Against Adoption

With the murder of Dr. George Tiller, abortion, and the people who confuse it with actual murder, are in the headlines once again, just as they will be for the rest of Obama's administration, and just as they will be again when we again have another Democratic president. As such, it's time to revisit the arguments in favor of abortion as being better for the mother AND the child than adoption. Of course, in the case of Dr. Tiller, who was only one of three late-term abortion providers in the nation, and therefore one of the only options women who tragically want children, but must undergo invasive medical procedures or carry fetuses either legally dead or with incurably fatal birth defects to term, adoption isn't an option. But for those other cases, where adoption is the "safe, consequence-free" choice pushed onto women, it's important to remember that adoption is at least as psychologically as abortion.

For example, the Medical Science Monitor found in 2004 that women who had an abortion were 65% likely to report that their abortion was traumatic or had traumatic consequences; however, the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless's2000 study of mothers who gave up children for adoption found that “ALL were traumatized by the act of relinquishing their child for adoption,” (emphasis mine). Depression rates for relinquishing mothers rival those of women who have abortions, and while it seems from the literature (which is limited when it comes to relinquishing mothers in comparison to that on women who have abortions) that women who have abortions certainly do put themselves at higher risk of various mental (and of course, due to the operation, physical) disorders, the difference between the two groups in the short term seems negligible, and in the long term, favors women who have abortions over relinquishing women. Here's two resources both ways: on relinquishing womenand on aborting women.

As for the children who are relinquished, the literature is clear when examining children left to the foster care system - which, to get a sense of what happens to those children, one need only read this report from Texas State Comptroller's office in 2006; children in foster care in Texas are at least 3 times more likely to die than those outside of foster care (according to my calculations from the Comptroller's report and here) and, according to this study, children in foster care in Texas are medicated at least three times more frequently than children not in foster care, with 41% on three or more classes of medication (not total medications), and with the largest-prescribed class being antidepressants. If a child is medicated in the Texas system, they're 57% likely to be medicated for depression; the national rate for depression in children and adolescents is about 5%, not all of whom will be medicated. In the Texas system, approximately 20% children are actively medicated with antidepressants.

I shudder at the thought of what the long-term outcomes are for those children. If 5% of children are clinically depressed, yet 30% of Americans will suffer depression at some point, can you imagine what the rates are for 20% as children, in the long run? If essentially guaranteeing that a relinquished child in foster care will suffer from clinical depression as an adult isn't argument enough against the unquestioned promotion of adoption, consider the long term effects of adoption on those in permanently adoptive families; you can examine the consequences of adoption yourself here. An indicative statistic: adoptees are overall approximately 40% more likely to show up in all classes of rehabilitation clinic for abuse.

To conclude - one woman's thoughts on having had both an abortion and a relinquishment, from Shakespeare's Sister:

"I have given a baby up for adoption, and I have had an abortion, and while anecdotes are not evidence, I can assert that abortions may or may not cause depression - it certainly did not in me, apart from briefly mourning the path not taken - but adoption? That is an entirely different matter. I don't doubt that there are women who were fine after adoption, and there is emphatically nothing wrong with that or with them; but I want to point out that if we're going to have a seemingly neverending discussion about the sorrow and remorse caused by abortion, then it is about goddamn time that we hear from birth mothers too. Believe me when I say that of the two choices, it was adoption that nearly destroyed me - and it never ends. The only comparison I have is the death of a loved one. The pain retreats, maybe fades, but it comes right back if I poke at it. Writing this has taken me nearly two weeks. Normally, I can write this amount in about thirty minutes, with bathroom breaks. I started to type, and stopped only to reread, then go wail into my pillow. There is no such thing as 'over' with this."

That Is All For Now.