Is adoption the alternative to abortion? Unpacking the complexities of unplanned pregnancies

For National Adoption Day, let’s dive into the truths behind the conservatives’ ‘Adoption, not Abortion’ slogan.

By Annabel Rocha
November 17, 2023

Adoption, not abortion.

This idea has become a conservative slogan used by pro-life protesters, at crisis pregnancy centers, and by elected officials who push the notion that placing a child for adoption solves the problems faced by an unwanted pregnancy.

“Adoption, not abortion. With Roe overturned, we should find ways to make the adoption process in our country easier and safer,” tweeted former U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo, two days after Roe was overturned.

Continued: https://www.reckon.news/news/2023/11/is-adoption-the-alternative-to-abortion-unpacking-the-complexities-of-unplanned-pregnancies.html

17.11.2023

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Advancing New Standards for Reproductive Health

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States with restrictive abortion laws place more kids in foster care

By Jen Christensen, CNN
Nov 6, 2023

A new study finds that in states with certain restrictive abortion laws, even before the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of children whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t care for them increased and their children end up in foster care.

The study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, found that there was an 11% increase in children placed in foster care in states with certain abortion restrictions called TRAP laws, following the enactment of those TRAP laws, relative to states without such abortion restrictions.

Continued: https://www.komu.com/news/nationworld/states-with-restrictive-abortion-laws-place-more-kids-in-foster-care/article_816763e4-3c7c-5129-b3ac-7240ebfcc4d8.html

06.11.2023

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‘Adoption, not abortion?’ How the Dobbs decision is affecting adoption in the U.S.

A year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, are more babies being placed in adoptive care? Birth mothers and adoption groups say trends are emerging, but it’s complicated.

July 3, 2023
By Mary Pflum

Madelynn Ballenger discovered she was pregnant for the second time at 20 years old. Already a single mother to a young son, she didn’t know whether she could take on a second child physically or financially. “It was really, really scary,” Ballenger said. “I didn’t have a job. I wasn’t in a good position to be expecting another child.”

It was September 2021, the month Texas’ ban on abortions after six weeks took effect, and Ballenger was five weeks pregnant. That left her little time to decide whether to keep the baby or terminate the pregnancy — if she could even find an available appointment to get an abortion.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/parenting/adoption-abortion-dobbs-decision-impact-rcna92104

Conservatives have pushed infant safe haven laws as an alternative to abortion. But few American women use them

By Isabelle Chapman and Daniel A. Medina
Tue August 9, 2022

As many American women reckon with the sudden loss of their constitutional right to abortion, conservatives have floated an alternative they say makes abortion less necessary: safe haven laws.

The laws, which allow mothers to anonymously abandon infants at hospitals and other designated sites shortly after giving birth, have been in place in all 50 states since 2008.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/09/us/infant-safe-haven-law-abortion-invs/index.html

We’re the Women Who Chose Adoption Over Abortion. Ask Us Why Abortion Rights Matter

6/2/2022
by JULIA FRANKS

The pee test came up positive. There they were, two lines, side by side, rose and ghostly.

It was the 1980s, and I was a full-time college student. I’d just been dumped by a guy I was convinced I loved and I was trying to figure out what the rest of my life was going to look like. I was frozen with indecision, attracted to every kind of career. So many could-be lives beckoned and called to me that I found it impossible to decide on just one. Even choosing a single academic major meant a dozen other fields I’d never master, a whole array of breath-taking magical lives I’d never get to live.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2022/06/02/adoption-abortion/

How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights

As liberation movements bloomed, they offered a vision of reproductive justice that was about equality, not just “choice.”

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
February 22, 2022

It will probably be months before the Supreme Court decides, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, whether to overturn Roe v. Wade. But, in this latest round of attacks on Roe, a novel line of argument has emerged: that forced pregnancy and parenthood no longer constitute a hardship for women. Lawyers representing Mississippi, the appellant in the lawsuit, describe a world that has fundamentally changed over the past fifty years, in which the burdens of parenting have been lifted and women have been empowered to have it all—to assume a career while still raising families. As for those women who would prefer not to parent, they now have the option to simply terminate their parental rights.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/how-black-feminists-defined-abortion-rights

22.02.2022

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USA – How Abortion Access Can Save Women From Violence

In America, pregnancy is a uniquely violent and sometimes deadly time. Abortion can be a lifeline.

Caroline Orr Bueno
December 15, 2021

There was a particularly revealing exchange at the Supreme Court last week, during arguments over Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, in a case with grave implications for abortion rights nationwide. Justice Amy Coney Barrett brought up safe haven laws—which allow babies to be surrendered for adoption shortly after birth without criminal penalties—and suggested that abortion is no longer necessary since women can just give up their babies for adoption. If abortion rights advocates are concerned about the burdens of forced motherhood, Barrett asked, “Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?”

Barrett’s comments reflect complete disregard for the ordeal of pregnancy itself and the impact of making people endure an unwanted pregnancy.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/164711/abortion-bans-violence-against-women

It’s not as simple as abortion v. adoption. Just ask Bri

December 14, 2021
AMY ISACKSON

Bri had wanted to be a mom for as long as she can recall. "I remember in high school, one of my aunts had a large family, so I used to say I wanted five kids like her," she said.

But seven years ago, Bri got pregnant by accident. She was 21 years old and the reality she confronted was very different from her teenage fantasy.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1063784711/its-not-as-simple-as-abortion-v-adoption-just-ask-bri

14.12.2021

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Amy Coney Barrett

Corrine Rocca

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Sociologist says women are more likely to choose abortion over adoption

December 3, 2021
Heard on All Things Considered
Mary Louise Kelly

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at UCSF, who has studied whether the option to put a child up for adoption alleviates the need for a woman to get an abortion.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In oral arguments this week before the Supreme Court over Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks, the court's newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, brought up the issue of adoption as a viable alternative to abortion. Well, sociologist Gretchen Sisson has studied and written extensively about the choices people make when they don't wish to have a child, and she joins me now.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333491/sociologist-says-women-are-more-likely-to-choose-abortion-over-adoption

The new anti-abortion tactics of the far right in the Americas

ISABELLA COTASTEPHANIA CORPI
OCT 24, 2021

An EL PAÍS investigation in five Latin American countries has found that a network of centers affiliated with the far-right US organization Heartbeat International (HI) promote themselves online as feminist support groups and use misleading language in favor of abortion, but in reality they work to manipulate and institutionalize women to get them to carry their pregnancy to term.

Five female reporters and one male reporter went undercover to centers in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico between 2019 and 2021, as a follow-up to an OpenDemocracy investigation into HI’s operations in the region.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-10-24/the-new-anti-abortion-tactics-of-the-far-right-in-the-americas.html

24.10.2021