By Terri Marcroft
Just published by AAPLOG Action
Each year, approximately 2.8 million American women face an unintended pregnancy. When those involved are not ready, willing or able to parent, there is no ideal solution.
The obvious options for one facing an unplanned pregnancy are abortion, parenting and adoption, but few know all the pros and cons of those three options.
Few know how healthy and beautiful adoption can be these days, especially given that it’s been completely overhauled recently. Today, women can voluntarily make an adoption plan. They can select adoptive parents with their values and faith. They can share contact information. They can select adoptive parents who want to stay in touch. And together, they can build the relationship they want to have.
What does “open adoption” mean?
Openness in adoption is a continuum: each family navigates the waters until they find the balance of contact and distance that works for them. Visits and privacy are a tradeoff requiring discussion and planning. Some want more contact; following on social media and gathering regularly to celebrate holidays in person. Others are satisfied with an annual photo. For most, the right balance is somewhere between those two extremes, and evolves over time.
At the core of open adoption is a world of possibilities. There are an infinite number of ways to structure any ongoing relationship. Adoption is no different. And when a family structures these new relationships inside the limits of their comfort zone, they know it works. They can feel it.
Open adoption means ‘possibility’… And the benefits are many.
For the Adoptee, open adoption means that the child’s questions are answered. S/he is not left to wonder why the birth mom chose adoption, s/he gets honest answers from the start. All children are curious about where they came from, and deserve the truth.
For the Birth Parents, open adoption can mean peace of mind, especially if open communication is honest, valued and continued. It’s reassuring to know that the child is thriving, doing well in their adoptive family.
For the Adoptive Parents, open adoption means information, — i.e. health history, ancestry, etc. that empower them to make good medical decisions.
There is no ideal level of openness. As with any ongoing relationship, work and communication are required to strike the balance that works well for the adoptive family and the birth parents. That’s for the adults to work out, as open adoption is THE option that keeps the child’s best interests front and center.
If we know more about open adoption today, we can all be better equipped to share this information when our patients ask. The social narrative, as we know, is pushing a false choice between only two options: abortion and parenting. That false binary is problematic, limiting the options to two, but to recap briefly:
Abortion
Abortion is presented today as a safe, quick, painless answer. Society tells us that there’s no downside to abortion. We know that is simply not true. But women are duped into believing that when they don’t get the rest of the story.
During the last fifty years of unfettered abortion access in this country, we have learned what abortion does to the female body. We’ve been able to observe and study the side effects over time and in large groups. Those findings reveal significant risks to women’s health.
Induced abortions can exact an immense physical and emotional toll on women. Numerous studies have documented this lasting harm in three categories—compromised mental health, future preterm births and infertility, and increased risk of breast cancer.
Most women who undergo abortion procedures are not made aware of the long-term effects. (We certainly don’t hear about the side effects of abortion from those who are selling them). In fact, most of the health care community – AAPLOG being the exception — is unaware of the lasting consequences of abortion.
Hoping She’ll Parent
The pro-life mission is urging women to reject abortion. The pro-life community encourages parenting because we know that keeping parents with their children is usually best for all. When the patient has no partner and no source of income, however, that’s a very tall order!
There’s a marked increase in the number of people taking on single parent roles. The growing number of women having children outside of marriage has been climbing over the last 50-60 years. In 1960 only 5% of mothers were unmarried, and in 2015, that rate was 41%[1]. That’s an increase of over 800%. As a result, many more children are living with solo parents. On average, 6.8% of children around the world under the age of 18 live in a single-parent household. But in the US, that number is 23%. A recent 2019 Pew Research Center study of 130 countries and territories shows that the U.S. has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households[2].
And the rise in births to unmarried women is undeniable. The fathers are missing, especially in African-American communities, to the detriment of the children.
This from Barack Obama in his June 2008 Father’s Day speech in Chicago[3]:
“We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled—doubled—since we were children. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are:
– Five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime,
– Nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and
– Twenty times more likely to end up in prison.
They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”
But this is happening in all ethnic communities. Single-mother households are far more likely to be poor than married-couple households. That is the reality. The poverty rate for single-mother families in 2018 was 34%, more than five times higher than the rate for married-couple families, which was only 6%[4]. Nearly three-in-five (58 percent) of all poor children lived in families headed by unmarried mothers. And one-in-three single moms spend over 50% of their income on housing, while 27% struggle to afford shelter. Forty percent of single moms in the U.S. have jobs that provide low wages and no paid leave. Almost one-third of single-mother families are food insecure. Two out of three single moms are on government assistance. Among the homeless families in America, more than 80% were headed by single women with children[5], [6].
