depends on the water we swim in, our environment as much as it depends on individual factors, too. And I guess if I back up, I Am from the Midwest. I was adopted in a private infant adoption, same race. And technically it was open. Functionally, it was definitely not. So that's something we could maybe talk more about. But as I studied public health, I had a special interest in human trafficking, and I searched survivors of trafficking throughout my public health year and then educated fellow healthcare providers about identifying and intervening in cases of trafficking in the healthcare space. Because. Because I was shocked to find in my studies that 88% of people who were surveyed who had been victims of trafficking had encountered some part of the healthcare industry during their time being victimized. And so that was a big window of opportunity to intervene and maybe help end someone suffering or help them find freedom again. But the more I learned and the more I educated about what trafficking is and how we define it on a legal level, the more I realized that a lot of the circumstances surrounding my adoption actually met that definition too, which was shocking for me. It took me a while to realize, and the day I did, I really. I've wrestled with it for a good bit. I was like, could this seriously be true? But I think that it is, and I started to notice other people talking about that too. So though I no longer practice clinical medicine, I have shifted into an advocacy through writing and authorship primarily, and then also educating online. And I think a big reason I'm able to kind of separate the personal feelings about some of the nasty comments I get and really focus on the education is I truly think people just don't understand.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

I think it's interesting because, you know, when, you know it's different to hear it from other people saying, oh, their opinions about adoption are like this or like that, but when you are actually working in that space really intimately like you have, I think it's. I mean, I just thought it was so wild. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to, like, get involved in this kind of world and then realize, like, whoa, like, this is very similar to, like, what adoption is like in this country. And that's why I think it's important that, you know, people understand that adoption in America is very different from adoption everywhere else in well developed countries. And so, you know, when you say stuff like, well, adoption is, like, very similar to human trafficking, people just immediately get on the defensive. I mean, it's. It's like. I think that is probably one of the most, like, triggering statements that I see people get really, like, whoa. Like, how dare you? And I think if people were to not be so defensive and be a little more just curious about whoa, like, even if it's shocking to you, like, you hear that that term, that adoption is similar to human trafficking, instead of getting so defensive, like, hey, why don't you pause for a second, ask, how are you coming to this kind of correlation? And that's kind of where I wanted to bring you on and ask you, like, what, what is the definition of, like, human trafficking? And what is kind of that compared to how private infant adoption works in America?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, absolutely. So the definitions from the United States and also the United nations are similar in structure. The wording is just slightly different, but the meaning is the same. We use a model called the Palermo Protocol, which is just, we've got to put a fancy name on everything, but it's just the structure of how we describe trafficking in the law. So it's the act of obtaining a person, and there are a few other words for obtaining a person by means of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of exploiting them for profit. So the interesting thing about ACT that I always like to point out is that if a minor is involved, you do not have to prove that one of the other subtypes of act have happened. If the minor is involved, the act is already qualified, if that makes sense.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So if I think about it through that lens, which is very much how I came to this after years and years of studying trafficking and then kind of coming out of the adoption fog, the miners are already involved in private infant adoption. Private infant adoption. And then the means, force, fraud, coercion, I started learning about, especially the coercion. There have been periods in history of force, and certainly there's been fraud and adoption too. But the coercion is a really big piece. And I know you know this well from other conversations I've heard you all have on this podcast. Unfortunately, coercion is a big part of recruiting parents to relinquish. And then I truly feel that if we use maybe the term identity trafficking, it'll make more sense. But exploiting an adoptee for profit, we know the industry is very much for profit and the exploitation is making a profit on that transaction of adoption. But then it's just, I feel a lifetime of identity exploitation for a lot of private infant adoptees. Like, we very much see the mental health ramifications of forced assimilation into a family of strangers. So that's just a very like 30,000 foot view. Obviously it's a complex topic, but that's where I'm at.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. Cause I feel like, you know, adoption is so nuanced and there's so I mean, every situation is so different and the requirements and what people think that the reasons why they do it. But I think the word coercion also triggers a lot of people who are, you know, obviously looking at adoption, this beautiful, awesome, amazing lens. And it's one of those things where it's like, the coercion is so subtle and slow and methodical that it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the coercion happened or how it happened. But I think one thing that's interesting that I learned is that like, even having adoptive parents at the hospital in the same just wing of the hospital, you know, while this birth mother is paying to relinquish, is a very subtle form of coercion. Because how can I possibly feel safe enough to change my mind or to whatever if I know that I'm going to break this family's heart, which is right next door, have the car seat in their hands, you know what I'm saying? So I think when you use the word coercion, people get very like, whoa, what do you mean? And I've had a lot of people even talk about mine and my wife's story about, like, you weren't coerced. We watched it happen. We watched you do this. And it's like, yeah, but you don't understand that I was also a child. You know what I mean? And so I'm listening to all the adults around me who are telling me that, you know, it's better to do this than it is to parent and that kind of stuff. And so even that little subtle language. And also, you know, adoption agency will have birth parents kind of fill out like pros and cons list about, you know, relinquishing versus parenting. And I kept thinking in my head, you know, at that time, like, well, people have children all the time and never do pros and cons list. So in my head I'm like, why are we doing that with. With young, vulnerable women who are in crisis pregnancies, clearly, or else they wouldn't be in this situation to even think about relinquishing. So I think it's important, the work that you're doing, because we have to, like, it's like, how do we change and shift the language to where it's not so extreme that we can almost kind of like baby walk them into this, like, other understanding of what adoption looks like in words like coercion and words like human trafficking. Just for some reason, I just see such a visceral. It creates such a visceral reaction to people. And I just, you know, obviously the whole goal of this and even talking about it is to kind of just try to shift and baby walk them into, like, this understanding. And I noticed you mentioned the fog, and I want to elaborate on that because I think people who are not familiar with adoption or whatever don't know what the fog is. So can you just give, like, a little breakdown of what the fog is like, specifically, like, you know, from your viewpoint.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yes. Which, by the way, as a medical professional, I love an acronym. So the fact that there was already an acronym for this, great. Yeah. But FOG stands for fear, obligation and guilt. And it's adoptee speak for those factors that we are usually not aware of that keep us from reckoning with what adoption means for us on an individual level. Basically, it's the lullaby that keeps us asleep to the circumstances that led to us growing up the way we did adopt. You say, oh, I'm fine. I'm happy. I have no desire to understand this or I don't have trauma. Maybe so. But I often, you know, these days default to, you know, I was the same way, and I was very much in the fog. I was afraid of reckoning with that or I didn't think I needed to. So the fog, it's an, it's an apt word and it's great acronym.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. Did you now, when you were in, like, when you were in the fog, did you ever have any little slight moments of like, you know, kind of seeing through it and then coming back, going back into it? Cause I think it's a. It's a different journey, I think for every adoptee.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Looking back, like, hindsight being 20 20, I see times where I kind of was. Was seeing those glimmers or glimpses of this might not be what I think it is. I was thinking about this quite a bit yesterday, about I'm getting close to my birthday. So every year I just tend to be a little bit more interested in revisiting some of the circumstances and learning more about how I came into the world, what little I can know. And I think there are times where everyone thinks about that and questions it. But then kind of our default, which turns out to be a trauma response of its own, is to kind of just say, no, I'm not going to visit, that it doesn't feel safe. And I think one of the first steps to maybe helping others understand that this shocking term of human trafficking or. Or even coercion as part of adoption is to step back and say, okay, let's look at the trauma responses involved with loss. That's not acknowledged. And I did not know much about the Fawn trauma response until I became a doctor, which helped me come out of the fog. But Fawn is very much that kind of people pleasing, soothing, ignore to get, get along, go along and assimilate. So when I learned what Fawn was, I started to break things down a

