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The Abortion Adoption Lottery
I was talking with some wealthy, pro-life activists this evening and came up with an idea that they wanted no part of. I agreed that abortion would be made illegal, but that every pro-life American would adopt one child.
This caused a huge debate, which I countered point-by-point. Allow me to share their concerns and my answer:
1: There are not enough babies to adopt.
There are 300 million people in the US. There are close to 2 million abortions preformed annually in the US. Of these 300 million, odds are that at least two million are rabidly pro-life.
2: Making people take in a child they do not want is an unfair intrusion into their lives.
Well, if you want these kids to live, it should not be an intrusion. You are saving their lives. Also, if you don't want the child, why should the mother?
3: How do we know that these children will go to pro-life, stable homes?
We have the census and tax returns. Just check the box that you will take one of these kids, and only those with a certain income level will be accepted as parents.
4: Why should we be punished because people cannot keep their legs closed.
The continuation of our species depends on people not keeping their legs closed. We could ban sex and see how that goes. But anyway, I thought this was about saving the children.
Of course we all know how this debate ends. They say that ending abortions will stop irresponsible sex and in the cases that it does not well, forget about the mother and the child.
These are generally the same people who love war but will never join the military and discourage their children from doing the same while simultaneously advocating military recruiters on college campuses.
Only in America....
This caused a huge debate, which I countered point-by-point. Allow me to share their concerns and my answer:
1: There are not enough babies to adopt.
There are 300 million people in the US. There are close to 2 million abortions preformed annually in the US. Of these 300 million, odds are that at least two million are rabidly pro-life.
2: Making people take in a child they do not want is an unfair intrusion into their lives.
Well, if you want these kids to live, it should not be an intrusion. You are saving their lives. Also, if you don't want the child, why should the mother?
3: How do we know that these children will go to pro-life, stable homes?
We have the census and tax returns. Just check the box that you will take one of these kids, and only those with a certain income level will be accepted as parents.
4: Why should we be punished because people cannot keep their legs closed.
The continuation of our species depends on people not keeping their legs closed. We could ban sex and see how that goes. But anyway, I thought this was about saving the children.
Of course we all know how this debate ends. They say that ending abortions will stop irresponsible sex and in the cases that it does not well, forget about the mother and the child.
These are generally the same people who love war but will never join the military and discourage their children from doing the same while simultaneously advocating military recruiters on college campuses.
Only in America....
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Comparing abortion and adoption is offensive to all who have been adopted and their families. There is NO evidence to assume that children who are relinquished for adoption - either voluntarily or involuntarily - are any more at risk for having been aborted than are any other human beings, and to suggest so is very hurtful.
Mothers who have lost children to adoption live with shame and guilt and adoptees live with feelings of rejection and gratitude. Please do not add yet more harm to these populations by making these grossly inaccurate comparisons. As a line in the movie "My Sister's Keeper" says: "Most children are accidents." Most ALL!
Your number one reason is also flawed and based on extremely perverted thinking. A healthy nation does not bemoan a lack of families unable to remain intact and losing children to non-related strangers. Healthy societies help families in crisis and support extended kinship care as an alternative when necessary.
If you are to suggest that pro-lifers adopt, you might mention that there are half a million children in US foster care -- 129,000 of which COULD be adopted.
Please stop comparing infant adoption to a reproductive choice. Those choices end at the end of the first trimester - long before a viable , sustainable human being is alive. Please consider all the adopted children you are causing to walk around beleiving they need to be grateful they were not aborted. A tremendously unfair and untrue burden. They were carried to term because they were wanted!
What we need to all work together on is sex education and access to birth control.
Mirah Riben, author of "The Stork Market: America's Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry"
http://www.AdvocatePublications.com
July 13, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a parent of three adopted children, I find offense in almost every word you wrote. No child deserves to be brought up in a home that doesn't want them. It happens all the time, of course, but the idea of making people take a child into their home as a kind of "money-where-your-mouth-is" punishment is ridiculous, cruel, and absurd.
I won't go point by point, but your other statement about keeping legs closed betrays an equally ignorant knowledge of human nature.
I suggest you think about what you wrote, and spend a little time really trying to wrap your mind around these issues. Maybe even read a few books.
July 13, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The first two commentators totally misunderstand what the blogger is about:he is about exposing the hypocrisy of Right to Life. If being anti-abortion is about saving children, his suggestion should be entirely acceptable. If it is simply about punishing women for having sex, you get the responses that the Right to Lifers gave. They see being forced to have a child you don't want as a punishment -- they see such a punishment as inappropriate for themselves but appropriate for women who get pregnant when they don't want a child. They don't see that being born to someone who doesn't want you is punishment to a child. They see demanding that an adopted child go to a good home as appropriate but it's okay if an unwanted child is born to parents who cannot provide such a home.
Once there is a child -- well after viability society's duty to that child is to do the best they possibly can for that child -- whatever the condition of that child. Prior to that point, in my view, to choose to transform a fetus which is not yet a child into a child with a lesser chance of fulfillment is a moral evil. And, yes, that means that I am advocating more abortions because there are still people who see creating a chlid with a lesser chance of happiness as evidence of their own moral superiority.
It is all about how you judge the parents according to right to life -- not about whether the life created would be good for the child.
July 13, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I kind of left this post alone for a while. I suppose that was unfortunate. Thank you for getting my point.
July 14, 2009 12:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thought-provoking questions such as the ones that staleync asked his pro-life activist acquaintances/friends are great for challenging people's thinking on thorny issues.
Such an approach could be used for just about any strongly held belief.
When I was in high school, my next-door neighbor ran for governor on the pro-life ticket, and I remember my mother asking was Neighbor So-so had done lately for unwed mothers. Nothing, as it turned out.
July 13, 2009 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
For what it's worth, I guess I can see that this was meant as a weird (and uneffective) kind of snark, but I still find it objectionable -- my advice about more reading stands.
July 13, 2009 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink