iChooseAdoption Campaign

When I saw the link to this iChooseAdoption campaign on the Adoption Council website with the pitch "Sometimes choosing adoption is being a good mother," my mind flitted instantly to anti-abortion narratives. I was confused as to why an adoption advocacy site would suggest unprepared parents choose adoption over abortion, since creating a wider market of needy children seemed cruel. Then I realized I was being totally dumb. The negative alternative they were suggesting was mothers feeling obligated to raise their children, even if they were unprepared or unready.

This raises an interesting aspect of adoption: the women who are pressured to actually have children. There are a whole host of reasons why a woman might carry a baby to term even if she doesn't intend to raise it herself, and I certainly don't want to suggest that many women don't make that decision based on their own deep-seated values, but that external pressure is one of those reasons. There are many communities where pre-marriage pregnancy is a marker of shame, but so too is abortion. Pregnancy, according to word on the street, is kind of difficult. It can also be profoundly beautiful apparently, but usually that profound beauty is associated with preparing to have a lifelong relationship with that child. For women who don't plan to have that relationship, any of that beauty and excitement is probably denied them, and they are harshly judged while the father may remain silent.

I am pro-joyous and dignified life, for the mother as well as the child. The case of a woman being pressured into carrying to term and choosing adoption is one instance in which the mother is perhaps denied making a real choice for herself; she is forced into it by the value system of those around her.

I do think the posters and PSAs could be a little clearer. They feature a woman cradling her pregnant belly, looking at it with concern and possibly... fear? sadness? anger? The only text is 1. their slogan "SOMETIMES CHOOSING ADOPTION IS BEING A GOOD MOTHER," with "ADOPTION" and "GOOD MOTHER" larger than any of the rest of the text and 2. iChooseAdoption.org. If I saw that on a billboard on the highway, I would think pro-life. That is an unfortunate automatic association, but if they had simply included the slogan visible on their website, "resources for pregnant women considering options," I would have recognized the emphasis on options. Just as no woman should be pressured to carry her child to term, she also shouldn't be pressured to have an abortion. I still think that, if they want to appeal to the widest swath of the population, they should be clearer with their message.

I am glad to have found an alternative to the term "giving up [a child] for adoption." That phrase makes me think of giving up ON that child, giving up on your own abilities, failing. Not to say that adoption is not a real sacrifice; I just think "choosing adoption" doesn't charge the decision with a value system the mother might not agree or want to identify with.