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

little bit more, I think, and explain to people what is Fawning.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So we think about the trauma response as being fight, flight, freeze. Right. So when something traumatic happens to us, we tend to our brains push us into one of those responses with our central nervous system. But Fawn is kind of the lesser known sibling of fight, flight, freeze. And so instead of fighting, fleeing or freezing in trauma, especially complex trauma that occurs over time, meaning maybe losing your first family and then not being allowed to talk about it or not understanding or having language to grieve that growing up can definitely send you into that Fawn of I'm going to people, please. I'm going to do what I can to assimilate our nervous system, protecting us without us really realizing it.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, because I would think of like an example of Fawning would be like an overachieving, making sure I get A's, A pluses, making sure I. I perfect this. You know, if my mom wants me to be a swimmer or a musician, I'm gonna like or doctor. Is that how that works? I'm curious.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

That's how I got there. Yeah.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Okay, interesting. So got to become like doing your research and all your work did that. That must have. I mean, I just, I can't imagine. I'm not an OP D. But I try my hardest to kind of put myself in that mindset. And I really can't imagine what it's like to live your whole life kind of operating not on autopilot, but you don't even realize you're on autopilot until something kind of breaks you out of it. And then to almost have to like go back and question everything. Because I would imagine that's what you do. You go back and be okay. Was that fawning? Was that this? You know what I mean? Like, you go back and you kind of like think about all that stuff.

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[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Did you ever like coming out of the fog? Did you ever like, you know, talk to your, your parents who raised you and kind of like try to explain to them any, I mean, how did that work?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yes. So two parter When I did start kind of waking up to the fog, it was definitely an inciting event in my personal life. Like a couple at once that kind of forced me to review. And then all of a sudden I'm I'm reckoning with everything, just like you said. So I'm realizing that things I was taught on a spiritual level growing up, very religious things I was taught about who I am and what my career should be, realizing that that maybe wasn't a good fit and I had been kind of forcing myself into it. I had some personal health things that forced me into that. So everything does feel like it falls apart at once. It feels like a really big, almost catastrophic event sometimes. And so of Course, it can be scary to maybe visit it. And if we don't have to, staying in the fog feels easier on a. On a, like, central nervous system level as far as support goes for my adoptive family. So at the time that all this was happening, I was not yet in reunion with my paternal side. Unfortunately, the only thing I knew about my mom growing up in this open, but not really open adoption was that she had passed when I was young. So I haven't had the privilege of reunion with her. But I do have a couple of family members on that side that I have since found. But no one was quite in the picture yet when all this was going on. So the only support I did have were my adoptive parents, which, you know, intentional or not, there is a bias of protecting that relationship when we talk about adoption with our adoptive parents. Unfortunately, mine have not been super supportive of me reckoning with adoption at all. It makes them very uncomfortable, I think, that they weren't given grief language for their own infertility, which led them to adopt. And so it's been a lot of years of not really being able, on a psychological level to talk about this stuff with me. So I haven't, I haven't really had their support as I've gone along, which has been very hard.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. So when. And when you say, like, I think that's important, what you said about grief language. Like, I think when people, you know, when I, when we share our story or share things about adoption, people get very defensive of, of the daughter. We relinquish her parents. And it's like, I, I also feel that they are also a victim of this industry. And I don't say that lightly because I feel like they have, they've gone through their own, you know, grief and loss. And I think, I think the adoption industry kind of pushes more towards, well, the solution to your infertility is adoption. Instead of, hey, let's, let's get you into therapy for that. Because I think when people ask me, well, I, I can't have children. I can't. I can't have children. So what do I do? And my immediate thought is, well, you go to therapy for that. Like, you go and you. And you kind of dissect that grief and loss. Because I do. I don't want to minimize the loss that prospective adoptive parents feel when they can't have children. I just feel like in this, in this country, in the system, what are we prioritizing here? Are we prioritizing their, Their, their inability to have children, or are we going to prioritize the, you know, innocent infant who's being separated doesn't know what's going on. So I think it's interesting that, you know, I. I've also heard from adoptive parents who have kind of got, like, it's weird. I. The more I talk to all these people, it's like everyone almost has their own fog. Like. Like. Like, adoptees have their own fog. I think adoptive parents have their own fog, and then birth parents have their own fog. I mean, me and my wife for the first, I think, three years after we relinquished, we went around the country talking about how great it was, and, you know, Bethany Christian Services made pamphlets, and we went and spoke to universities about it. And, you know, me and Kate, years later, realized, like, wow, like, we were so numb and operating in that. Like, it's beautiful. It's amazing. Look at this. That we didn't even really get time to, like, grieve or, like, grieve the way that we felt like we were probably supposed to. And I think it's got to be pretty similar to adoptive parents to where have they been able to, like, sit with that and grieve in their own way before jumping right into, well, I can't have my own kids, so I'm just gonna go adopt, or. Yeah. And so do you feel that adoptive parents. Do you think that it's, like, a requirement, they should have to go to grief and counseling before adopting?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

