Dr. Kopf is a board certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist who specializes in abortion care, is a fellow of the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and has performed abortions for over 25 years.
Dr. Peter Kopf is asked:
Does your clinic offer literature, or do you talk about other options, such as adoption, with the women who come in?
His response:
The misconception is true, however.....Adoption is "very simple"? I wonder how many mothers who lost children to adoption this dude has ever met or read about?Well, adoption is very simple, if they are interested we discuss it. It's sort of a misconception in some circles that ladies who choose pregnancy termination would be interested in adoption, that's one thing people don't understand.
Abortion is birth control. Adoption is giving up your child and not accepting your duties as a mother. Most women are not interested in that. It's only in a religiously-altered mind that that's a true option.
Simple? How so? Carrying a child for nine months is "simpler" then not? Going through labor is simpler than not? Experiencing feeling your child inside you and going through labor and delivery to never see your child again is "simpler" than avoiding going through that?
Living the rest of your life wondering about the welfare of a human being you are responsible for bringing into the world is "simple"? Getting a knot in your stomach every time you're asked how many kids you have - simple?
What is this man thinking?
I'm pro-choice but find the statement "abortion is birth control" offensive.
But of every confusing thing this man has said, the most confusing is his final statement:
"Adoption is giving up your child and not accepting your duties as a mother. Most women are not interested in that. It's only in a religiously-altered mind that that's a true option."
What?? Abortion is NOT a non-acceptance of being a mother? Perhaps it's a language difficulty thing?
A pro-life blogger, who sees nothing wrong with the "simple" comment about adoption, points out a fallacy I of course agree with: "...he just gave credit to religious women for being the only group who would even consider adoption. What about the other women who do not have a 'religiously altered mind'?"
But then she ruins it by adding: "His pro abortion thinking tears down adoption as another option that women are given."
Bottom line - as always it's a devil and the devil-or-the-deep-blue-sea either/or argument that totally omits the possibility that a woman might actually WANT to keep and nurture her child but just believes she can't because she doesn't have a job, or a husband, or supportive parents.
With both abortionists and anti-abortionists pushing their agenda, it's amazing any single mother ever makes it through in tact with her baby in her arms...but then, isn't that their mutual goal?
These seeming opponents are really - perhaps unknowingly, unwittingly? - united in preventing single mothers from being parents.
5 comments:
I don't, as an adoptee, find his statement offensive.He means adoption is simple in theory not in practise I believe.
Adoption however coerced, manipulated or chosen is giving up your duties as a mother isn't it? It doesn't mean you don't love the baby/child, care, remember,have pain,forget,regret but you do not carry out the day to day duties..fact.
Just be glad many women have been helped to find solutions that presumably they have chosen freely.
Sorry to disagree but when I read his quote I wanted to pat the man on the back. He said it in perhaps an insensitive way, but he certainly "gets" that adoption has nothing to do with abortion. As an adoptee, I am tired of living with the "walking fetus that she at least cared enough not to abort" stereotype. I am tired of First Mothers being the only women automatically associated with abortion. I'm tired of people making connections between abortion and adoption that don't exist, jumbling it up, sprinkling some God and some shame in there, and throwing it in a woman's face with the end result being a bad decision.
I don't believe he meant to say that adoption itself was simple but rather saying what I've always said: the decision between parenting, adoption, and abortion is not the jumbled, complicated mess that people feel to make it out to be. You either want to be pregnant or you don't. You either want to parent or you don't. Women who want to parent *ought* to be given the resources to do so. When the secondary issues of lack of support or poverty become the primary reasons one chooses adoption--there isn't truly a choice. It SHOULD be that simple--referring to laying out the decisions, not that being a First Mother is simple at all.
More tact would have been for him to say, for the next paragraph: "abortion is not wanting to be pregnant" and "adoption is not wanting to parent." (or for some women, adoption is being forced out of parenting and not being given a choice). As for the "not accepting your duties as a mother" part, I can imagine how that would be offensive to women who were forced into adoption or who had bad information and chose adoption or had no means by which to parent and surrendered to adoption out of desperation.
I believe he meant to say that religion twists abortion and adoption together when it shouldn't--and indeed it does. 87% of CPC centers use government funds to guilt and shame women out of abortion and try to save their souls. I don't think it's unfair to say that the Pro-Life movement has a decided involvement with encouraging adoption, intertwined with religion and "forgiveness."
Well, I certainly agree in keeping abortion and adoption separated. I, and most mothers I know, HATE that they are entwined in any way as if every adoptee is so lucky not to have bene aborted - anymore than anyone else...including children born to married folk.
It almost sounds like he was speaking off the cuff and got quoted. I just hate that he said "adoption is easy" because it does sound to me that he is suggesting (or thinks) that making that decsion is easy. Kinda like Juno...just sign the kid away and go out and play guitar! I cannot find a rationale explanation for those 3 words.
I too think you misinterpreted him.
If he'd meant what you thought he did, he would not have followed up by saying, "Adoption is giving up your child and not accepting your duties as a mother. Most women are not interested in that. It's only in a religiously-altered mind that that's a true option."
In the full article he calls himself a "devout atheist", and it seems to me that what he is indirectly saying that it is too often coercive pressure from religious groups that influences women to relinquish their babies for adoption.
Seems unanimous that I mis-interpreted.
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