How does a country address the economic and emotional burden of an unplanned pregnancy? As a country if we are claiming to be working for the well-being of the child by prohibiting the termination of the childs life, it makes sense that we would take a little more responsability for providing functional programs that allow parents to support their children adequately without enduring the horrific effects that seperation of mother and baby creates. Our current wellfare situation is otrocious. It is unfair to assume that because a woman was previously making the decision to abort due to a lack of available resources or aid, that adoption is any more appealing to her. Considering only 2% of women facing unplanned pregnancy currently choose to place their children for adoption, one can assume that the option is not appealing to most women. Who wants to create a being, nurture it within your womb, bond with that being, become competely dedicated to ensuring the wellfare of that being for the rest of it's life, and then place that beings life in the hands of relatively unknown people? These people have simply passed a house inspection and interview, and handed over a picture and letter saying, "Dear Birthmother, we have more money than you do, so god obviously intended for us to rip your child from your womb the second the umbilical cord is cut, but we'll let you see a picture or visit every now and again so therefor it'll be swell. Well it will at least be swell for us, we'll have your kid, and have fulfilled our dreams of completing our family, whereas you will have only a broken heart and a lifetime of emptiness for the shock of what actually just occured to hit you. By the way choose us!"
That is not even to begin looking at the newer developments in research into how the seperation from a mother at birth affects infants and the complex array of issues that adoptees face which has been shuffled around and downplayed by institions promoting adoption in the name of being "pro-life." Adoptees are proportionally over represented in prisons, mental institutions, and in phsychiatric care. I am not a fan of abortion, what I would like to see as an alternative to abortion is that our community look to developing more effective programs which seek to provide better resources for parents facing an unplanned, but not necessarily unwanted pregnancy. Not all women choose abortion simply because they "don't want their baby." It is often a decision made due to a lack of any other viable option, again factoring into the picture every mothers innate knowledge of how completely destroyed and ruined she will be upon losing her baby, as well as every mothers healthy and much needed instinct which tells her that when that baby comes into this world the first thing it needs is her milk, her arms, the feel of her heartbeat, her voice, and her love. The same things it has been bonding with and needing since conception in her body.
That was a rather lengthy introduction, but I am coming to the point where I address your issue of gays and "non-traditional family members" being allowed to adopt with greater frequency. How do you think a mother would feel to place her child because she does not have enough money or family assistance to raise that child, or because she thinks the child needs a "two parent home" only to discover she will go through years of anguish, suffer the easily developed PTSD and depression so often found in birthmothers post relinquishment, only to find a single mother not so different from her self was able to adopt only because she had more money? It brings to the surface the reality that our country does not support mothers at all. It supports people with money. If any of the adoptive parents who are willing to pay 15 to 20 thousand dollars (average price for a white gerber baby last time I checked), would be willing to donate a fraction of that to programs that help women get the much needed resources to give their children a stable healthy life, hardly any women would ever want to place their children for adoption.
The myth of the abandoning drug addicted "birth"mother is not proportional to the real number of women who place their children for those reasons. To my point, I think that if the US truly supports "non-traditional families" try supporting young single moms before you waste thousands of dollars trying to get her child away from her. I see gay and lesian, single parent homes, etc as having complete potential for providing loving and decent homes for children. That said, I can see young lower income single mothers and also having complete potential to provide a loving stable home. Being in a low income family with non college educated parents, or one parent will affect a childs life. So will be in a gay/lesbian home, being with a single adoptive parent, being seperated from your mother at birth (consider that most of us consider it a horrible idea to seperate a PUPPY from the mother at the momment of birth, to not be horrified at the idea of seperating an infant babe with it's complex array of emotional and psychological needs is absurd).
Adoption sounds good in the storybooks, but the myth of the "perfect forever family" that fills the American heart with gushy feelings of Orphan Annie is as antiquated as the myth of the "two parent nuclear family" with a white picket fence and an apple pie in the window. It's unrealistic as healthful way to deal with unplanned pregnancy.