I absolutely think that those who adopt due to infertility, yes, absolutely. We do see, like, a microcosm of. Of folks who are adopting for the reasons that, obviously, that's one of the biggest motivators. And so I think. I think grief counseling can be really scary, but I think that it is absolutely necessary.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. Cause what do you. What do you think the biggest misconception of adoption in America is?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that intent matters more than impact when it comes to adoption. I think we all skate around on. We being just like our collective societal narrative skates around on, oh, well, we mean adoption to be something that's good and protective for kids. So it is. And I think our intent really trips us up when we're trying to actually look at and assess impact and make sure that we're doing what's right for the adoptee involved. And that ends up meaning that adoptees go erased and ignored a lot of the time.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. So I honestly feel like. I mean, I even still work on that. I need to work. Like, I constantly am. Okay. My intention may be one thing, but the impact of what I'm. Of what I'm doing may not, you know, be what I want. So I think it's important to kind of do that little moral inventory a lot. I try to do that a lot because I think there's been a lot of things that I've, you know, said or done throughout my, you know, relinquishing journey and being a birth parent that, you know, in an open adoption that I'm like, oof. My intention may have been this, but the impact, I don't think it was, you know, wasn't there, wasn't the right thing. But I noticed that you mentioned the open adoption thing. So you, when you say open, does that mean you had face to face visits? Was it pictures and letters or how did that work for you?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So in my case, we were open only in the legal sense, meaning that vital information wasn't redacted. I unfortunately never had a relationship with my mom. She was sent photos and I think like a small blurb of an update every six months for two years. And I'm still trying to get my hands on whether there was a written like open adoption agreement as far as what was going to happen with that. But what I was always told was the agreement was for up to two years. And then she had requested further updates when I turned three right before she passed, and that was declined. So it functionally closed at that point for good.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

So, and this was through an agency that your parents adopted you from?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

No, ours was private, just through a lawyer. And in fact, it's interesting when we talk about coercion in my story, I kind of feel like people in common is even coercive. So one of the reasons I became a physician was the family doctor who took care of me throughout childhood was actually my mom's doctor when she was considering relinquishment. And he had been friends with my adoptive parents and kind of brought them to the same lawyer. So I think people in common is a big conflict of interest there and that he was always praised in my family for fulfilling God's plan by bringing them together. But like, yeah, privately through a lawyer because of this doctor is where I'm going with that.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Okay, so which, which is totally different because I think people automatically assume that a lot of private infant adoptions are all done through agencies and that's not the case. I mean, there's lawyers and like you said, I mean, God, what a. How do you separate. Conflict of interest almost? Or how do you like how, you know, how do you make barriers around that because that, that's not, that's not the first time I've heard of. Actually, I was talking to adoptee a couple weeks ago who said that they had. It was all in the same. In the same church. They couldn't have a chill, a child. One of the other members of the church had a daughter who was, you know, obviously pregnant, crisis pregnancy. And they facilitated the whole thing. And, And I always thought, like, how does, like, how do you, like, go to church every Sunday? And then, like, you know, you, you get to sit and I don't know, I just feel. I couldn't imagine how, how, how that would be. And the adoptee was very, you know, traumatized from learning that. I mean, to know that you grew up going to church with your biological mom, you didn't know, you know what I mean, for that for so long, it's intense. And I feel like, you know, the stories that I hear, it's. It's like an unfolding of just like, trauma that another thing happens. And it's trauma. And it's like, it's one of those things where I think we as a society would be pretty ignorant to ignore the fact that adoption is not trauma. It is trauma. And I think even that can get people pretty triggered. And I also noticed that, you know, I'm trying to think of the saying where it's trauma is not what happened to you, it's how you interpreted it or something like that. And I feel like a lot of that has to do when adoptees are in the fog, is that they, you know, I'm not traumatized. You can't tell me I'm traumatized. I'm not. And it's like, I think one of the things that I want people to understand is that we're not saying that you are, you know, traumatized or, you know, we're not saying that you should or shouldn't be. We're just saying that this is what happens when a baby is separated from the biological mother, and this is what happens. And I think you as a doctor can. Can, you know, attest to this, that, you know, what, from your experience in your work, what. What do babies really experience when they are, you know, taken away from. From biomomic.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. So hard thing to study. Right. Because it's free verbal for everybody involved. What we do know is on a neurobiological level, mom and baby are so much more connected than I think most people realize. There's this really cool thing called maternal fetal microchimerism where Our cells cross. I've heard of that, the placenta on either side. And they have found in maternal tissue up to 30 years, perhaps more, but the furthest was 30 years in the studies of those baby cells still in mom's body, all throughout the body, in different tissues. So there's different phenomena like that. Even if you want to get real nerdy, go look up how the placenta works and the biology of that organ, which purely exists to connect mom and baby throughout the pregnancy. It's just so intertwined. And so if we're that entwined on a cellular level with the womb that nurtures us, the person whose womb nurtures us, then how could we not be on a psychological level? And so there's more being studied about the psychological part. Again, really hard to do because we've got babies involved, but we know on a DNA level, certain things will change the expression of our DNA throughout a pregnancy. And so the way I see it in medicine and part of what eventually brought me out of the fog was studying just how connected moms and babies are and then considering, like, how then can we go and separate on a legal level, on a social basis for life? Like, it just didn't click for me anymore.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. So did you now? Is. Since you've been kind of online sharing your story, I was curious on what your. What is, like, your biggest pushback that you've seen from people online who disagree or get defensive or whatever.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So since I started using the language about trafficking, my biggest pushback has been a little bit, what we've already talked about, of just how shocking it is to consider that something that is so sensationalized on either end could actually have something to do with each other. So, like, when I was educating about trafficking in the thick of it, the biggest barrier to understanding trafficking for what it really was was how sensationalized it is in the media. Like movies like Taken, things were told about. About babies being shipped in Wayfair containers. Like, there's a lot of misinformation that's very sensationalized about trafficking and what it is. So misinformation on that end, misinformation on the adoption end. Because adoption propaganda historically has been just so ingrained, and we miss the intersectionality of what has led to the ways that you see adoption or the ways it works to the point where I think a lot of adoptive parents seem surprised to learn that adoptees actually have a second birth certificate that falsifies a lot of our identity and the way we come into the world. Like, there's just a lot of I don't think it's willful, but just ignorance about what adoption is and how it works. So to bring those two together is a really big ask, I think, on a psychological level. And so when you say we got to walk people there, I think you're exactly right. But I get a lot of pushback of how dare you is often said to me suggests that trafficking and adoption have things in common. But from what I'm seeing on the academic level and the legal definitions, there's definitely similarities. So I try to ask people to hang with me. You know, I try to do things in series. I'm going to explain more, you know, but the ability to have enough empathy to sit with something and push past that defensiveness, like you were saying earlier, is is a skill that I don't think everyone has. And I think it would be great if everyone did because we could have some really cool discussions if we shared that, like understanding August always feels like

