Anne Laurie on this Ross column:
Obviously, there were (are) many, many thousands of “good” adoptions, families where adults desperate to nuture formed seamless bonds with children who thrived in circumstances far better than they could otherwise achieve. But even at its best, adoption isnever a simple transfer between independent economic entities, a logically impeccable marketplace solution to the messy biological Fertility Gap. Of course, given the opinions expressed in his prior writings, Douthat would not consider the feelings of thebirth mothers to have any weight in this equation (don’t play if you can’t pay, Chunky Reese Witherspoon!).
And you know, maybe in imaginary-woman-world where Ross lives in futile hope of girls screwing him without birth control, all us infertile chicks are so completely round-the-bend baby-crazy we don’t care where the kid comes from, like just drop him on our doorstep in a basket and we won’t ask question one.
But in 20effing11, knowing all the sordid history of punitive maternity homes and creepy baby-stealing, I really resent the idea that it’d be totally okay with me if you just yoinked some mother’s kid away from her and maybe out there somewhere she was suffering because some jerk in a suit decided my married middle-class ass was better to raise her offspring because I could get the kid a crib from Pottery Barn.
(I couldn’t, or if I did it would be from Craigslist, but still, that’s the idea, anyway.)
Maybe there are long lines of white middle class married ladies who don’t care if their families are built on the pain of others, and would be thrilled to return to the days when girls were forced to give up their children for others to raise. Maybe there are hundreds of women who’d be happy as hell to take horrible advantage of another woman in order for them to have what they want. People are assholes, I mean, we can’t rule anything out. But Ross is just assuming that this is how it is for everybody, and if we’re just making assumptions, I’d rather go with the one that doesn’t make all infertile women out to be desperate and stupid and cruel.
But then, I don’t have a New York Times column, so what do I know?
A.