Pro-abortion advocates and their allies like to argue that adoption isn’t a replacement for abortion.
It’s a popular argument because, in some ways, it’s effective: Yes, abortion kills the unborn child and permanently answers the question of what to do. Yes, abortion means you don’t need to worry about pregnancy, delivery or adoption.
But what it doesn’t do is erase the child. Women who abort and women who adopt both think about their children for the rest of their lives. The difference is that one woman remembers that child with hope.
Abortion cannot and does not wipe the slate clean. Pregnancy is an irreversible and whole-of-body process aimed at nurturing new life and establishing a strong emotional connection between mother and child. This is abruptly cut short by abortion.
Abortion also has a long list of immediate and long-term side effects: Increased cancer risk, depression or anxiety, and – of course – the death of an innocent child. It’s a horrifying and unnatural procedure, the details of which are suppressed or obscured at every turn.
The reason more mothers don’t choose adoption is because of a lack of education and support — not because they prefer aborting.
Connecting vulnerable women with networks of support and material resources is an essential next step after the fall of Roe. Facing an unplanned pregnancy is hard, and so is every step forward. But “hard” doesn’t mean “impossible.” It also doesn’t mean that women have to face parenting or adoption alone.
Lifeline Children’s Services, the organization I lead, offers comprehensive birth mother support for this reason. We offer open adoptions whenever they’re wanted by the birth mother, and we make sure our adoptive families understand the needs and desires of the birth mother. We know how hard it is to place your child for adoption into the arms of another, and we do everything we can to honor that.
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But the pro-abortion lobby wants to discredit adoption because they want abortion to be every desperate woman’s only option.
The fact remains, though, that women who choose life and place their child for adoption have incredibly positive outcomes. Most end up marrying later in life and starting a family — and 70 percent of them avoid future unplanned pregnancies.
It’s also a fact that adoption offers women a parenting-free future, just like abortion. But it offers them this future and this freedom without requiring the traumatic death of their unborn child.
There are also millions of families waiting to adopt the children surrendered by mothers who choose life, which works out to a staggering 36 families for each child.
That’s why I argue that adoption is absolutely a legitimate “replacement” for abortion.
Every adoption is a pro-woman, pro-child, and pro-life decision that empowers mothers and their children, giving them both a chance to live full lives. Through adoption, every woman who feels unprepared to parent can choose life and still remain child-free after her pregnancy ends.
Abortion, on the other hand, deprives mother and child of such a future.
It violently ends a life. It abruptly terminates a complex physical and emotional process begun weeks before the mother ever became aware of her child’s existence. It saddles post-abortive women with a life of secret guilt, regret, and physical risk.
Pro-abortionists insist that abortion is empowering, safe, and simple because they can’t afford to acknowledge reality. They can’t afford to admit that we are called to care for these women and children, not exploit them for political and economic gain.
This makes clear the perversity of the pro-abortion accusation that Christians are just “pro-birth,” not pro-life. It’s pro-abortionists who don’t care what happens to women or children.
The church is invested in women, children and families. Adoption is an essential part of this investment, providing equal love, care and compassion for mother and child.
So stop believing pro-abortionist lies about adoption. Choose life. Choose the truth. Help us build a future where women and children are cherished and protected.
Herbie Newell is the president and executive director of Lifeline Children’s Services, the largest Evangelical Christian adoption agency in America, host of The Defender Podcast and author of “Image Bearers: Shifting from Pro-Birth to Pro-Life.”
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