The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his092/adopted.lzh/ADOPTED.TXT

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ISS:ADOPTED, not ABORTED  by Maria Penkal

   "Adoption, not abortion" is a sign often seen at abortuary pickets.
Do we, as prolifers, understand adoption? Are we aware of all that
pro-abortionists are doing to undermine the institution of adoption?

   In its most simplistic sense, adoption is the process whereby a
couple (or single person) agree to take and raise a child who is not
their biological child, and become the legal parents of that child.
Another way of putting it, as a U.S. government publication states, is
that adoption "is a process through which parental ties between
biological parents and child are severed and a new family unit is
created."

   LOVE VS. VIOLENCE

   Adoption is the antithesis of abortion. Both an adopted child and an
aborted child are, supposedly, unwanted or inconvenient. The difference
is that in adoption the solution offered to deal with the unplanned
child is one based on love; abortion is based on violence.

   Despite the positive aspects of adoption as a solution to the
unplanned pregnancy, the solution of adoption is rarely seen or offered
as an option. Witness this: for a sample year of 1982, the Centers for
Disease Control reported that there were 1, 303,980 abortions during
the various stages of pregnancy. During that same year, the National
Committee for Adoption tells us that there were only 17, 202 adoptions
of healthy infants. With less than 1 percent of abortions owing to
fetal defects, there is a gamut of other "reasons" for adoption to have
a prominent place as a positive solution to an untimely pregnancy.

   Unfortunately, there is a bias against adoption. The main line of
anti-adoption thinking is brought to us courtesy of the pro-aborts.
Kristin Luker, in her book ABORTION AND THE POLITICS OF MOTHERHOOD,
states that "having a baby and giving it up for adoption, as pro-life
people advocate, is not seen by most pro-choice people as a moral
solution to the abortion problem. To transform a [fetus] into a baby
and then send it out into a world where the parents can have no
assurance that it will be well-loved and cared for is, for pro-choice
people, the height of moral irresponsibility." That rationale certainly
explains why Kate Michelman of NARAL [National Abortion Rights Action
League] proclaims the abortion of her fourth, and most inconvenient,
child as the most "moral" decision she has ever made!

   Norma McCorvey, alias Jane Roe of ROE V. WADE, whose legal victory
came too late to facilitate an abortion for her, has searched for the
child she relinquished for adoption. According to the June 20 article
in the NATIONAL ENQUIRER, her 19-year-old biological daughter was
located. (Allegedly, she is pro-life, but prefers not to reveal her
identity.) One can only imagine how devastated that child was when she
discovered not only that her mother wanted to abort her, but that some
20 years later she is still sorry she didn't have the choice to abort
her. McCorvey stated in a NEW YORK TIMES interview that just as it was
her right to abort her child, it was also her right to search for her.
As Olivia Gans, director of American Victims of Abortion so poignantly
put it, "I can never search for my child. My child is dead." Ms. Gans
can thank "Jane Roe, " her lawyers and her many feminist supporters for
that state of affairs. True choice would have meant that Ms. Gans would
have been given information about adoption. But, as we can see,
information about adoption is in short supply in the abortion industry.

   In a Planned Parenthood newsletter, a column written by the editor
stated that "in our childbirth preparation classes, there have only
been two instances in which the babies were put up for adoption." This
is hardly surprising! There's plenty of money to be made for their
organization via abortion, but none for adoption. The editor goes on to
say: "In fact, it is adoption which is now often perceived as cruel and
unnatural." One can safely assume that the editor of the newsletter
feels that abortion is the "natural" solution for a young woman in a
crisis pregnancy.

   TWISTED LOGIC

   Feminist psychotherapist and pro-abortionist Phyllis Chesler
believes that most adoptions are entered into under duress and most
should therefore be considered illegal. (Chesler ignores the fact that
most abortions are entered into under duress. The only difference is
that with adoption there is a live child; with abortion there is a dead
child that doesn't have to be dealt with anymore.) Chesler states in
her book SACRED BOND: THE LEGACY OF BABY M (where she takes on not just
the subject of surrogate motherhood, but adoption as well) that "a
child's own birth mother is meant for that child; [and] that premature
physical separation from that mother ... will cause trauma and injury
that should be avoided." Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Chesler's
dreaded "premature physical separation" applies only to the issue of
adoption, but not to abortion. Such is the twisted logic of feminists,
who feel that their sacred bond to the children they conceive entitles
them to murder their children before they are born.

   Chesler feels adopters are immediately suspect in their motives to
seek adoption of a child because it is THEIR need to have a child that
is their catalyst to search for an adoptable child (a formidable task
these days). That logic is as bizarre as stating that the motives of
pregnant women who eat are suspect, because it is their search for the
food that nourishes both them and their babies. The feminists have
taken a solution to the problem of abortion and twisted it into a
problem! Interestingly, Chesler calls for an end to surrogacy as a
"safe, sure, respectable industry." Her criticism of surrogacy would be
a lot easier to swallow were she not among the many women who call for
the continuation of abortion as a "safe, sure respectable industry."

   GOOD NEWS IS NO NEWS

   Contrary to the popularly held feminist belief, happy adoptive
placements do abound. We just never hear about them, because they don't
make "good copy." Rather we hear about pseudo-adoptions, such as Baby
M's, child-abuse adoptions (such as Lisa Steinberg, who was not even
legally adopted) and the local axe-murderer who kills his adoptive
parents. We never hear about women who come back to their social worker
a year or two after placement of their children "to let me see how well
she is doing, that her self-worth is intact, and that she is becoming
self-fulfilled, " as a social worker for Children's Home Society so
wonderfully put it. We never hear about happy, healthy, well-adjusted
adoptees, making their way through life, simply glad to have had their
chance at life. We know better than anyone the precariousness of life
in an era where no child is safe, particularly in his mother's womb. I
know whereof I speak, for I am an adoptee.

   I was conceived, carried and born an unwanted child. Unwanted by my
birth parents, that is, but very much wanted by my adoptive parents (I
didn't know that I should have experienced trauma and injury until
Phyllis Chesler told me so!). I was lucky to have made my appearance in
the year 1955, long before the travesty of ROE V. WADE took its toll on
25 million others like me. It tends to cut one to the quick to realize
that there are so many people out in the world who believe it would
have been "more merciful" had I never been born. If I had been
conceived in the 1970's instead of the 1950's, I might have been just
one of the many sacrificial lambs offered up in the name of
reproductive freedom.

   I, for one, can say wholly and without reservation, that I am glad
that I was adopted and not aborted.

   Maria Penkal is a homemaker and freelance writer living in Lake
Worth, Florida, with her husband and two children. This article copied
by permission from the November/December 1989 issue of ALL About
Issues, copyright 1989 American Life League, P.O. Box 1350 Stafford, VA
22554.

   American Life League gives permission for reproduction of this
article providing that all of the above information is stated, and a
copy of the publication is sent to the above address.