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[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. Cause I kind of feel like it's like, it's like you said, like, please just bear with me. Like I'm gonna say something, you're not gonna like it, but if you could just sit with me for a quick second and just kind of be curious. And like you said, I think it comes down to like, you know, empathetic curiosity. Just be. And honestly, what made me more curious about it was just hearing adoptees experience. I think, like, me and Kate always talk about how actually, you know, healing it is, I think for us on a different level to hear the stories of adoptees and just know that like, we're, our concerns aren't like, we're not going crazy. You know what I mean? Like, these concerns are real. And I don't think people are. I don't think they have the emotional capacity to sit with it and being uncomfortable for a long time. And I think it's important when you're talking with people about adoption to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Like it's. And I think that goes for all things, not just adoption with human rights. And I mean, whatever you want, but like, just get comfortable being uncomfortable. This is gonna be uncomfortable. And I think it especially is for adoptive parents when we use language like we were talking about earlier. So, I mean, as far as that kind of stuff goes, I wanted to talk to you about what so you, your, your biological mother passed when you were super young, which I am so sorry about. I mean, because I've heard so many stories about adoptees, you know, becoming 18 and think, you know, they have this freedom now and they go to search and they miss the opportunity to meet them by a week, sometimes the same a couple days before they turn 18. And they said, my biggest regret is not like being more. Not like, not, not standing up for myself and really pushing to find my biological family before I, you know, turn 18. Because they were so scared of just hurting their adoptive parents. They're so, you know, so they're all just wait, 18. And I know me and Kate get a lot of pushback as far as like, oh, wait till she's 18. And all this kind of stuff for her to reach out. And it's one of those things where it's like, the more I'm hearing stories, it's like, I mean, waiting to 18 is not a, that doesn't work for a lot of people. And unfortunately, you know, you've had that experience of going, you know, how do you get answers? If you go to look and your biological mom or your dad is not alive anymore, that's a huge, huge loss. I mean, even if you've never met them, I mean, just, just, it's the loss of the unknown. Now I'll never know. I can never ask these questions. And I think that is a lifelong, a lifelong, you know, just pain that can never really be fulfilled or fixed or anything. So I think it's important that we kind of prioritize adoptees even when they're minors, even when they're younger. Because as adoptive parents, like, I really believe that your duty is to not raise this child like you would a biological child, because they're not. And I, I think it's kind of unfair to try to raise an adopted child the same as you would a biological child, because it's not the same, you know?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yes, absolutely. One of the biggest griefs I deal with, one of the biggest sources of grief for me is the fact that my perception of my mom will always be through everyone else's eyes. The things I know about her come from everyone else. I have never gotten to have that one on one, direct from the source, conversation or observation opportunity, which was something that was a huge gift. I did, I did reunite with my dad a few years back and getting to hear him in his own words, getting to see him for who he is as a living being in the room with me has been such a gift. So it almost threw a little more grief on not getting to have that chance with my mom. So absolutely, it's one of those lifelong things that I'm going to have to keep coming back to and reckoning with. And I go through fits and starts where I really need to know more about her. So I'll try my best to request information. But of course, legally I'm severed from her. So that's a big task to prove next of kin or prove that I have the right to that information, because in the eyes of the laws, I don't. So I wish the burden of proof was on the adoptive parents when it comes to open adoption to prove whether or not it's safe to be in relationship with an adoptee's first family, because I think so often adoptive parents tend to, again, I think unintentionally feel like it's unsafe for the child to be in reunion or contact when really it's a psychological feeling of discomfort that feels unsafe on the part of the parent. Because so many adoptees in the fog who come into my comments seem to think that it would have been unsafe for them to know their families. And I thought the same thing. But as it turned out, she would have been a safe person to be adopted now.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

And why did you feel that, you know, it would be unsafe when you were growing up?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

This is what I was told, you know, this is where some of the religious teaching comes into play of, you know, who's a sinner and who's worthy of relationship and time. Right. But yeah, they didn't feel. My adoptive parents didn't feel it'd be safe for me to know her at such a young age. I think they thought maybe it would confuse me. And then of course, when I'm three, it became a nonentity and my dad was already a nonentity because there were some things told to them that weren't true. She told the lawyer or the lawyer told them that we didn't know who dad was, so there was no chance there. But yeah, when mom passed, then it was a non entity. But I think they were convinced that she'd try to take me away from them, which is that a safety issue to me or to them afraid of her influence on me? There were a lot of interesting fears that were kind of projected there. But as it was told to me, she just wasn't a safe person for me to be around. And that was not true.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

So did you, do you. So I guess elaborate more on that? Do you feel that. That the religion part played a big role in why they felt she was unsafe? Because not like, you know, it'd be different if they said, oh, we know that she killed somebody, or, you know, that she put children in harm or, you know, it's difference between an actual behavior that is, you know, dangerous versus a belief difference, you know.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, and I absolutely agree with what you're saying. I think on their level, being a sinner was definitely the unsafe thing. Because the religion I grew up in, it turns out it was a lot. Evangelical Christianity is where I was at. And it's a lot about image, at least the way that was practiced in my home. It's a lot about we got to look the right way, we got to do the right things so people know that we're good Christian People. Well, come to find out, on my adoption paperwork, my mom had indicated that she practiced the same religion in the same denomination. Her fatal flaw was that she happened to get pregnant outside of wedlock. I hate that word.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So, you know, being sinful in that way evidently made her unsafe. And that's a very, like, spiritual abuse type of narrative. That was. That was kind of a big part of the reason I didn't get to have contact with her, so. Too bad.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, it is because I feel like, you know, as a kid, and this is why. This is why I just feel like there's a really thin fine line between religious indoctrination and then obviously wanting to, like, you know, share a journey with your children. And it's. It's. I don't really know where the line is, but I. It's very, very common, especially in the world of adoption, where religious influence is huge. I mean, Bethany Christian Services was a. Was the agency we used, and one of the biggest ones. And then we have, you know, the Catholic one. And so the. Like, a lot of it is very, you know, religiously rooted. And I think that that's when it comes to the point of, like, you know, are we. Like you said, the adoptive parents have this fear, but I think it's more of a projection of their own. It's not really like they don't. It's not like the children's not in danger. It's more. You're feeling either threatened or you're feeling, you know, feel like you need to defend. But it's one of those things where I wish. I almost wish that that wasn't involved at all. I wish adoptive parents would have to go through a. Maybe, I don't know, just a different type of program before they get to adopt children. Because I've had so many adoptees tell me how religious trauma really impacted their worldview, and it impacted pretty much their whole life until they kind of got themselves out of their own fog. And I think, like I said, it's a fine line, but I feel it's too common for me not to bring up, because it's everywhere that I see. It's like, wow. And then when you either. When I will kind of like, you know, want to talk deeply or more about it, they. It always goes back to, like, a Bible verse about adoption or how God chose and all these things. And I think. I know, like you said, the intent is different than the impact. And so I don't think they're doing it maliciously. I think the scariest Part for me is that they actually believe this is a good thing. They believe that this is, you know, it's good and it's morally good and it's ethical and. And so I think it's more dangerous, I think, that you. That you do these things and believe that it's actually good then to actually, you know, it's a disservice, I think, to adopt a lot of adoptees to say that, you know, you were chosen and you almost like, put this glamorization, this romanticization on, you know, the story of origin, when really the story of origin is crisis. And it's in. It's. And I think we always skip over that part. Like, adoptive parents have a. Have a tendency to skip over the crisis part and go right to, oh, how beautiful, we saved you. You know, you were chosen for us. And I feel like growing up as a child, that is. It's. I don't want to say, like, emotional neglect, but it just feels like it's a disservice to the adoptee to do that. I don't think it creates. I couldn't imagine the pressure I'd feel if I wanted to even think of challenging that narrative to my own parents, you know. Did you ever feel that?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

