Syndicated columnist Cynthia Tucker recently chastised a couple of U.S. Supreme Court justices for being either naive or misleading about adoption.
Tucker, an adoptive parent herself, said in her column that it was unrealistic for the conservative majority on the court to assume adoptions would rise dramatically when it voted in favor of allowing the states to determine abortion policy.
She says the research in the year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade bears this skepticism out: 90% of women denied abortions have so far chosen to keep their child rather than put the child up for adoption.
Tucker is probably correct when she says that the main reason for this is that a woman tends to become attached to a child carried to term. The maternal instinct is a powerful force.
Rather than arguing, as Tucker seems to do, that the absence of an adoption burst is an argument for returning to greater abortion autonomy, what the numbers might suggest is more needs to be done to promote adoption as a good alternative for all parties.
For the adoptive parent, Tucker herself gives testimony of the satisfaction that comes from giving a child a stable, loving home that might not have been possible had the child remained with his or her birth mother. Government policies have been created to help adoptive parents make this noble choice. Just this year, Mississippi enacted an income tax credit for adoption expenses, providing up to $10,000 for people who adopt children in Mississippi and up to $5,000 for those who adopt children out of state. This is on top of the federal tax credit that can be as much as $16,000.
For the birth mother, putting a child up for adoption because the mother’s too young or can’t afford to raise a baby may be emotionally difficult in the short term, but it frees her of the potential trauma and lasting guilt that ending that life inside her could bring. And if the birth mother simply has no emotional feelings for the child, it would be cruel not to allow someone else to provide that love.
Most centrally, adoption is by far a better option for the unwanted child than is abortion. Ask those whose mothers considered abortion but did not go through with it whether they wish their mothers had, we’d wager that survey would almost universally say, “Of course not.”
Whether adopted or not, whether poor or rich, whether loved or neglected, a child wants to live. No statistics can deny that reality.
