Name:   copperline - Subject:   ANOTHER sincere and serious question Date:   4/5/2016 11:08:00 AM

This discussion is what the forum should be about, a sharing of viewpoints without name-calling and insults.   Thank you to everyone.

Doc, your posts are very thoughtful and I appreciate them.   But I have to put up a couple of counterpoints from the other side.  

Regarding the large numbers of people who are hoping to adopt, and that they are the natural solution to this problem:       Unfortunately, the majority of unwanted children do not end up in the adoption system, they are in foster care homes & institutions because their family life collapsed not when they were new borns… but when the kids were older, and beyond that age when adoption is desirable to those good people.    Infants & toddlers get adopted, 9 year olds do not.   Teenagers do not.   Those kids are held in a foster care system in hopes that someday their original families can get themselves together and come back to parent the child that was removed from their care.   And that just doesn’t happen very often.  For that reason, the availability of large numbers of potential adoptive parents can only make a small contribution to the problem of unwanted & abandoned children.

Regarding private agencies that provide social/medical/educational services to single mothers:   There are some good examples of that, but the dispersion of those agencies will always be spotty & uncoordinated.   A generous program in Birmingham is irrelevant to a pregnant 16 yr old in Wilcox County because there are few people near her to organize, conduct or fund the complex social services needed to compensate for the burdens of parenthood she is about to face.     Private, non-publically funded programs will always tend to develop where they have a funding base of support and they will be limited in their reach.   Only the State can provide programatic services equally over underfunded or impoverished regions.   That said, neither private nor public programs can provide enough to transform an immature child or unwilling adult into a competent parent.   Nor can those programs realistically provide the vast array of financial support, childcare, medical care, education & job training, nutrition, transportation, housing, counseling and instrumental support needed to make a good parent out of someone who doesn’t want the job.   Further complicating things....those very expensive services aren’t needed for a nine month pregnancy, but for a span of 18 to 25 years between conception and emancipation.

One reality of working with pregnant teens is that they don’t understand the magnitude of what’s required to become a parent themselves so they don’t often have the ability to make competent choices.  An example would be the little girl who gets pregnant, and her parents wish she would put the child up for adoption at birth.     She might even agree, but as she comes to term she has bonded & developed a strong sense of maternal attachment.   Now, regardless of the inadvisability of doing so, she insists on keeping the child for her own.   It happens all the time, and the impact of those unplanned pregnancies affects the entire family over subsequent years.   It’s really common now for aging grandparents to become parents of new-borns, and sad to see any elderly couple struggling to raise a child who was dropped off by birth parents who could not fend for themselves & their accidental child.

I believe that the important choice to have a child has to remain with the two people who conceived it.  And for the first part of pregnancy, I think it is the responsibility of those people to decide to give life or not.  It has to be that way.   Accidental pregnancies can’t just be lightly accepted without consideration of their consequences.  It has to be up to the woman to not only decide if she is ready & able to bring the pregnancy to term… but also provide the long term financial, emotional and physical conditions needed for that new human being to thrive.   It’s the natural responsibility of the couple to bring a new life into the world, to decide the where and when, and decide for themselves if they are up to the task.   If they are not ready, willing or able, then we should not force this on them.   We should do what we can to make sure they have the space needed to come to a good decision.    Not doing so creates circumstances where more families collapse, abuse & neglect becomes more commonplace, and unloved children become wards of the state.