100%? Yeah, I definitely did. A lot of times I'd bring up a question I had or something that didn't make sense. And I was kind of the, oh, gosh, what's the word? The truth teller in the family structure I was in. And so I think I made people uncomfortable with a lot of the questions I was asking. But when it came to asking the ones about adoption, I was usually pretty quickly shut down. And I think it's just not having the emotional bandwidth to even consider what the answer would be to that question that I was asking. But you're absolutely right, and huge passion of mine is how often spiritual abuse coincides with the narratives about being adopted. I absolutely absorbed some really crummy theology as an adoptee growing up in evangelical Christianity and have been working to debunk some of the things that I learned. And it was so interesting to me to look at some of the most touted verses about adoption in the New Testament. There's actually only five mentions of that word as we translate it in English. And then, of course, there's a lovely verse in. In the book of James about caring for orphans and widows in their distress and true and pure religion. It's actually. That verse is celebrated every year. We used to call it Orphan Sunday in November. There's There's a Sunday every year called Orphan Sunday, but now they're calling. Yeah, I find that it's. Certain traditions practice it more than others or certain churches within those. It's kind of hit or miss, whether I talk to people who grew up with it or not, which is interesting. But every year in November, it's practiced or it's celebrated as true religion on Sunday. And we talk in the churches, it celebrated about how great adoption is. And as I was actually coming out of the fog, there was an Orphan Sunday celebration at the church I was on the worship team for, and there was a prayer shared by one of the elders, kind of top of the service. We all prayed it as a group together about adoption. And he literally prayed that parental rights would be. Would be terminated by the court so that children could be. Have not have barriers to being raised in good Christian families. And I just.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

Whoa.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

I did not know what to do with that. Right. But unfortunately, there's. There's so much religious indoctrination that it's a good thing to take kids from people who are bad. And I'm using that word on purpose.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Right.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Who we have been told are not fit in order for them to be raised in good Christian families. But when I started looking at who we're labeling with this label of bad, it's usually people who are dealing with temporary crises like socioeconomic disadvantages and whatnot. And so when I Learned that from Dr. Sisson's research in her book Relinquished that as little as a couple thousand dollars could have preserved a family, it got me thinking pretty hard about who we label good or bad in churches. And I think there's a lot of prosperity gospel that causes us to label people as bad when they're actually just suffering from the social impacts of poverty. And that's crazy to me that we're calling that pure religion.

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[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, it is crazy because I think that, you know, when, when you look at those, you know, five verses that talk about it or whatever, you're ignoring the 98 other percent of the verses that say take care of the widow, take care, you know, like, like, like help the women in crisis, help the children in crisis. And so I think it's interesting how they kind of cherry pick, you know, which ones fit. I think Orphan Sunday sounds. That just sounds crazy to me.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So the title of my book is Orphan Sunday is the Worst. It's coming out spring 2028. We're going to debunk. So the way that the word adoption is used is actually meant to be a metaphor for other things. I get to cite the work of Dr. Erenheim, who is also. She's a theologian, but she's also an adoptee and she debunks a lot of that use of. In the. So the ways we. Those verses are totally out of context. Kind of like Christians tend to do with other things like, you know, our homophobia and Christianity comes from those cherry picking tendencies too. And so I think if we can look at the verses for what they actually say and kind of correct the theology, we'll see that those orphans and widows are meant to be taken care of together as a dyad. So that verse does not mean what we think it means. If I can quote Princess Bride in a different way.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Right, right, Yeah.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

I mean, you keep using that verse.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, right. I think, yeah. Because I think people in like, you know, I personally, I think everyone has their own spiritual journey that they have to go through. I. Which is why I'm not really. I have my beliefs. My children don't know what those beliefs are. I don't, I don't feel the need to like, you know, explain it to them or try to like, you know, anything. I just want. I think everyone has their own journey to follow when it comes to that. Which is why I believe that a lot of, a lot of the adoptees that I come across who grew up extremely religious, it does a lot more damage than good as far as the psyche goes. And especially when they come out of the fog. That's a huge. I mean, when you grow up as a child and you're told these certain things, I mean, you believe Them with your whole being, your whole soul and heart. And it's like you said, you're going to these. You know, you're in the worship group, you know, you're in the singing and, you know, so. And it's funny because I actually brought up this a couple months ago to someone and I was like, you know, the science behind worship music itself is very, very interesting and how it's laid out and how, you know, people will feel the Holy Spirit, the hands will go up. And there's a. It's actually a really interesting, like, science behind why that is. And I thought it was interesting how when I was reading the article, how it brought it back, us being. Us being humans and being kind of tribal in. In nature. And so we feed off each other's energy and. And so you can get the same feeling of the Holy Spirit at a concert, at a. You know what I mean, when you're around people. And so, yeah, I think that part's really interesting that, you know, they use it a lot to justify why adoption is so good and so great, but they ignore everything else that says help the immigrant, help the children, help the widow. You know what I mean? And I think that's when. That's why it's so important that we have discussions like this. Because when you look at the reasons why mothers relinquished is resources, and that's really, really sad when you think about it, because how crazy is it that a temporary crisis creates a permanent trauma and not just for the biological parent, but also the adoptee when it's not necessarily necessary, you know?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Absolutely. And to then call it a reflection of the gospel, is. Is that really what is a reflection of your core beliefs? Like, I. I don't know. It's interesting that you. You mentioned, like, how common it is for adoptees to have to reckon with both the faith stuff and how adoption came together. I like to call my faith deconstruction, a double deconstruction, because I could not have reckoned with what my core beliefs were on the faith side without also looking at adoption and how entwined those things were. It's God's plan, you know, it's what God meant for you to have. And like, when you juxtapose that with verses like, I think it's Psalm 139 about how you formed me in my mother's womb. Like, did God form me in the wrong womb? And then people had to fix it. Like, all kinds of really confusing things are being taught to adoptees that, again, might not have been intentional. But still had an impact. Yeah.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

