In debates about abortion, anti-choice activists often advocate the option of putting a child up for adoption as and alternative to abortion for women who do not wish to, or have no means to raise a child. In the United States in particular, a dangerous rhetoric has developed to counter the Planned Parenthood slogan “Every child a wanted child”.
Pregnant Pause is a good example of this. They argue that every child is a wanted child, as up to two million American couples are currently waiting to adopt a child, and 1.3 million abortions are carried out in the US every year. If only every woman who found herself unwantedly pregnant chose to carry the pregnancy to term, all of these babies would find happy, loving homes with one of the two million couples waiting to adopt them!
The US-based anti-choice lobbying organisation National Right to Life makes this bold claim: “Adoption is a thoroughly responsible, helpful-to-all alternative to abortion that is, unfortunately, not well understood.” The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and abortionfacts.com go a step further, to paraphrase the Planned Parenthood slogan as “every unwanted child a dead child” and “Every Child a Wanted Child, and if not wanted, kill!”, respectively. Ultimately, what we are being told here is that women who choose to abort an unwanted pregnancy are murdering children, and that instead they should simply act as incubators for those who want to adopt children instead.
A similar discourse can be observed among anti-choice organisations in the UK, though it is more subtle. Care Confidential gives information about the different options available to pregnant women. Just a quick glance at the paragraph heading on their abortion and adoption pages gives you an insight into which way Care Confidential leans. After some more-or-less factual information on medical and surgical abortions we get “What are the health risks of medical abortions?” and “What are the health risks [of surgical abortion]?” The list of “risks” is rather more extensive than those given by the NHS, with in some cases drastically inflated numbers and in-depth discussion of “post-abortion stress”. When it comes to adoption, the paragraph headings are “What’s good about adoption?”, “What is the adoption procedure?”, “What support is there for adoption?” The page makes no mention, for instance, of mental health impacts of carrying a pregnancy to term to then give the child up for adoption, nor of the risks posed to a woman’s physical health by pregnancy and childbirth.
Alternatives Pregnancy Choices Newham has a similar approach. The organisation states that women are entitled to have “all the information about all three options” (keeping the baby, adoption and abortion). Yet a good two thirds of the information page on abortion is dedicated to risks and particularly potential mental health issues. There is a certain implication here that women should feel guilty and traumatised after an abortion. The adoption page, on the other hand, concentrates on describing the improvements in approaches to adoption, how the woman would be involved throughout the process, for instance through being able to choose the adoptive parents, and how she can change her mind for up to six weeks after the birth.
Particularly worrying is the fact that these organisations offer information and counseling to women in unplanned pregnancy situations, who may often be in a vulnerable position and in need of factual, impartial advice rather than the
railroading, judgmental “information” offered by anti-choice organisations.
The leaflet Baby Adoption Today [PDF] published by the Adoption Support Society and linked to from the Care Confidential website makes at least a token effort to address some of the emotional issues around adoption, with questions like “I couldn’t go through 9 months of pregnancy and then give my baby away”, and “What would I say to family and friends afterwards – pregnant one week and without a baby the next?” The answers it gives, however, are far from unbiased.

It’s still hard to decide. Isn’t an abortion more straightforward in the long run? It may seem to be in the short term, but in the long run you could be coping with the emotional problems and depression that can follow and abortion and which may be ongoing. If you choose adoption, you may also experience similar emotions but your baby will have the chance of life in a loving home.

I am particularly concerned by the answer to the “What would I say to family and friends” question:

You may feel awkward or embarrassed. Tell people you decided on adoption because, although it was a very painful choice, you believe it was the right and loving decision for you and your baby.

There are other problematic passages in the leaflet, characterised by the assumption that the default state of a woman is to want a child, and that only external circumstances prevent her from being able to keep and raise that child herself. Advocates of adoption as the alternative to abortion often fail to deal with a number of basic issues: that there may be more than one reason for not wanting a child beyond simple inability to support them economically at a particular point in a woman’s life; the emotional and physical effects on a woman of carrying a pregnancy to term and giving the baby up for adoption; and the social, economic, and educational impacts of this process.
The disruption that even a “normal”, complication-free pregnancy, where the woman fits all the social norms of being happily married and financially stable, causes to a woman’s life is significant. I have watched friends and colleagues go through this: doctor’s appointments, loss of energy, physical side effects, being off work sick. Imagine now someone who fits the stereotype of the Baby Adoption Today leaflet: relatively young, not in a financially stable position, possibly not in a long-term relationship, either still in education or possibly in an unstable, low-paid job. Some of the issues this woman might face if she chose to carry the pregnancy to term to give up the child for adoption include:

• Workplace discrimination: Although this is illegal in the UK, it still happens [PDF] What’s more, the government is currently not collecting or publishing statistics on distrimination due to pregnancy so we have no meaningful ways of addressing this.
• Missing out on school/university: This can be simply to attend doctor’s appointments, but also due to physical side effects of the pregnancy – loss of energy, morning sickness, etc. Over the course of the nine months, this can be incredibly disruptive and damaging to a young woman’s education, and significantly impact her future educational and career choices and path.
• Having to take time off work: Never popular, often seen as a justification for employment discrimination; in a job paid by the hour or with few or no benefits, this will also have a significant financial impact on the woman throughout her pregnancy.
• Social stigma: To be fair, there is a lot of this going round, regardless of whether a woman chooses abortion, adoption or to keep the baby. Adoption, however, seems to offer the worst of both worlds in this area: unlike an abortion it’s not something you can keep secret, and after months of visible pregnancy having to explain to friends, family, colleagues and the nosy lady next door that you aren’t keeping the baby can be extremely challenging.
• Lack of benefits/legal protection: A woman keeping her baby would be entitled to maternity leave – both to help her recover physically from pregnancy and childbirth, and to give her time to bond with and look after her child. A woman giving her baby up for adoption, while she doesn’t have a child to look after, has still gone through the same physically traumatic experience of pregnancy and child birth and is additionally going through what may be a very stressful adoption procedure. Yet as best I can tell, she would be expected back at work the day after giving birth. At best, this is a legally grey area.

To be honest, even in my stable relationship and middle-class, salaried job with exceptionally good benefits I wouldn’t want to put myself through any of the above unless I genuinely wanted a child. To ask a woman to put her life on hold for the better part of a year, to expose herself to risks of short- and long-term health problems, discrimination, of not being able to fulfill her life ambitions as she misses out on educational, social and employment opportunities, so that her “baby will have the chance of life in a loving home” is beyond reasonable. There may be women out there who are selfless enough to do this. Ultimately, though, denying women the choice, presenting adoption as the only option for a woman in an unwanted pregnancy situation, asking them to make such sacrifices for a bundle of cells they never wanted is not a viable alternative. The message proponents of adoption send to me is that I am only valued as an incubator; that the baby that may come out of my uterus to be adopted by others is of more value than anything else I can offer society through who I am, what I can do or what I personally aspire to.