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


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


USA – Why So Many Women Choose Abortion Over Adoption

Why So Many Women Choose Abortion Over Adoption
Some American women see giving up their babies as more emotionally painful than terminating their pregnancies.

Olga Khazan
May 20, 2019

Along the highways of states where support for abortion is at its lowest, it’s not uncommon to see road signs that say choose adoption and similar messages. The signs capture a preferred anti-abortion retort to outcries over abortion restrictions, like the kind Georgia and Alabama just passed: Women with unwanted pregnancies should find adoptive families.

Adoption is a choice that certain women who don’t wish to keep their babies enter into happily. Some women find abortion to be anathema and rule it out among their options for an unwanted pregnancy. And for women considering abortion who ultimately settle on adoption, the process often benefits everyone involved.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/why-more-women-dont-choose-adoption/589759/