Having and not having children - towards reproductive justice
Anne Else and Maria Haenga-Collins present a seminar about reproductive justice.
Presenters—Anne Else and Maria Haenga-Collins
First, we briefly outline some statistics and sum up the current state of law and practice with regard to major aspects of adoption, state care, donor conception and surrogacy, including their damaging effect on Māori in particular. We then consider the large-scale changes which are increasingly affecting human reproduction, and why the current focus on ART ‘solutions’ is misleading and dysfunctional. We make the case for focusing instead on how to bring about reproductive justice, drawing on concepts from tikanga and mātauranga Māori which could benefit us all, by effectively enlarging perceptions of what ‘family’ means.
***
Dr Anne Else, MNZM, adopted at birth in Auckland in 1945, found her birth mother in 1984. An independent researcher and author based in Wellington, since the 1980s she has published a wide range of work focusing on adoption and related topics, including state care, assisted reproductive technology, and gender ideology. Her latest publication, an e-book written with Dr Maria Haenga-Collins, includes both a digitised version of her ground-breaking 1991 history of post-war adoption to 1974, and seven new chapters on adoption and related topics up to 2022. A Question of Adoption: Closed Stranger Adoption in New Zealand 1944–1974 and Adoption, State Care, Donor Conception and Surrogacy 1975–2022 (Bridget Williams Books 2023, e-book only).
Dr Maria Haenga-Collins (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Kāi Tahu and Pākehā) was, as a young child, first fostered and then adopted into a Pākehā family. She is a lecturer and researcher at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT). Her 2011 MA thesis, ‘Belonging and Whakapapa: The Closed Stranger Adoption of Māori Children into Pākehā Families’, was followed in 2017 by her doctoral dissertation (at the Australian National University, Canberra): ‘Closed Stranger Adoption, Māori and Race Relations in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1955–85’.