And that's why.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, we got to think about that.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. And that's why I feel like, you know, when it comes to this kind of stuff, it's really important to, like, you know, and some people are like, oh, you know, don't, you know, religion is separate from adoption? It's like. Yeah, but when. When you start, like, researching it and talking to so many people, you realize that it's an undeniable. It's an undeniable connection correlation there because it's so. It's so pushed in that kind of world. But. Yeah. So I want. I want to go back to your experience as an adoptee. I know we're talking about a whole bunch of random stuff, so forget me. I'm not a very professional, you know, interviewer. I'm just kind of. I just talk and go off a cuff here. But. But I'd like to. What. What is one thing that, as an adoptee, what is one thing that you would want either prospective adoptive parents to know or someone who either, like, pushes and works for adoption agencies, et cetera?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

I would love a little bit more of a long game in how we think about the adoptee involved and everyone involved in an adoption story. I would love us to have a little more forethought in how are the things we're doing now and the things we're telling ourselves about what's happening in this story now going to look in 2,030, 50 years? And how's that going to impact even future generations? Because one thing I've seen so much in the out of the fog world, adoptee discussions online, birth parent discussions online. Like, it certainly has an impact bigger than I think anyone acknowledges when the story is first being, I guess, written when it comes to an adoption. So I'd love. I'd love to encourage a lot of forethought, foresight, thinking about everyone else involved, as well as how you're going to feel about this in 30 years.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. Because I. I think it's one of those things where it's. It goes back to, you know, a permanent solution that affects more than one person for a really temporary crisis situation, which really, in reality, as you know from reading Relinquish, which is amazing book, everyone should read it, I think.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

But that'd be my second thing. Everyone needs to read Relinquish.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Everybody. Yeah.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Because they talk about how, you know, how. What an utter failure of society, really, it is that these women are actually in this position where they feel they need to do this. And I've actually, I'm trying to get, you know, a lot more UK people and over there across the pond, trying to get their, their experience and their stories because they are vastly different. Like there's, it's so different, it's crazy because they look at. And then when I explain to them how, you know, it costs, you know, upwards of $50,000 to adopt a baby, I mean, they, the look on their faces are like, what, what are you talking about? And I'm like, yes, it is, it is one of those things where now we're crossing into not only psychological things that are unethical, but now we're talking about actual policies and like how money is involved and how every other country in the world knows that commodifying children, human beings is not ethical. So the fact that we're so far behind is mind blowing to other people over in the UK who are like, this is like, they can't believe it. They're like, this is so crazy. And I wanted to touch on that because when we talk about human trafficking and how you talk about exploiting for profit, you know, there's a couple minors usually involved with infant adoption, especially like, you know, when teenagers, teenagers, like for instance, teenage parents. I mean, there's two sets of minors here. There's the parents who are having this child and there's a baby, and then there's adults who are paying lots of money to acquire this other minor. And I think that's where the lines kind of get blurry and people, we need to kind of focus in on that because I think that says a lot about how this industry works over here.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah, I think when we follow the money and consider the motivations of people who may be making their livelihoods on what adoption is and how it works in our country, we'll maybe uncover where this story has been told in a certain way on purpose. And again, maybe not with nefarious intent.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Right.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

But because there's natural bias toward, well, if this is your livelihood, you'd like that to continue. So how can we preserve the way things are, preserve the status quo so that the industry continues? Because, yes, we all have to make a paycheck under capitalism.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Right.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

But at what cost? And yeah, it's incredible to me also how far behind we are from other countries and how, what the reaction was when some countries closed international adoptions, with the US in particular. I feel like that should have sent a message and maybe the wrong message was received because I heard a lot of chatter lamenting that that had happened. And obviously complexity across the board. Right? But maybe it was a good thing that children aren't being brought to another country to grow up in a culture that's not theirs. I don't know. Yeah, we got a long way to go.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

When I saw that, I was like, oh, my God. I actually got really excited because I was like, okay, okay, they're acknowledging it. Like, Korea is going to. They're going to like, okay, like we're acknowledging it. And then everyone, I'm like, so maybe, maybe Americans will start. You know what I mean? I'm like, okay, no, we're still pushing the okay. Got it. I'm like, dang it. You know, everybody gets so close and then it gets like shut back down. And that makes people very uncomfortable as well when I bring up the fact that, you know, it costs money. And when you go. When you look up the legal definition of adoption, it's very cheap, it's not expensive to do. Anyone can go to the courts and transfer and terminate and then whatever, it's not expensive. So then my question is, what are we doing? And when I look at the research, because a lot of these agencies in this country are nonprofits, so we can all look at their, you know, their finances. And I think one of the numbers I can't remember, don't quote me, but I think it was like 88% of the money is marketing. And when I look at it and I'm like, wait a minute, so we are, we spend. They're spending 80% of the budget on marketing for humans. Because when you break it down, that's what it is you're marketing towards to acquire humans. This is, this is something that I think should stop everyone in their tracks and go, wait a minute, what the hell is going on? Which is what I thought was going to happen when, you know, a lot of the international countries were like, we're not, we can't adopt to America because they're way far behind. It's crazy over there. So looking at that, I'm just like, wow. And then I talked to a woman who used to work for an adoption agency and how her job was to pretty much find the poorest areas of a city and find billboards in that area of the city specifically. And I thought, wow. So we're actually acknowledging that our customer base is poverty stricken women in crisis, feeling the need to relinquish. And so when you look at it, when you kind of zoom out, it's like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? And you have experience with human trafficking, so you know that this is like. So you can't talk about it without talking about the money that's exchanged when it comes to that in this country.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. And there is so much other overlap, too. The money being exchanged for humans is just a small part of it. I have a really cool concept map I made in a class when I was learning about what trafficking was, where I had listed all the different risk factors that I learned about for someone to be victimized by human trafficking. And I focused specifically for me, it was on. It was on commercial sex, but also for labor trafficking, too. A lot of the risk factors really coincide, and that's like prior trauma, growing up economically unstable, having little to no adult supervision in the case of a minor. There are lots of other factors. And the overlap of the factors that lead to trafficking and the factors that lead someone to relinquish, they're so similar. Like, the Venn diagram has a huge middle circle. And so it's interesting to see just how similar, like, you know, for lack of a better term, pimps would target, maybe group homes where there were minors who weren't as well supervised or who were impoverished or who needed their basic needs provided for so that they could exploit them for commercial sex. So similarly to what we were just saying, you know, we target impoverished families or people in crisis, unexpected pregnancies, so that we can make money from their relinquishment and then adopting their child to someone else. And that is not what's in the best interest of a child. And there are. There are alternatives that exist. That's probably the. One of the second highest comments I get is, well, then what do you want us to do? What's the alternative? Guess what? Those. Those exist. And family preservation is the best one we've got. And it's very possible if we would just deconstruct some of our narratives about what adoption accomplishes.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, because I think it's funny because it's one of the most common ones I hear, but also one of the most, like, oh, I'm so glad you asked that question. What are the alternatives to, you know, infant private adoption? What are the alternatives?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yeah. So my favorite is family preservation. Very possible. I love the work that saving our sisters is doing best never. I love that. And family preservation on that end. So that's my very favorite. And I think in most cases of private infant adoption, that would actually mitigate even the need for it. Other alternatives that are, like, maybe second best. I like guardianship, kinship, adoption. Now not all those are perfect. I know some adoptees who had their own. Their own issues, their own grief, but when there is some family member involved, it's better than being adopted as strangers. And then guardianship's nice because it doesn't erase the adoptee's identity. It doesn't sever an adoptee legally from their right to know and to participate in their lineage. So those are like my top three, I'd say. But I think that I'm the type of person who can envision a world where we make such major reform that maybe, you know, there's even something else we can reach for that would be a better solution.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, like a brand new, never discovered, kind of like mesh between, you know, and preservation and child welfare. If we can just kind of, you know, intermingle those things. I think, yeah, it's out there. It's out there. I believe it because I think if anything, we can learn from other countries, we can also adopt our own kind of policies into it and make it. And make it to where it's as ethical as possible. Because I think when people say, oh, well, what are we supposed to do if we can't adopt? Or what do we. What do you want the kids to do? And a lot of the, A lot of the extreme language they use of like, oh, well, what do you want her to do? Throw the baby in a dumpster? The classic toss baby in the woods.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Would you rather have been aborted? Yeah. Yeah.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

