Aboliphobia: symbolic violence against abolitionist thought on adoption
Aboliphobia is a neologism coined by Olmo Gómez Aldaz in 2025 to name a specific form of symbolic violence directed against those who hold abolitionist positions on adoption.
The text argues that this hostility is not a simple ideological disagreement, but a cultural, institutional and discursive defence mechanism that protects the adoptive system and its moral imagery of “rescue”, “salvation” and “altruistic love”.
Aboliphobia operates through discrediting, ridicule, pathologisation and the silencing of critical voices that question adoption as a structurally violent, colonial, dispossessive and identity-destroying institution.
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This page is part of the Undoing Adoption line of work, devoted to dismantling adoption as an institution of substitution, erasure of origins, identity violence and documentary destruction of filiation.
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Aboliphobia names the symbolic violence directed against abolitionist thought. It should be read together with the other critical texts in the same line:
On this page
- What aboliphobia is
- Why it was necessary to name it
- Symbolic violence against abolitionist thought
- Psychological, political and social dimensions
- Manifestations of aboliphobia
- Aboliphobia, adoption and control of the narrative
- Impact on abolitionist individuals
- A concept to expand the critique of adoption
- Key concepts
- Structure of the text
- Publication, versions and records
- Access to the publication
- Recommended citation
What aboliphobia is
Aboliphobia designates the set of attitudes, discourses and practices that seek to deny, delegitimise or pathologise abolitionist thought in relation to adoption.
It is not a literal fear. The word names a defensive and ideological reaction to the possibility of dismantling the moral narrative on which the adoptive system rests.
The concept makes it possible to distinguish this form of hostility from broader forms of discursive violence, defining its specific field of operation: the defence of the adoptive order against those who question it from a structural, ethical and political perspective.
Why it was necessary to name it
The abolitionist critique of adoption is often met with a violence that is not recognised as such. It is presented as debate, caution, family sensitivity or defence of children, but often functions as direct invalidation of those who denounce the harm.
Naming aboliphobia makes that violence visible. It makes it possible to recognise that hostility towards abolitionism does not appear in isolation, but as a structural reaction aimed at protecting the adoptive system.
Once named, the phenomenon no longer appears as a sum of personal conflicts and can be analysed as a form of symbolic, epistemic, political and social violence.
Naming aboliphobia is also an act of restitution: it gives conceptual existence back to an aggression that the adoptive system needs to keep invisible in order to preserve its moral legitimacy.
Symbolic violence against abolitionist thought
Aboliphobia operates by invalidating the critical subject instead of responding to their arguments. Those who question adoption are not heard as bearers of a legitimate critique, but presented as exaggerated, resentful, ungrateful, unstable or incapable of understanding the supposed goodness of the system.
This mechanism protects the cultural image of adoption as an act of love, salvation or generosity. Faced with accounts that reveal dispossession, rupture of origin, identity substitution and institutional violence, aboliphobia attempts to restore the adoptive myth.
Its function is not only to defend a legal or family practice. It also defends the identities, interests, narratives and social positions that depend on adoption continuing to be perceived as a morally positive institution.
That is why aboliphobia cannot be reduced to an individual emotional reaction. It is a form of symbolic violence that acts on language, spaces of legitimacy and the very possibility of thinking about the abolition of adoption.
Psychological, political and social dimensions
The text develops aboliphobia in three dimensions: psychological, political and social.
In its psychological dimension, it appears as an affective reaction to the symbolic threat posed by abolitionist discourse for those who identify with the adoptive system or benefit from it.
In its political dimension, it acts as a strategy of institutional preservation through censorship, neutralisation or the discrediting of critical voices.
In its social dimension, it reproduces myths of gratitude, destiny, rescue and salvation, preventing recognition of the structural harm caused by adoption.
This threefold dimension makes it possible to understand that aboliphobia does not operate only at the level of opinions. It operates in emotions, institutions, professional discourses, the media, families and forms of social belonging.
Manifestations of aboliphobia
Aboliphobia can manifest explicitly, through mockery, attack, direct censorship or personal disqualification.
