“We will adopt your baby!” We have seen the posts and read the comments. We have seen the pictures of individuals and couples holding signs with this printed message, standing outside the clinics and at the pro-life rallies. And while this is a well-meaning response to the recent abortion legislation and subsequent media attention, is offering to adopt her baby the right answer? The intent is good! Big-hearted and noble even! But offering to adopt her baby is an overly simplistic answer to a complex and much deeper issue.
The offer itself, if anyone chooses to be so brave, will need to be an offer that is made unconditionally. It is an offer that cannot be made with any exceptions. Not a single “if.“ Offering to adopt a child who has not yet been born is a serious consideration, a game-changing decision that could significantly affect us and the other members of our family for the rest of our lives!
Can we honestly say that we would be willing to adopt a baby with a different ethnicity than our own? One with special needs or who may be born with serious birth defects? One whose birthmother has AIDS or other communicable diseases? A baby who has already been exposed to dangerous substances that most assuredly has negatively impacted his or her brain development? If we are unable or unwilling to adopt a child with no questions asked, then perhaps we should not be offering at all.
Please hear me . . . I am not saying that a baby with significant special needs is ever a valid reason to have an abortion! Not at all! But if we ourselves are unwilling or unable to raise a child with significant special needs, perhaps we should not be so quick to criticize the expectant mother who is unwilling or unable to do so either.
And let’s take a step back for a moment, so we can look at the bigger picture. While offering to adopt her baby – unconditionally and without exceptions - is certainly a valid alternative to abortion, adoption is not the only alternative. Nor is adoption necessarily the best alternative. Adoption can be a beautiful thing, a moment when an orphaned child and a loving family find each other, joining their hearts together for the rest of their lives. Many of us have a story that includes adoption, and we are so, so thankful that it does!
But adoption only tells half of the story. What we often miss is that adoption is, or at least should be, the last resort. Adoption is the solution for when all other options have failed. If our response to abortion is to stand up and say, “We will adopt your baby!” we are inadvertently skipping to the last resort. And when we do so, we miss entirely the other piece of the equation. We completely overlook the mother who is carrying the baby.
