Why Giving a Child Up for Adoption Would Be Wrong for Me

You might want to comment to: Why Giving a Child Up for Adoption Would Be Wrong for Me at WomensRights.change.org

My response:

You are not alone! No one wants to suffer lifelong grief, doubt, and guilt of losing a child to adoption, and no one should have to. NO woman chooses to give birth and give away a baby, except paid surrogates.

And your discussion, like all discussions of abortion and adoption eliminate the third choice: being able to raise your child. Further…

All discussions about abortion and adoption forget that the two "choices" only exist in competition to one another for a very short, time-limited period of time, and many mothers are not even aware they are pregnant - or not able to think about it or deal with it - until that window has ceased be open any longer.

Discussion of abortion and adoption set up a cruel perception that every adopted person was at more risk of being aborted than any other human being, which is unfair and it is simply not true. It creates and perpetuates deep seeded feelings of indebtedness and gratitude for adoptees, which is a heavy and unwarranted burden to carry. It likewise places women who chose or are persuaded or pressured or coerced into placing their child for adoption into some kind of saints who chose life over abortion for their child when in fact most simply are not supported in doing what they would chose: keep and love and care for their child once it is no longer an unborn fetus but a fully sustainable human being.

It is thus regrettable that people continue these comparative discussions as they are very hurtful to those of us who lost children to adoption often under duress or perhaps totally involuntarily, and it is painful for all who have been adopted, and because they omit discussions of preserving families in crisis by helping them find the resources they need to remain intact.

Your discussion has also missed the point that crisis pregnancy centers push adoption as an adoption out of religious conviction and because there is money to be made in placing children for adoption to meet a demand by those willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars per child which is what places so much pressure on young and poor women.

In order to eliminate this “reverse Robinhoodism” women need to stop putting in orders for other women’s children.

Mirah Riben, author, The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry