Adoption: A Choice All Can Agree On

When a woman gets pregnant unexpectedly and thinks she can’t raise the child for various reasons she has to make a choice. In this time of agony, regret and sadness she has a lot of decisions to make.She looks at having an abortion to end the pregnancy because it is fast and seems easy. On the other hand she knows she has the opportunity to carry the child for nine months and raise it on her own. This is a daunting and enormous decision the mother is faced with. She may not want to have an abortion because she has heard of post-abortion syndrome and doesn’t want to regret it later but she also doesn’t think she can raise a child due to her age, education, or financial situation.What other choice does she have? Adoption, and it is a choice that everyone can agree on. She can choose to carry her baby and bring it to the world and then let someone that she can trust will raise her baby will adopt it.
Adoption is key to fewer abortions. After abortion was legalized in 1973 abortion rates went up and adoptions went down. Politicians that are not for the ban on abortion also see the importance of having more adoptions and fewer abortions. Looking at adoption as a choice is very important because it is a choice that both sides, whether you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life, can find common ground on. When you are dealing with a topic such as abortion you need to be able to find an idea that both sides see as a solution. This is where adoption comes into play in a big way. Women that are going through the decision making process need to understand that abortion or raising the child aren’t her only two choices. When they explore the possibility of adoption they can find some peace in knowing that they are bringing new life into the world and making sure their child is raised the best way possible. I know it must be hard for them to go through 9 months of pregnancy in order to put their child up for adoption but at least that way they don’t have to think about what could have been, the life that could have been lived. And in that life many things could have happened. What if some of the greatest people this world has ever known had been aborted? Where would our world be now? Even those who aren’t in the spotlight have a purpose and a contribution to their communities that only they can do or give. We might be aborting the future finder of the cure for cancer or the doctor who finds out how to stop the spreading of AIDS.I hope that our generation is the one that says no to abortion. Not everyone at a given time can raise a child but every one can choose adoption. I hope that during my life span I can at least see abortions decrease. If for one day in the United States every woman who was going to have an abortion decided to have an adoption instead, 4,000 lives would be saved. I know that everyone has their own opinion on this topic but I think that if we can find common ground we can begin to truly change the world in a positive way.
There are adoption agencies out there who’s goals are to help a woman through the pregnancy process and finding a family to adopt. One agency is the Adoption Network Law Center, adoptionnetwork.com. They help women through unexpected pregnancies with lining up a family to adopt as well as financial assistance.With all of this in mind I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a new movie coming out this Fall. It is called Bella and has won many film festivals including the Toronto Film Festival which is one of the most prestigious in the world. I had the opportunity to see a showing of it in June.. Bella puts everything I talked about earlier in this column into a real life scenario. It shows the trouble of a young woman trying to decide what to do after getting pregnant. She says that it is taken care of, that she will just go in and have an abortion until a friend from work asks her one question: “Have you thought about adoption?” The movie goes through their relationship through the ordeal and shows the power of friendship and family. This movie is not political and is not preachy.. All ticket sales from the first weekend in the theatres will go to crisis pregnancy centers. I hope a lot of people go to see Bella even if it means driving out of town to see it.Lets all work together on helping promote adoptions in America because as the banner in Muscatine Right to Life’s 4th of July float said, “The future is in out hands.“Andrew Rauenbuehler is a member of the Muscatine Right to Life