Where Did The Adoptable Children Go?

USA Today less than two weeks ago wrote about the “critical adoption shortage” now that Russia is cracking down in international adoptions. In addition to that, we are told that “as single parenthood becomes more acceptable,`there are just not as many women placing their children for adoption’.” And, as we are now upon the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I think I know where a lot of the potential adoptable children went to – the dumpster back of Planned Parenthood.

A good society would consider divorce and surrendering for adoption as equally tragic options. Instead, we have made divorce easy and surrendering for adoption the one most unthinkable option of all, with the possible exception of the good old shotgun wedding. Genesis 2:24 famously declares, “This is the reason that a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife, and they become one flesh.” But in modern society I fear that people do not leave their father and mother, or more to the point, their previous children. Marriage, not being a blood tie, must often take a back seat to the needs of one’s parents and children. Blood ties seem to trump the “one flesh” of Genesis. That may explain why divorce is an easy option but surrendering for adoption is considered too horrible to contemplate.

We know that single parenting is not the best option for children; and even under current laws and constitutional interpretations, governments have as much right to advertise and promote “surrendering for adoption” as they do to discourage smoking cigarettes. They should exercise it. If surrendering for adoption becomes seen as a valid option, the burden of carrying a baby to term becomes a relatively short term one; even if the birth mother keeps the child until weaning [which might not be a bad idea] she bears the burden for barely a year and a half. The demand for ‘abortion rights’ is all the stronger if our women are presented with the binary trap of abortion or two decades of single parenting, which are right now the only two options usually presented.

David Frum points out that the temptation to abortion usually arises from economic pressure and that societies and states that are strongly supportive of childbearing, especially for women in financial crisis, have a lower rate of abortions, regardless of what abortion ‘rights’ are in that particular country. He says nothing about contraception; I think contraception should be available but I’m not sure it needs to be available free of charge. [It has been a long time since I’ve priced condoms; they provide a certain degree of protection against STDs as well, which IUDs and injections do not.] Melinda Gates informs us that in cultures where the women wish to hide from their husbands or partners the fact that they wish to avoid conceiving, Depo-Provera is the popular method, and in those cultures they should be able to get that; however not very many women in the West, except in some immigrant communities, seem to be in that kind of situation. And I wish Frum would say something about the “surrendering for adoption” option.

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