I Dissent.

There was a time in my more Catholic life when I was pro-life. I figure I should name this facet of my existence because, if I don’t, surely someone who remembers this tidbit about me will attempt to out me. I am naming it here because, like my damn freaking uterus, it is my own. My own story to tell and make decisions about. If I am going to talk about how profoundly pro-choice I am now, I want to first acknowledge the shadowed place that I crawled my way out of. On my terms.

If you missed where I defined my departure from the Catholic Church, you can catch up with it here. The thing about being an adoptee around Catholics is, they love nothing more to make you the poster child for their pro-life cause. Desperate for belonging and apparently unable to flex my critical thinking skills, I was a willing participant. My involvement with the cult (and I mean that in every sense of the sharp and pointed word that it is) of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students—also known as FOCUS—was complicated to say the least. This is a group, by the way, that still very much has a presence at St. Thomas Aquinas, the church on The Hill in Boulder, Colorado. If you think that this kind of thing is only happening in the Deep South, you might need to check in with that unfriendly beast called reality.

During my freshman year, FOCUS was inviting me to bible studies and by my sophomore year, I was spending the bulk of my time with a group of people who said they could not sit on the same couch as their significant other and watch a movie because it made them want to do more than kissing (duh!). By junior year, I had a friend who was asked by male members of the group to cover her shoulders and clavicle because it made them think impure thoughts. No, I am not using hyperbole. I had friends who got married at 19 or 20 because then they could have sex in marriage—which apparently is the only way god likes it (so vanilla). Our spring break road trip to California was filled not with mixed tapes of epic music, but with hours on end of Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body.” When I say that I was elbow deep in the pro-life movement, I mean that this group organized prayer vigils outside the local Boulder abortion clinic.

When you spend your entire life being told by people that you are “so blessed” to have not been aborted by your birthmother, you accept this as some form of reality. That is, until you come out of the fog. Coming out of the fog is a term that is used in the adoptee community when the bunnies and rainbow story you were always told about your existence and your adoption starts to fall away and reality sets in.

Before coming out of the fog, I believed it was my purpose as an adoptee to share my testimony to save all the babies. Before coming out of the fog, I had a black hole of longing to belong. Even though I never really felt like I fit in with all those pious, non-couch sitting Jesus-lovers, I tried anyway. I regret it deeply. The unrealistic standards, which I held myself and the world to, cost me greatly. Likely, they also cost the world greatly because religion has a weight to it that I believe we all have to bear—now more than ever. Yet, I cannot hide the truth of this past.

After coming out of the fog and leaving the Catholic Church, my existence stopped feeling like it was “hashtag so blessed.” The shadow of adoption is that you wonder if it would be better had you not been born. I do not know any adoptee who has not thought this at some point. You always hold the tension of knowing that you were not wanted by those who created you and were desperately wanted by those who adopt you. It is an astounding amount of psychological pressure.

I know some would argue here that biological parents do sometimes want the child they decide to part with, and I do not disagree. Wanting something in theory is dramatically separate of wanting it in practice. It is the inability for the biological parent to claim the child (even for valid reasons) that imprints on the adoptee and leaves the wounding.

When six judges in the United States Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade, I found myself between sobbing spells and rage. I am a feel-first kind of gal, so sometimes it takes a little while for my cognitions to catch up with my emotions. When they did, I thought about all the souls who will be forced to come into existence with parents who will either have to place them up for adoption, or find a way to raise a child they are not able to care for emotionally, financially, physically—even if they wish they could. Why on earth do we not trust a birthing person when they tell us that they cannot be a parent right now? Countless babies coming into the world knowing that they were not wanted (remember my previous definition above?). How is this honoring life? Whose lives are we honoring?

I thought about all of my ex-FOCUS friends who undoubtedly are rejoicing at a praise and worship event. None of them know the whole story of my adoption. They chose to see what they wanted to—I was a miracle. Saved by my birth mother and their god. Chosen. Handpicked by god.

No pressure, though.

The truth is, the pro-life movement does not want to hear any of this. Amy Coney Barrett wants to talk about the gift that adoption is, but adoptees know that adoption is a multi-billion dollar, for-profit industry. What the Supreme Court just did is guarantee the flow of their commodity—babies. Adoptees who dare to talk about the realities of adoption are frequently silenced by the pro-life movement because that entire system is built on the bunnies and rainbow tales that I, too, believed in.

The Catholic Church has a long and messy history with women, especially outspoken women. So, in hindsight, I somehow knew the writing was on the wall for me. All those damn clavicles I dared to bare and the words I could no longer hold in my mouth. If I am going to exist—and it turns out that I do—I wish to exist in a world where human truth is held at a higher regard than an archaic dogma handed down in a dusty book.

I will not be complicit as I watch the forced-birthing movement dismantle lives in the name of life. Our stories are where our collective power resides. I will speak mine because to remain silent in these days is no longer an option.

I resist.

I dissent.

Per aspera, ad astra,

Julie