Adoption Mosaics’s November 9 “We the Experts”panel will feature adoptees who favor the abolition of adoption.

This has to be among the most complex issues in adoption, which overflows with complexity. It’s not a simple issue nor an easy conversation. I know many adoptees who favor abolition. Some had terrible experiences because of adoption. Some love their adoptive family and hate the adoption industry. Some see adoption’s complicity with capitalism and imperialism, along with white saviorism, as more than enough reason to abolish adoption.

And it’s not because they want children to languish, to be unsafe, to die in orphanages, to be aborted, or to suffer in any way. Ideas like family preservation, adequate resources, legal guardianship, systemic change, the dynamics of power and privilege, organized abandonment, and more, I imagine, will be discussed.

These are my ruminations. The best approach is, of course, to hear from the experts, the adoptees themselves.

This Saturday, November 9, you have the chance to do just that. I will be there. We non-adoptees don’t talk or ask questions or make comments—we agree to listen and learn. Whatever connection you have to adoption, please join this conversation. You can register here.

The notion of abolishing adoption is a tough one for many folks; at the same time, it is increasing in the adoption community. “Abolition” is itself is a term that raises controversy and confusion, along with “reparations.” These words need to be parsed thoughtfully; all have nuance and depth.

I have no doubts the panelists—JinYoung Kim, Lina Vanegas, Marly Osma de Forest, and Schai Schairer—will be passionate, insightful, and challenging. As de Forest says on the Adoption Mosaic IG page, this will be an opportunity “to spend time with other adoptees imagining more expansive, holistic, and trauma-informed practices of care that do not demand severance and possession.”

Full disclosure: I am a consultant at Adoption Mosaic, an adoptee-led, adoptee-centric organization providing resources and support to all members of the adoption constellation.