It can also appear in more subtle forms: silencing, omission, neutralisation of discourse, exclusion from academic or media spaces, or the reduction of abolitionist thought to an emotional reaction without political value.
At the institutional level, it is expressed when organisations linked to the adoptive system monopolise public discourse and define which criticisms are acceptable and which must remain outside the debate.
In the media sphere, it appears when sentimental stories of gratitude and happy endings are privileged while the harm produced by separation from origin, loss of identity and substitution of filiation is omitted.
In everyday life, it appears when adopted people who denounce the violence of adoption are accused of being ungrateful, resentful, radical or emotionally unable to accept their own history.
Aboliphobia, adoption and control of the narrative
Adoption has historically been sustained by a powerful moral narrative: the saved child, the generous family, the redeeming mother, expected gratitude and family destiny as reparation.
Abolitionist thought breaks that frame. It does not ask how adoption can be improved, but why an institution should exist that breaks bonds of origin, substitutes filiations and turns dispossession into a legal solution.
Aboliphobia appears precisely at that point: when the adoptive system can no longer present itself as unquestionably beneficial and responds by attacking, ridiculing or pathologising those who challenge it.
Its function is to restore control over the narrative. That is why it does not merely deny specific facts, but tries to prevent the very existence of an abolitionist language capable of naming adoption as structural violence.
Impact on abolitionist individuals
Aboliphobia produces psychic, social and political effects. It reproduces a form of symbolic dispossession: the same denial of voice and legitimacy that many adopted people have suffered in their personal history is repeated when they try to develop a public critique of adoption.
On a personal level, it can generate isolation, moral exhaustion, loss of trust and a sense of epistemic exile: lived experience and critical analysis are systematically denied.
On a collective level, it fragments networks, discourages public exposure and forces abolitionist movements to devote an enormous part of their energy to defending their very right to exist.
On a political level, it maintains the hegemony of adoptive ideology by presenting abolitionist positions as extreme, irrational or pathological. In doing so, it blocks alliances, neutralises debates and obstructs public recognition of adoption as a site of structural violence.
But naming aboliphobia also opens a path of resistance. It makes it possible to transform isolation into awareness, and awareness into political action.
A concept to expand the critique of adoption
The concept of aboliphobia expands the critical field of adoption because it makes it possible to analyse not only the adoptive institution, but also the reactions that appear when that institution is questioned from an abolitionist perspective.
Aboliphobia shows that adoption is not sustained only by laws, files, professional discourses or family practices. It is also sustained by a symbolic defence that turns radical critique into something unspeakable, irrational or morally suspicious.
Naming that defence makes it possible to study it, dismantle it and restore legitimacy to voices that have been silenced by the dominant adoptive imaginary.
The text places aboliphobia within a decolonial and abolitionist critique of adoption, understood as an institution of dispossession, identity substitution and social control.
Key concepts
- Aboliphobia.
- Abolitionism of adoption.
- Symbolic violence.
- Epistemic violence.
- Pathologisation of critique.
- Adoptive system.
- Adoptive ideology.
- Identity dispossession.
- Compulsory gratitude.
- Decolonisation of adoption.
- Control of the narrative.
- Adoptism.
Structure of the text
The article is organised as a conceptual proposal. It begins from the need to name a form of violence that until now had no specific designation within critical studies on adoption.
It then develops the conceptual framework of aboliphobia, defines the term, describes its manifestations and dynamics, analyses its impact on abolitionist individuals and movements, and concludes by placing the concept as a tool of epistemic and political resistance.
The structure of the text makes it possible to read aboliphobia not as an isolated reaction, but as a symptom of the adoptive system’s resistance to its own denaturalisation.
Publication, versions and records
Access to the publication
The publication is available on Zenodo. The general DOI identifies the full record and its versions, while the version DOI identifies a specific edition of the text.
Recommended citation
Gómez Aldaz, Olmo. Aboliphobia: a neologism to name the symbolic violence against abolitionist thought on adoption. 2025. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17443668.