Adoption Uncovered Charlyn Spiering

There are many Christians in the world of adoption and many of them do wonderful work supporting foster families, and foster children, and making sure children outside of the country who need homes can access them. Some families within Evangelical Christianity have developed adoption practices that attracted the interest of investigative journalist and author Kathryn Joyce. Her book “The Child Catchers” highlights cautionary tales of what can happen if the needs of children and first families are put aside to benefit families willing to pay money to grow their families. This interview and Kathryn’s book include many invitations to spark creative conversations about the state of international adoption a few years ago and how our efforts can be used to help children who need it get into stable homes in the future, whether that is through adoption or via another path.

Most of us have heard bits and pieces about how poorly America has treated the Native Tribes that have lived on this land. We may not understand fully how adoption was weaponized against tribes to raise children who were brought up without a memory of their heritage and culture. As journalist Trace Lara Hentz began to look into her own past as a Native American Adoptee she began to realize how many people like her are out there and alone. This year she is embarking on a project to find out how many adoptees in America and around the world can trace their history to a Native American tribe. Listen to this interview with Trace for more information about how adoption is connected to America's treatment of Native American tribes, and where we should go from here.

Lynn Grubb felt fairly comfortable growing up as an adoptee. Then, when she became an adult she got curious and decided she wanted to find her birth family. The process wasn't smooth for her and she learned a lot along the way. Now that she has discovered where she came from she offers advice to others seeking their past. Lynn also gives back to children in foster care by volunteering as a Guardian ad Litem, also known as CASA. You can find out more about doing DNA searches and volunteering with foster care in this podcast episode.

Patricia Knight Meyer's story seems foreign compared to the happy renditions of adoptive families brought together for happy holiday photos. She was adopted quietly, without proper paperwork. This left her in a state of limbo for a good portion of her life, worried that if anyone looked hard enough she would not be able to prove her identity or her citizenship. Over the course of her life she sought out her birth family, but even that connection was not a simple solution to her problem. Find out about more about how she navigated life without documentation and how her writing helped her process her experience.

When Carlynne Hershberger found out she was pregnant at 19 she could never have known then how that experience would shape the rest of her life. Many women don't. In Carlynne's case she became a victim of the baby scoop era when young pregnant women were hidden away and their babies were taken from them with little consideration for their feelings on the matter and given to other families to raise. Carlynne wants us to be aware that even though the baby scoop era is technically in the past, large pieces of that thinking remain. She believes birth mothers need more support and more options available to them so they can truly consider what is best for them and their children.

Adoption is changing. Technology now makes it possible to adopt the embryos left over from couples who have attempted or succeeded in IVF treatments. Oversight and regulation of this transaction is in its infancy. The people adopting these embryos and those encouraging the idea of the personhood of these embryos are a select group. Where is this practice headed and what does it mean for the children who are conceived through this practice and the couples who could start families this way, but don't have access to this practice yet? These are all questions that still need to be solved as embryo adoption grows. Risa Cromer has been studying embryo adoption as an anthropologist who specializes in reproductive politics at Purdue University. This conversation I have with her sheds some light on where embryo adoption came from and where it might be headed.