American Adoption: The Compassionate Choice

Lost in the dogmatic rhetoric being spewed by both ideological extremes among pro-choice and pro-life proponents....the third choice, the most compassionate and moral choice gets lost, dismissed, and totally ignored by both sides in an attempt to prove their chosen "choice" is the better of the "two."

Ken Connor, the attorney who represented Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case and Vice Chairman of Americans United for Life the anti-abortion organization writes in his latest diatribe that abortion big business (A Selfless Choice: In Celebration of Adoption, Townhall.com May 12, 2007). He extols instead the "virtues" of adoption-a far bigger and corrupt-multi-billion dollar industry. Unlike physicians who perform pregnancy termination, the adoption industry is financed by those who profit from another's loss and preys upon mothers and expectant mothers in crisis both here and abroad, often exploiting and coercing them. None of which is done by abortion providers.

Because of the demand for infants-especially white, healthy infants to adopt-expectant mothers in any less than the ideal, well-healed situation are bombarded with doctors, friends and relatives advocating on behalf of a "deserving" and "desperate" couple. If the mother is young, poor, or single her failings are played upon and she is told by Connor and his ilk how difficult mothering will be and the "advantages" to her and her baby.

Adoption is in no way a win-win for the mother who looses her parental rights and her child. To suggest that adoption is a "win" for relinquishing mothers, as Connor and his ilk do, is an insulting implication that the mother is "relieved" of her "burden" by relinquishing, while out of the other side of their mouths calling it "selfless." Adoption is a permanent, irrevocable lifetime loss that mothers and their families never fully forget or recover from. Some describe adoption as aborting the mother. It most assuredly aborts the relationship between the two.

Likewise, children placed for adoption are also put in a position of lifetime loss of genetic connection and heredity replaced with feelings of rejection and abandonment that exists in those adopted even into the most loving homes. As a result, adoptees are seen in all kinds of mental treatment facilities in disproportionate numbers as compared to non-adopted.

Women facing crisis pregnancies need to know that so-called promises of "open" adoption are just that - promises. They are not legally upheld in most states. Despite what expectant mothers are told, adoption does not guarantee better life - only a different one. Stable, married, well-meaning and motivated adoptive parents die, divorce, and even abuse and kill children entrusted into their care. Single mothers mature and many marry. Adoption is often an unnecessarily permanent solution for a temporary situation.

UNICEF's position is that adoption should be a last resort. "Families needing support to care for their children should receive it, and that alternative means of caring for a child should only be considered when, despite this assistance, a child's family is unavailable, unable or unwilling to care for her or him." This is the moral and ethical "choice" to be promoting and none other!

To encourage and promote more relinquishments and more adoptions to fill a "demand" for healthy white infants simply adds to the competition for homes for older, non-white, or physically challenged children being supported by state funds. It is uncharitable and un-American. The same is true for supporting and encouraging international adoption.

The Christian right pro-life movement, however, is reportedly under the gun to improve their image as being concerned only for the unborn. Yet, adoption is NOT the only other alternative. Mothers and moms-to-be caught between the two battling ideologies are left choosing between the devil and deep blue sea. It is cruel and immoral to speak about choices and disregard the most sacred choice of all-supporting mothers and newly forming families to remain intact. A decline in children being abandoned by mothers for adoption is something to celebrate, not bemoan...as does Connor and his followers. A decline in adoption is related more to single parents finding the support they need to parent, not an increase in abortions.

Adoption is intended to be in the best interest of children. It is a intended to find homes for orphans and children whose parents cannot care for them despite efforts at helping them do so. Encouraging women to relinquish newborn infants for adoption is not counter-productive to the best interest of the 130,000 children in foster care who can never be reunited with family. These are the children many Christian conservatives-such as those who met for a three-day summit in Colorado recently-say they are aiming to help by promoting adoption.

But their agenda is mired with using adoption as a tool against abortion, against single parenthood and for evangelism. The pro-adoption campaign calls for "every orphan experiencing God's unfailing love and knowing Jesus as savior." And Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson, a major player in this new path of evangelism, expressed concern that foster parents typically are permitted to take children to church but cannot force religion on them. They must adhere to other state guidelines as well, some of which may contradict their faith such as parents "disciplining" their children physically with switches as taught by Dobson, a child psychologist.

As pro-lifers work to improve their image, it becomes clearer and clearer that many good people are being used by this movement to further its own agendas of punishment, not redemption and/or to supply babies to affiliate adoption agency who are funded by recipients of children. Abandonment through adoption is encouraged by anti-family, anti-parenting programs such as so-called "safe havens" and Putative Father Registries, causing one to ask if the real reason to maintain the supply of "adoptable" [read acceptable] babies for their contributors, cronies, constituents or clients.

Working hand-in-hand with, and praising the efforts of these pro-adoption zealots, is Tom Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption which represents non and for-profit adoption agencies. While the NCFA web page purports to be about finding homes for children in foster care as their goal, one click on their mission page shows in black and white their first and foremost agenda item: "Train pregnancy counselors and health care workers in infant adoption awareness, so women and teens with unplanned pregnancies can freely consider the loving option of adoption." Other items on their agenda list include the promotion of so-called "safe havens" that allow for the legal abandonment if infants and putative father laws to speed relinquishments of newly born babies. Also contrary to promoting the adoption of US orphans, on the NCFA agenda is "Work[ing] with the US and foreign governments to establish sound policies for intercountry adoption, so foreign orphans can be placed with loving, permanent families." Seems foster care children are the foot in the door to get tax incentives and other benefits for their clients who seek to adopt primarily infants. All good social engineers know that if one is going to mold a being, so much better to star with a "blank slate." *

Additionally the NCFA is not just pro-adoption, they are the largest-and in many states the only-opposition to open record legislation returning to adoptees their right to their own true identity as protected by the UN Convention of Child Rights and recommended by all experts on child and family issues.

Pro-life organizations can be known by whatever family-orientated, all-American sounding names and their adoption agencies can be called cutesie "baby saving" and "hope-filled" names...they may even invoke the name of, or believe that they are doing the work of, God.... but their tactics are all counter to true Family Preservation as spelled out in the constitution of the Unites States which protects parental rights; the United Nations CRC; and message of Judeo-Christianity. Being pro-family means being supportive of all families...not judging who has the necessary finances or marital status. Nor should children be removed from abusive parents to go from the frying pan into the fires of hell, damnation and corporal punishment all in the name of God. Is this how Jesus meant for us to help widows and children by promoting the creation of more orphans and punishing children?

*For more on American adoption as social engineering see Barbara Melosh, Ellen Herman, and E. Wayne Carp.