What legitimacy do we have to talk about international adoption?

We denounce the total absence of the voices of adopted people and
their first families.

Last month, the Journal de Montréal examined the political parties'
positions on the moratorium on international adoption. The article
reported that the Parti Québécois and MNA Marwah Rizqy criticized the
Coalition Avenir Québec for "dragging its feet" by extending the
suspension for over a year and a half. To support the idea that it is
urgent to end the moratorium, they highlighted the "touching" story of
an infertile couple who, despite several years of waiting, had still
not been able to realize their dream of becoming parents. For his
part, Minister Lionel Carmant emphasized the risks of child
trafficking and the need to wait for the report currently being
conducted by the responsible officials, which is expected to be
released this fall.

Who is speaking for whom here?

Although all these positions seem to diverge, they are based on a
common blind spot: the total absence, in the public debate, of the
voices of those directly affected by international adoption, namely
adopted persons and their first families.
Since the early 2000s, adoptees who have become adults, from various
European countries and the United States, have criticized the
monopolization of the narrative by individuals who have not
experienced the situation and who claim an expert stance based on a
pretense of objectivity and neutrality. In Quebec, this epistemic
background continues to hinder the voices of those most directly
affected and contributes to the perpetuation of harmful consequences
for them, while diminishing the value of the knowledge derived from
their lived experience.
Why is Quebec lagging so far behind?
Adoption is complex, and the diversity of experiences among adopted
people does not form a monolithic block that can be fixed once and for
all. When one truly pays attention to the lived experience of uprooted
people, as well as that of the communities from which they were taken,
some testify to positive experiences, sometimes even expressing
gratitude towards adoptive parents and host societies.
But by questioning the power relations underlying international
adoption, what appears to be "touching" radically changes its meaning
and reveals a completely different reality.

It is primarily the stories of assimilation, suicide, addiction,
incest, and psychological suffering among adopted people that become
visible when we stop reducing them to exotic trophies from the Orient,
supposedly rescued from wild and distant lands. Behind this rescue
narrative lies the structural violence of a deterritorialization that
no material "gift" from the West can fully compensate for. This
violence tears the child from their original lineage and disrupts the
construction of their identity, exposing them to an existential
ambiguity that could haunt them for their entire lives.
Several experiences of coercion, manipulation, and the precariousness
of the material and social conditions of first mothers in the Global
South, manifested in particular by the inaccessibility of
contraception, are brought to light when one seeks to take
reproductive justice seriously. These experiences are part of a
colonial continuum and continue to influence family separation, both
before and long after adoption.
All this shows that reducing adoption to its illicit dimension alone
or to the alleged right to have a child, without putting the testimony
of the first people concerned at the forefront, prevents us from
grasping the full depth of the issues it raises.
It takes profound sensitivity and intellectual honesty to expose the
numerous forms of violence rendered invisible by the rhetoric of
benevolence and moralizing that surrounds international adoption. In
this debate, both the opposition parties and the government lack these
essential qualities.

The impossibility of being heard

In the context of preparations for the review following the moratorium
expected by Minister Carmant, the Secretariat for International Child
Services has set itself the objective of consulting adopted persons to
discuss the modalities.

We, the Upper House of Adoptees, had the opportunity to speak with the
responsible officials. This time, the problem was no longer silence,
but the impossibility of being fully heard.
Aware of what we have experienced, bearing in our bodies the delicacy
with which a subject such as adoption must be approached, and faced
with the government's eagerness to publish its report, we sought to
slow down the process in order to ensure that things are done with
dignity.
The response we received was: "The train has left the station." Then:
"The entire adoption ecosystem has already been mobilized."
What "touching" stories does this emergency help to highlight?
Why aren't the people directly affected being consulted as a priority?
We argued that adopted people have historically been disadvantaged and
that this reality required special attention in the consultation
process. However, the Secretariat maintained that the analysis of the
data collected during the workshops would be entrusted to the National
School of Public Administration to ensure its neutrality.
What kind of neutrality are we talking about?
The choices made in the very composition of the interviews, however,
call this neutrality into question. The Secretariat was prepared to
base its report on more testimonies from adoptive parents than from
adoptees, before we pointed out this imbalance: 66 adoptive parents
versus 40 adoptees. Yet, nearly twenty thousand adoptees live in
Quebec today.
As for the first families, no consultation is planned.
A subject of such complexity demands a methodological approach
commensurate with the challenge. This is an assessment whose
conclusions will directly guide policies surrounding international
adoption.
We did not choose to come to Quebec. Yet, from our birth to adulthood,
decisions concerning our existence continue to be made without us.