Abortion and adoption are twinned in the minds of many Americans who have endured the never-ending heated debates over abortion. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, sociologist Dr. Gretchen Sisson releases the results of her decade-long study of adoption, revealing what she says is the grief of American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.

Adoption has long been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as mutually agreed common ground in the abortion debate. But little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. For her book Relinquished, Sisson draws upon hundreds of interviews with mothers who placed their children for domestic adoption. She finds their voices to be powerful and heartrending, deserving to be heard.

Join us for a timely and provocative look at the flip side of the fight over abortion, adoption, rights and the American family.

Photo by Liz Corman

February 20, 2024

Speakers

Gretchen Sisson
Ph.D., Qualitative Sociologist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San Francisco; Author, Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood; X @gesisson

In conversation with Laphonza Butler

U.S. Senator (D-CA); X @Senlaphonza



👉Join our Email List! https://www.commonwealthclub.org/email

🎉 BECOME a MEMBER: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/memb...

The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 500 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy.

Founded in 1903 in San Francisco California 🌉, The Commonwealth Club has played host to a diverse and distinctive array of speakers, from Teddy Roosevelt in 1911 to Anthony Fauci in 2020.

In addition to the videos🎥 shared here, the Club reaches millions of listeners through its podcast🎙 and weekly national radio program📻.