Bunnies & Abandonment

My neighbor texted me asking if my daughter and I would like a pet bunny. One of her coworkers had found a domestic bunny and all the supplies (including a crate, hay, and bedding) on the side of the road. Somebody abandoned this bunny and it needed a home. “Bring me this bunny,” I texted back. 

I went to work purchasing the necessary supplies: an outside hutch and bunny run, rabbit food, a toy. Then I cleared out a space in the house for the crate so it could sleep inside on nights when the weather’s bad. I found a veterinarian who sees bunnies. I sat down and reconciled with the part of myself that knew why I was making the choice to take in this rabbit; I am under a large amount of stress as I come up to the final stretch of my thesis and graduation looms. I know that it helps me take care of myself when I have a smaller being to take care of. This is not the best place to be in, emotionally, but for adopting a pet, it’s not the worst. And then, once I’d come to terms with the state of my mental health, I told my daughter that we’d soon have a fluffy little bunny to love and care for. 

But as I explained the story to my daughter, a ball of disgust formed in my throat as I put it together. How dreamy this story could be if I leaned into it, if I told it the way I was supposed to, right? Here was an abandoned baby who needed a home. We would be the heroes, save it, take it in. And, you know, for this little bunny, maybe it really is like that. Whoever decided to drop it on the side of the road really is the bad guy here and thank goodness for its foster family who scooped it up. But for millions of adopted human infants, this story doesn’t work. 

This is what happens when language isn’t precise. We use the same words with infant adoption and pet adoption which, as you can imagine, leads to confusion in the differences and pain in adoptees who don’t enjoy being compared to the shelter dog you brought home or the purebred you paid thousands for. It doesn’t sit well. Humans are not to be bought or owned, but since this language overlaps, so do our cultural ideas on adoption. 

My dog’s adoption is more like my own than this bunny’s. When I was twenty years old and in my first apartment, I wanted a puppy. Luckily for me, one of my friend’s dogs had an unexpected litter so once she was weaned, Penny came into my life. I knew that Penny would be my dog before she came home, the same way my parents knew that about me. Penny was wanted just like I was. Unfortunately, I think both of us were meant to fill some holes, and it shouldn’t be like that. 

This bunny, however, is the perfect model of what most conservatives want in an adoption. An abandoned bunny, clearly dumped and no longer wanted, the obvious solution is to take him in. Right? 

Last fall when Amy Coney Barrett, an adoptive mother herself, explained that safe haven laws solved the abortion / adoption problem once and for all, I spent a month or so afterwards coming out of the shock her comment put me in. Since when is abandonment the best way to start a life? Living as an adoptee has put me firmly in the pro-choice camp. If you can choose between non-existence and trauma, the choice seems obvious. Well, from the adoptive parent perspective, maybe it’s a cleaner slate if parents just abandon the baby at a firehouse. Ownership is a much cleaner bill if you can rid yourself of the fear that the creators won’t come back for what they’ve lost, right? 

It’s really unfortunate for all the adoptees how badly we’ve screwed this narrative up. Their own flesh and blood parents are vilified, their adoptive parents are elevated to hero status, and the adoptees themselves are left somewhere in the middle to sort it all out for themselves. 

It reminds me of my own family. My daughter’s father and I are divorced and there is one cardinal rule: don’t vilify the other parent. I firmly believe that my daughter is more than just my daughter; she is her father’s daughter, her grandparents’ granddaughter, her aunts’ and uncles’ niece, she is a friend, she is a student, she has many relationships of her own. She deserves to know all of her family, she deserves to build her own relationships with people. That openness is something I didn’t get in my adoption story. There were good guys and bad guys and then me, stuck in the middle between them. 

I know from experience how important openness is in a blended family, how the truth must shine or else it turns to shame. But I also know of the dark side, the trauma that rides along for your entire life, the nervousness that surfaces with each new relationship. And with our new family member, this little bunny, I promise that I will meet it where it is and take care of it the best I can, but I can never erase the pain of being left on the side of the road.