It was a chilling, disgraceful weekend for anyone watching the interwebs and the discussion of adoption. Advocates of abortion are going after adoption because of Amy Coney Barrett’s questions about safe-haven laws during the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization oral arguments. She was getting to the point that these laws, in all 50 states, do alleviate the burden of parenting. She wasn’t saying it’s easy to leave a baby with authorities, no questions asked, never to be seen again. But the response from the lawyer for the Mississippi abortion clinic opposed to the state law made it clear, as I note in my syndicated column today, that advocates for abortion are fighting for a right to a dead baby. That’s ugly to have to confront, but it’s the truth. And I don’t think most Americans are behind that. They want to know that a woman in a tough situation has options. But the right to a dead baby? While women often say they couldn’t live with themselves knowing someone else was raising their baby, if we educated people more about the options birth mothers have and that there are people more than willing to open their homes to a baby, there wouldn’t be this confusion. Women deserve better than a culture that encourages and even pressures her to abort her baby.
Naomi Schaefer Riley, by the way, opens her new book, No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster-Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives, with the cruel attack from the Left on Amy Coney Barrett’s two adoptions. This is consistent with a child-welfare culture that is hostile to interracial adoption. Better to remain in foster care than wind up in a white forever family is the view.
We need a culture that celebrates birth mothers and supports foster and adoptive families. Yes, absolutely adoption is a loss. We don’t want to rip families apart. But if a baby is born addicted to meth, that baby is going to be better off in the home of someone who isn’t enslaved to such a potent drug that keeps her from parenting. I know a young boy who was near dead last year around this time because of similar circumstances. Adoption can be a lifesaving option. It is going to be for him. We need to be realistic, but the denigration is abhorrent.
Adoption is better than abortion. To say otherwise is to make it clear you are fighting for the right to a dead baby.