Adoption: From Reproductive Exploitation to Reproductive Justice

Although adoption culture grew exponentially throughout the twentieth century in western societies, feminist analyses of the institution of adoption did not keep pace. It is only recently that feminists have attempted to locate adoption within feminism. Emerging in the early 2000s, critical adoption studies constitutes a wide variety of discourses and is interdisciplinary in scope. Notwithstanding such scholarship, the broader project of locating adoption within feminism remains on the margins of the feminist academy, and further, remains noticeably silent within reproductive justice theory. This research identifies reproductive oppression, exploitation and violence within adoption systems in domestic, transnational and colonial contexts, addresses the exclusion of the institution of adoption within the project of feminism, reproductive justice scholarship and movements, and examines the institution of adoption through a reproductive justice framework. This work interrogates the institution of adoption in ways that have been mostly absent in reproductive justice scholarship, praxis and movement and attends to the ways in which such analyses can operate to improve reproductive outcomes for marginalized women and girls in domestic, transnational, and colonial contexts.