On the day of the Dobbs decision, one couple stood outside the court, holding a sign saying, “We will adopt your baby.”
https://twitter.com/NoelleFitchett/status/1540805540946649089?s=20&t=sYATIpEzQT6KeKS7MKRKnQThey faced nasty accusations when the photo spread on social media. Abortion advocates questioned why they didn’t instead call for expansive government aid policies, such as free childcare, housing, and welfare packages. They slammed the couple for not acknowledging the emotional trauma caused by giving a child away. They even questioned whether, as white people, they would adopt a nonwhite child.
They ought to make up their minds, because pro-lifers are constantly being lectured about and lied about, told they only care about fetuses until they are born. To adopt and to provide help — this is exactly the kind of thing pro-lifers are constantly told they need to do. But as the criticism shows, nothing will ever be enough. Bonnie Kristian unpacked the illogic of the meme the photo spawned on Twitter at Reason.
“The message remains steadfast: you should want to adopt, but your wanting to adopt is deeply suspicious,” she writes. “You shouldn’t be allowed to adopt, but why aren’t you adopting, you hypocrite?”
Christians, who comprise a large share of the pro-life crowd, already adopt at twice the rate of the general population. Since 2016, pregnancy centers have saved 828,131 lives, given away 1,290,079 packs of diapers, and provided 486,213 free or low-cost ultrasounds, in addition to countless other services. As employers promise to pay for abortion travel costs, the small Texas firm Buffer Insurance announced it would pay medical costs for employees who have their babies instead. And then, they went further, offering to pay costs for families who want to adopt children, too.
“Secular companies are paying for the travel costs for employees to abort babies out-of-state,” Buffer Insurance wrote on Facebook last week. “Today we are announcing that Buffer will pay for costs for our employees who birth babies.”
Those providing genuine service to mothers face questions those who only provide abortion never have to answer. Companies paying for abortions or associated travel costs aren’t questioned for their motives, despite the fact that offering abortion is far cheaper than paid maternity leave, with the median cost of an early medication abortion at around $500, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
“We realize that a lot of large corporations have some of these policies in place. But specifically, we’re a small and young company, so we really want to activate the majority of people who work for other small, midsize organizations,” Buffer Insurance President Sean Turner told the Christian Post. “So those are the ones that we think are going to have the most impact by implementing these types of policies of generosity in their own business.”
Nevertheless, critics persist in arguing that offering support or alternatives such as adoption to mothers does not solve the problem. Adoption is not a viable alternative to abortion: Mothers simply don’t choose it when offered. Giving up a child after birth is too difficult.
Abortion advocates are correct on this count. Currently, only 9% of women barred from the option of abortion due to state laws choose adoption over parenting, a 2017 study by UCSF sociologist Gretchen Sisson found. One woman said she had “too many feelings” for her daughter to give her to someone she barely knew. Doesn’t that say something? Most women, once able to hold their babies, don’t want to let them go.
But this is not an argument against adoption. Rather, it is proof that even an unexpected baby can be cared for and cherished, given the right help. It should be encouraging that mothers considering abortion can instead come to love the children they once thought they couldn’t. And it should give pause to those arguing for the necessity of abortion.