And I'll be honest with you, I have heard so many very even surprising to me, adoptees say, yeah, I would have. Yeah, you could have aborted. Because I wouldn't have known anything. I wouldn't even exist.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

I wouldn't have been here to know.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, Wouldn't have existed. To know pain, to feel this pain. So, yeah, And I'm like. And I was like, whoa. Like, it's so intense when you think about it. But like, yeah, I mean, kinship adoption, I think is really one of those. And also a permanent legal guardianship. Because I think one of the things that I noticed is adoptive parents will say, well, I don't want to share any rights. And it's like, yeah, okay, I understand. You want to make decisions based on the best interest of the child. There's an ability to do that where you can still have your full custodial, legal parental rights, without severing and robbing the identity of the adoptee and maintaining that to happen. Because, you know, it is a based on the constitution that everyone loves to talk about. It's Adoptees are the only ones who are. They're not able to get this original document, which is that. That is a. That's a civil rights thing, like we got. Or a human rights issue. Like, we gotta. Like that. That number one. Like, what's wrong with adoption in this country? Well, they can't even get their original birth certificate. And every other citizen in this country has a right to have that, but them, like, no. That's all. So right off the rip, based off just the basic part of it. It's. It's not right. And people are still amazed when I tell them that it's not. It's not federally protected. That. That. That I think people hear stories that, oh, well, you can go get your original birth certificate. It's not sealed anymore. And it's like, no, that's not the case. A lot of states still are completely sealed, and adoptees cannot get that information, which I think is devastating. It's wrong.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

It's still the last time I looked at the Adoption Rights Law center map, which I love the work of Gregory Luce and how he just outlines it so clearly, what our rights are in each state. It's still a minority of states where there's open access to OBC's original birth certificate. I was lucky enough to be from a state where I was able to get mine. It has a giant red void stamp on it, which felt great. But in some states, like, it's barred for 99 years. So, okay, I got to die for my birth certificate to be released to me. Great. In other states, you have to have a court order. So, like, needless barriers, right? To our own information. And I hear a lot of chatter about whether or not adoptees should have access to the information of the parents involved. But, like, what about just access to my own info? What about my birth records? I don't get my birth records because my hospital record starts, like, age 2. And so as a physician, I really wanted to see the entirety of my records. Right. And that was actually a big reason I took DNA tests back when I did. I was in medical school learning about inheritable diseases, and I didn't have access of figuring out whether at a risk. But when I went to go request my records from the hospital I was born in, they started age 2, and I went to the ER for. I think I had got a cut on my head or something. So because my birth records are under the name baby Girl, which is what's on my obc, they're not considered mine by the hospital. So just interesting Just interesting intricacies of not having the right to your own information that people don't think about. And so thankfully I haven't had that degree of medical emergency where that information would have saved my life. But other adoptees have been in that situation where it could have been life saving if they'd had access, which. That's super important.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, that's what I mind. It's like, listen, how about when you ask what can we do to change it or make it better? Let's start there. Number one is honestly, you know, have them have access to their original birth certificate. I know it's a hot taking, controversial, but I've seen a lot of talk online about how it's not fair to the biological parents. It's not fair if they don't want to be found, they shouldn't be able to be found. And I'm like, one of those things. And maybe I'm just because I'm a bio parent, but it's like how. I guess my thing is if you bring a child into the world and you don't plan on giving this innocent child that you brought into the world access to, even just to know a little bit about who you are, where they come from, it's like how, like I do think as a bio parent, it's our duty to. Maybe I don't know how to do it yet, but I'm like, maybe this should be a required letter. Like it should be a full page of explaining why you did what you did and why you don't want to be found. But here's all the medical information. Here's, you know, you could even put like, you know, bio mom, bio dad. And then I have a little, you know, I'm not, I don't know how we could do it yet, but I know there's a way that in order for adoption to occur in this country, we can have it to. To where the adoptee at least gets access to the basic birth certificate and medical information. And I think if we start there, that would help a lot of people.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

So it would, it would help to have at least a baseline. And I, when I look through my own documents, there was technically a medical history section, but in my case, and in a lot of adoptee cases, our parents pretty young when we're born, like my mom was 20. Health evolves over time and there are things we find out later about risk that we wouldn't have known then. So I would love to see some sort of dynamic way to access medical information that if we need to protect privacy. Sure. But adoptees right to know should be a much bigger conversation and entity, I think.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

And it affects.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

It affects you for your whole life.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

It does. And I also think, like, we're in 2026. We have Snapchat and TikTok. Like, how can we not. We should be able to create some kind of, like, database online to where the birth parent can go update the information anonymously. The adoptee can come and find it anonymously and still not know or. You know what I mean? Like, there's gotta be a way that we can advocate for that and make something. I'm like, come on, Americans, we're so smart. Can we invent something? Because I'm gonna, you know, national database where we can figure that out. And. But I do think that until we. Until it's a federally protected right, we have a lot of fighting to do for adoptees to get that access to. To that original birth certificate. And it's one of those things where it's like, not even for medical history or for knowledge, but I've heard a lot. A lot of adoptees say they just. It's a very personal thing that they want and they. And it's more than just a piece of paper to them. It's everything. And I think people don't understand that. It goes beyond just like, oh, information or wanting to know knowledge. It's like, no, I think a lot of adoptees have a personal connection to that piece of paper. It's more than a piece of paper to them, you know. Did you feel that way?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

