Most pro-lifers have heard the argument from abortion supporters that goes something along the lines of: “If you want to ban abortion, are you willing to adopt the kids that will result?” On its face, this argument is disingenuous. One does need to be willing to personally care for another to believe he has a right to life. I do not presently have the resources to take in any homeless people, but I can still justly oppose murdering them.
Even so, many pro-life couples actually will adopt children for the specific purpose of saving them from abortion. Some of these couples appeared at demonstrations over the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health to advertise their willingness. Did progressives on social media admire the couples’ taking up their challenge? Of course not! Instead, these couples faced mockery and derision online.
On the most basic level, these couples are doing a loving act of service to give a child a home, and they do not deserve to be made into an object of scorn on Twitter. Would any of the people mocking them be willing to adopt a baby who otherwise would have been aborted? Some would, surely, but the answer would be “no” for most of them.
Among the ridicule, there were a few thoughtful arguments. They all took different forms, but they mostly boiled down to: “Would these couples really adopt a baby? If they would, why haven’t they adopted one of the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care?”
The children who are already in foster care are not in the system for lack of interest. There are between 1 and 2 million couples in America who are waiting to adopt, enough to empty the entire system between two and five times over. If they were to attempt to adopt one of the children, it is likely they would be held up by well-intentioned yet counterproductive bureaucratic red tape.
Additionally, there is a priority to adopt babies who will be aborted. Children in foster care are in a very difficult situation, and we should find ways to help them, up to and including adoption. At the same time, there is no law on the books that allows foster kids to be killed, unlike the status of children in the womb.
For those in the foster system, they will either be adopted or stay in the system. The former is the ideal outcome in this scenario, but even the latter is preferable to death. In the case of a woman with an unplanned pregnancy considering abortion, the choice is often adoption or death, which is why these couples tend to favor the unborn.
People who hold these beliefs are largely consistent on the issue, which we see in the case of frozen embryo adoption. Some couples who have a difficult time conceiving pursue in vitro fertilization, where several embryos are conceived in a petri dish. Doctors transfer one or two into the mother’s uterus, while the rest are frozen for later use. Often, parents who undergo IVF decide not to use all the fertilized eggs, and the embryos languish in a freezer indefinitely.
Some pro-life couples endeavor to “save” these babies by adopting them and giving birth to them. People have built entire networks toward this effort. The reason why people do it is that they accept the scientific consensus that life begins at conception, and they believe that unborn babies, whether in freezers or mother’s wombs, have a right to life.
These couples are willing to do a wonderful thing, a disposition something few people making fun of or denouncing them share. This saga illustrates even more how disingenuous the arguments of abortion proponents are on adoption. If you do not personally adopt children, you are only pro-birth; if you do, you are some sort of creep. Luckily, adoptive parents do not need progressive approval. They will keep caring for children who would otherwise be dead.