It’s a challenging life, for both mother and child.
The Brookings Institute research data show that family structure plays a key role in the success of children at various stages of life. Children at every age have a greater chance of success in a home where the mother is married, and a lesser chance of success in homes of never-married mothers. Children raised by married parents typically do better in life on almost every measure[7].
So, abortion has life-long negative consequences. Single parenting has its own distinct challenges. And that is where voluntary infant adoption comes in.
The Third Option
For the woman who is unable or determined not to parent, she can be encouraged to complete the pregnancy and then choose parents. She could also be informed that she has the option of “open adoption” — staying in touch with the adoptive family and watching her child thrive.
Adoption has changed completely over the last 25 years. In response to the poor practices of forced adoptions in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, today’s adoption is so much healthier — less traumatic, less secretive, more honest and transparent. More collaborative. It’s still not an easy path to choose, especially in the short term. But, there’s also much more support for the birth mother now than ever before.
With a voluntary placement for adoption, she is entitled to
Have her pregnancy-related medical expenses covered, so that she bears no financial cost for choosing adoption;
Individual counseling/therapy[8]
Pre-placement to help ensure that she’s making the decision of her own free will and not being coerced, and
Post-placement to ensure that she gets some help with the grief of loss that comes with separation from the child she bore;
Independent legal counsel so she truly understands the legal finality of the decision she’s making.
Choosing the adoptive parents, even meeting and interviewing them before any decision is made so they can discuss the openness level of the future relationship.
Turns out, allowing everyone involved to be fully informed can lead to good decisions that replace life-long regret with a rewarding outcome. The woman who chooses adoption and creates a new family has accomplished much. Many of these women (who’ve placed their babies with adoptive parents) say upon reflection, “That was the hardest year of my life and the most beautiful, rewarding year of my life … my biggest accomplishment to date!”. And that is saying something! Imagine being in your 40’s or 50’s and feeling that way about a decision you made decades ago.
Final Thought
One in four women will be pregnant before they are twenty years old. That’s a staggering statistic. We must not be so focused on saving young lives from abortion, that we don’t consider the other ‘life affirming’ approach — offering adoption as an alternative to 20 years of full-time parenting. For the young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy and determined not to parent, it can be a huge relief to focus on the next six or seven months, relieved of the overwhelming idea of parenting for the next two decades.
With one in four women facing unplanned pregnancy before 20 years old, this is relevant to all of us. It’s also something to keep in mind when we gather with family. We have the opportunity to mentor and encourage our loved ones, as well as our patients.
Open adoption offers options. It offers connection. It offers answers. Those involved can forge their path together and create new families and traditions. Everything is possible. Creating new loving relationships, turning the unplanned into good is possible. And in this world, who would turn down one more person to love them? Or one more person to love?
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Terri Marcroft is an adoptive Mom, Executive Director of UnplannedGood.org and Founder of TheThirdOption.org. She is a leading, national voice advocating for open adoption as an option for women facing unplanned pregnancy. She has effectively championed legislation to increase adoption awareness and improve birth mother care. Find her two adoption books on Amazon, here and here. Terri speaks often at conferences, events, fundraisers and on podcasts.
[1] National Vital Statistics Report from CDC, Births and Birth Rates to Unmarried Women in the United States, Selected Years 1940–2015. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data-visualization/births-to-unmarried-women/
[2] Religion and household makeup around the world | Pew Research Center https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/12/12/religion-and-living-arrangements-around-the-world/
[3] Full text of Obama’s fatherhood speech
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/text-of-obamas-fatherhood-speech-011094
[4] PovertySnapshot2019-2.pdf (nwlc.org) https://nwlc.org/resources/national-snapshot-poverty-among-women-families-2019/
[5] more than 80% https://bridgeofhopeinc.org/family-homelessness-in-the-united-states/
[6] https://moveforhunger.org/blog/sidelined-and-struggling-harsh-reality-food-insecurity-single-moms?qs_blog=2024
[7] The marriage effect: Money or parenting? (brookings.edu)
[8] Author’s note: Individual counseling & therapy are recommended because choosing adoption is NOT easy. It’s a difficult choice that requires courage and determination. It involves separation, and therefore grief, then healing. There’s a vast difference between short term perspective on this option and the bigger long-term picture, which is why mentor input and adult advice are so important.