It is. I absolutely did. It was so kind of like what I was saying about my mom. Right. That I will never know her outside of other people's perspectives or what, like, their. Their filtered opinions of her. Right. I wanted to know myself in a concrete way beyond what everyone else said I was or where I came from. And so my story before the story is told in part by the information on that form. I didn't know that I hadn't been officially named before my adoptive birth certificate was finalized. Like, my adoptive parents had named me and picked out a name. But I think part of the coercion of my story is that my mom was told what they were planning to name me. And I think maybe she felt like she couldn't name me herself or something, I don't know. But she chose not to. And so just having, I don't know, the closure maybe of seeing that that was exactly what happened, getting to fill in some other blanks was really helpful. It turned out that the doctor who delivered me into took care of me my whole life. There was another involved. He was a resident at the time, meaning he had a supervising physician. So when I looked at that birth certificate, I learned something about myself that there was another physician present at my birth. And it turned out he was one of the doctors who was currently training me in medical school. So that was really interesting. Yeah, very interesting to train. And I did my OB GYN rotation in the hospital. I was born. And that was wild in a way that I didn't understand at the time. But I just think this incessant need to know that I harbored, that I feel that I've heard other adoptees describe to is eased a little when we can have access to things like our OBC or hard copies of information about our adoption. And knowing the actual details of the story before my adoption story has helped me embrace myself a little bit more, feel more secure in my own identity of just seeing like the hard evidence of what happened and making meaning for myself of what the facts were around everything that went down.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah, because in a way, when you see it laid out that way, it's because I think the whole. The whole. And people don't really know the history about like, you know, why. Because when you think about, you ask yourself the question of, well, why would an adoptive parent or the industry or whatever society want a different birth certificate? What does that do for everyone involved? And the only thing that makes sense to me is, well, it serves the adoptive parents because now they feel that they have their own, you know, a birth certificate certificate, even though they never gave birth. And so I think it does something kind of to their sense of security in themselves or whatever it is. But again, that is prioritizing adoptive parents over adoptees who obviously we know that it's very important their birth certificate, original one is. So if you, you know, you bet. The question of, like, well, how did this even happen? And obviously, listen, if they. Anyone listening, just go research Georgia Tan and go down. Go down.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

It's all her fault. It's all her fault.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Go down that pipeline because that's a whole nother episode we could have. But, but when you think about like, you know, and when you. So when I zoom out and I think about adoption in this country and how in adoption is designed to provide safe external care for children. And it's designed. It's supposed to be for the betterment of children. And it's not supposed to be a service for adults wanting to be parents, you know, you slowly realize how much we are prioritizing as a society. The wrong people, I think, in my opinion, and I think people, you know, it's like, how do you not agree. How can you not agree that adoptees should be at the very top of that priority list because they're literally thrown into a life, traumatized on purpose, or someone chose this to happen and they didn't get consent to any of it. It's like, why? So it's one of those things where it's like, the whole false burst of a kit has never made sense to me, ever. And even before I knew about Georgia Tan, I'm like, what is the point of this? And I remember when. When our daughter was born, I. I like, I requested. I wanted the. I wanted to sign the affidavit of parentage. I wanted. Because technically, since we knew we were relinquishing, they were like, well, you don't need to do all this. And I'm like, something in my soul was like, no, I want. I want my name on there. Like, I want my name on that original birth certificate, even though I knew they were going to get a new one, you know, and it was one of those things where it's like, it was really, really important to me to have that. And it's crazy how when you think about how something as simple as a piece of paper can do so much, do so much for adoptees. So I think that alone is the first step. We should probably federally protect everyone. You know, we're all American citizens, even adoptees, even though they're a minority, they still should have the right to that original information. So I think we obviously, you know, we got a lot of work to do, and I think that the work that you do is so important. It's so admirable because I think, you know, not only are you a minority as far as adoptee goes, but also as far as society goes, we get so much negative pushback, so much anger. You know, I think it's misplaced anger. I think the anger even for adoptive parents, I think, is pretty much, I think, really inside the anger towards the system. They're just spew it out at other people. And I think it's so important that, you know, we have professionals, not just people who are adoptees, who had life experience, which is still very valuable. But you're a doctor. You. You did the work. You have. You have done the. You know, you've gone through the educating process. And so to have that knowledge and be able to share it with the world is so important. That's why I wanted to have you on. I think it's really. I mean, like I said, we have a lot of work to do. But your books. What I wanted to, like what. What is going on with the book? That's. That's exciting. And how is. Like, what. When can we. When do we know that's happening?

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yes, I'm really excited. I recently got to announce my partnership with InterVarsity Press for my book Orphan Sunday is the Worst. And I'm actually in the thick of writing it right now. So it's exciting to get to talk a little bit about adoption and what I'm learning, and I'm even learning so much in the process of writing, which I hear from other authors. It just informs you. So I'm in a really exciting part of the process of this book, which is slated to come out spring of 2028. And I hope that it touches a place for adoptees that will make it easier to share with other people what our experience is like. But I also hope it'll open eyes of people who have been part of the. It's going to address kind of how evangelical Christianity intersects with adoption and some of theology, but also some of the real truth of when we look at, you know, what adoption actually accomplishes, is it lining up with what we say it is on a church level, or is it causing harm? And so I hope to really address that as thoroughly as I can. And I hope it's something that adoptees can take and hand it to somebody and say, here's the stuff that I've understood on an innate level that I haven't had words for. That was really my goal with writing this book, is to have a resource for adoptees to share with people in our lives, to explain things that are maybe really complex and nuanced.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Well, I cannot wait to read it. I can't wait for that to come out. I mean, I could talk to you all day, but maybe we'll do a part two. Maybe you can come on again and talk more. I'd love to kind of stay updated with your work. And I just really, really, really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and discuss this stuff. I know it's not easy, and that's why I think, you know, any adoptee who goes out and speaks about their experience deserves all the flowers. So I just really, really appreciate you doing this with me.

[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Thanks for the opportunity to come hang out. I feel like I could also talk to you all day about this stuff. There's so much, so much to it and so much change that we can envision. And it gives me a lot of hope to talk about the hard things and envision a future where maybe those aren't a problem anymore.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

Yeah. Listen, anyone that you know, Like I said, we started this podcast for a couple of reasons, but the main one was to kind of give adoptees a chance to share their story. So if you have anyone that you know of, that you know wants to share their story, please let me know. I'd love to give them the, the platform opportunity to do so. So hopefully I'll get you back again and we can do something again together. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much, Dr. Kristen. And hopefully we can talk again soon.

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[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

Yes, I'd love that.

[Kate (Co-host of Kate and Ty Break It Down)]

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[Dr. Kristen Kirkland (Guest, Family Medicine Physician and Adoptee Advocate)]

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