Adoption isn’t about giving up — it’s about giving life

A big part of my job involves correcting falsehoods. This one comes up a lot:

Not to mention that thousands of unwanted children are given up to the foster care system just because their parents did not want them. In 2014, there were 415,129 children in the foster care system, and less than 15% of them were adopted.

That was left under a Facebook post telling pro-life men to “shut up” about abortion. It voices a common idea: rejecting abortion means putting your child in “the system.” I’m going to leave aside the morality of telling foster kids they’d be better off dead and instead focus on the facts here (or lack thereof).

First, most children don’t enter foster care as newborns. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the median age in 2014 was 6.4.

And the majority of these kids weren’t “given up” but taken from their parents. As for adoption, only 25 percent were even eligible for it. On the other hand, if you’re carrying a baby you’re not ready to raise, plenty of people would love to get in touch.

Aspiring parents actually outnumber adoptable infants, so some have turned to websites like Adoption.com. It permits those who’ve been approved by a licensed adoption agency to create a profile explaining what they have to offer. Profiles are searchable by location, religion, family size, and other factors.

The site also provides pregnancy-related information and first-hand accounts from women who’ve been through the adoption process. Additional information about pregnancy, adoption, and material support is available at pregnancy care centers, as well.

If you’re choosing between abortion and adoption, then you need to separate truth from lies; comments like the one shown above definitely fall into the later category.

The truth? Adoption isn’t about “giving up” your baby. It’s about giving life.