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- [00:07]
A
I posted from your account that you are going to be a speaker at the Young Leaders Summit for Live Action, which is a pro life group. That's the Lila Rose organization. So that's a plug as well. It's in March if you guys want to go hear Katie speak. And you're a young leader. And someone commented on this post and said, no, you're going to have an anti adoption speaker. Got it. I can't. You can't get any more pro life than that. And then she said sarcasm and someone was like, who are you talking about? That's anti adoption. And she was like, Katie Faust. And she said basically, you only want to go be on the pro life ticket to like grift the pro life movement to be able to promote your anti adoption rhetoric. And then what else? Let's see, I read one of her recent articles. She was attacking orphanages and mentioned how much profit they're making. Well, goodness, she needs to look at herself and the money she's raking in now, apparently. And why not? Look at the billions of money that's coming into pro life. Population of organizations, Catholic church. You're over your head, apparently. I was like, couldn't. She asked if I've ever read your articles, which I was like, I work for her. I post your articles. I asked her what article she could possibly be talking about. I have no clue. And then she basically said because of our focus on biology, anti abortion groups. She's According to her, I'm like, well, I'm not in any. So I don't know. Are always sharing our content. You've never said anything about birth mothers, I guess. And you've never said anything about adoption. And I said, also ironic. This was the same day we posted our article on Substack. You guys can go read the difference between adoption and third party reproduction. Because a lot of people will say if you're against sperm and egg donation because they lose their biological parent, you have to be against adoption. And we said, no, here's why. Those are completely different. And it's the same day we posted this substack article. So anyway, for the record, Katie, for everyone, because I'm going to clip this and I'm going to post it ad nauseam for people. Are you, Katie foused against adoption and what's the them before us position on adoption?
- [02:17]
B
Let's say, am I anti adoption? Hmm. It's a mystery map wrapped in an enigma. Because I've never talked about this before, I haven't been completely vocal about how I myself am an adoptive mother about how I am the former assistant director of the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world. How I've gone on trips to and visited several overseas orphanages and seen really terrible destitute conditions of children that are there, talked with and walked with so many families that are not just adopting white drug free infants, but are going after the children that have truly been forsaken. The sibling groups, the older kids, the kids with special needs, the ones that nobody wants. And I'll tell you what, that is a just society's response to children who have lost their parents. That is what adoption is. And for those of you that say, oh well, if you defend children's right to their biological parent, then you can't say that adoption is okay. Actually I used to be responsible for compliance for our agency as it related to the international, the federal and the state level laws about adoption. Best practice. So I'm pretty familiar with how adoption is supposed to go. Doesn't always go that way. Sometimes people will make it more adult centric than child centric. But the principles themselves are geared around the best interests of the child. So what are those best interests? Well, it has to do with making sure the child's needs are met even if the adult's needs are not met. Those principles have to do with making sure that all the adults that are involved are screened and vetted with significant and exhaustive background checks, with post placement reports and training and all of that. So I mean I am pretty familiar with adoption and how adoption should go. So adoption is a remedy for a broken situation. But what is broken, what's broken is the child has lost their biological mother and father. Now if you have gone through an adoption as an adoptive parent, you know that it's not very easy to detach a child from their birth mother or their birth father. Sometimes, even if they are have been abusive, even if they are in a chemical treatment center, sometimes they still will not relinquish their parental rights to the child. Why? Because the law presumes that the child belongs with their biological parents. The very fact that it is hard to disconnect a child from their biological parents and then reattach them to a biological stranger testifies to the presumption that biological parents and children belong together. And it is an exception when there is a significant situation of abuse or neglect or a tragedy where the child has lost their mom and dad, where they cannot be raised by that man and that woman. So even the very existence of adoption law and the best practice as it is set up now testifies to the fact that biological parents and children belong together and they have a claim to one another. So at them before us, we are very clear. We are some of the most public facing critics of Big Fertility, ivf, sperm and egg donation and surrogacy. That is absolutely incompatible with incompatible with defending children's right to their mother and father. Adoption is altogether different. In Big Fertility, adults insist that children lose their rights, their life or their mother and father. So adults can have what they want. In adoption, it is the adults who do hard things on behalf of children. They are the people. The adults, the adoptive mother and father, recognize that the child has experienced a primal wound and they are seeking to mend it. From the child centric perspective, these are two very different things. And there is nothing about support for adoption that is incompatible with our strong natural law claim that children have a right to their mom and dad.
- [06:05]
A
I was responding to these comments by saying we've just fielded a bunch of comments the day before that we were too pro adoption. So what do we say too to then, the folks that actually are anti adoption? I think there's a lot of people who've been personally hurt. They feel victimized, like they were ripped away from their family when they shouldn't have been, that their kinship bonds with other family members were not prioritized. How do we respond to. Yeah, the anti adoption folks like you touched on a little bit. There are some ways that it's being done wrong. But the suggestion when I said, what is your answer to just nothing, foster care forever? And she said no, legal guardianship is the answer. So what would we respond to that?
- [06:52]
B
Well, first of all, adoption begins with loss. Significant loss, often primal loss, sometimes loss that can never be fully mended on this side of heaven. Sometimes these children bear the scars of especially birth mother loss all their life. And certainly birth mothers can often mourn the loss of their child all their life. And I do think that especially people on the right who are anti abortion try to paper over that because they're worried that if they ever talk about the loss or the pain or the downsides of relinquishing a child, it will drive people to abortion. I say, come on, walk and chew gum. You can say that children have a right to their mother and father. You can say children have a right to life and they also should be with their mother and father whenever possible. And either one of those loss of rights is going to have an impact on the child. So just be honest about how adoption begins with loss. But that doesn't mean that adoptive parents or adoptive children are bad. It means they're mending something that actually matters. I was on a call with somebody who's conservative and pro life and all of that, and she said, children have a right to a mother and father. And I said, no, children have a right to their mother and father. If children have a right to a mother and father, if any man and woman will do, then actually there's nothing to mourn. When children lose their birth mother, when children go to an orphanage, as long as they're assigned the right mom and dad, then there's no loss there. Why do we cry? Why do we make all these stories about orphans? And then why do they always tend to go looking for their mother and father? It's because there's actually something special about the relationship we have with those two adults that's different from everyone else. We can say that. We should say that and also say that adoption, when it's properly understood and executed, can be redemptive. And this is the best way for us to work to mend the wound that children have experienced when they're relinquished or when they lose their mom and dad at birth or later on in life. I understand why some people feel hurt by adoption because they have gone through something that no parent or child should ever have to go through. The separation from their mom and dad or from their own child. And in a perfect world, there wouldn't be any of it. We do not live in that world. We live in a world where, for a variety of reasons, tragedy or sometimes adult selfishness forces us to see the child as the client in need of this institution to work according to their best interest and provide them whenever possible with a mom and dad who can seek to heal their wound.
- [09:28]
A
That's so good. That'll preach. And I think it goes to show that it doesn't matter what we say and how many times we say it and how clear we say it. The fact that both sides get irritated with us or think we're saying something we're diff. That's different kind of goes to show what we talk about with them before us. We are going to piss everyone off at some point, and really we believe we are being consistent to those underlying things. A child has a right to his or her mother and father that they came from. When that is not possible, then we can look at the best case scenarios and what's best for the children in these other things. And we're going to be consistent on that. We'll post it as many times as we need to, apparently. But thank you for answering that question.