I have a question about safe haven laws. You can terminate parental rights by relinquishing a child after giving birth. The cases emphasized the burden of parenting. But women don’t have to parent if they don’t want to! Why don’t safe haven laws take care of that?

https://www.businessinsider.com/amy-coney-barrett-asks-safe-haven-laws-solutions-unwanted-motherhood-2021-12

Amy Coney Barrett is a mother by biology and adoption. Two of her children are transracial adoptees.

Like most people who are watching the case play out in the Supreme Court this week, I do not know much about her other than she is an adoptive mother who is raising children of color and that fact was touted by the Republicans as the equivalent of my “one black friend” as they rushed to confirm her even before RBG could be laid to rest.

This holding up of adoption as an alternative to abortion is dangerously disingenuous at so many levels. Safe haven laws, private adoption, newborn adoption are all just ways to feed an insatiable billion-dollar adoption industry.

I feel deeply about adoption. I feel for it from the position of one who was part of the streams that feed the industry. I craved motherhood so much that I was willing to take a newborn from another woman who was at her most vulnerable. A new mother, hormonal, sleep-deprived, and incapable of making decisions that would impact not just her but her family for generations.

Call it fate, call it divine intervention, that mother made the decision to parent. It saved my life. It saved hers and her children.

Adoption of a newborn before the mother has had the time to weigh the consequences of a permanent solution to a temporary problem is life-altering both for the birth family and the child taken from its family. Adoption should be the absolute last option. Even then, there should be measures in place to ensure that the birth history and family ties are preserved.

This careless touting of adoption as a Plan B, a ‘feel good’ alternative to abortion plays dangerously with the concept of life. If the card-carrying pro-life group really cared about lives, they would mobilize to provide pre-natal healthcare. They would mobilize to offer new parents respite care, childcare so mothers can put food on the table. They would mobilize to offer quality, affordable healthcare.

But, we all knew then as we know now, that this has never been about life, for the lives, we are talking about here is the vulnerable, the people of color, the people who are already alive. The unborn clump of cells has more value in their heads than already living breathing struggling women, children, and men.

This argument also conveniently removes men from the equation. If you are arguing for women to carry babies to term, include the sperm donors, the men who create that life in equal measure.

I am livid this morning. The decision is a foregone conclusion. Blue states will protect and prioritize care. The ones who need it most will languish. An underground market for abortions will thrive. Women and babies will die.

America will have finally toppled off the pedestal mounted on hubris.

Adoption Abortion Adoption Disgusted Roe V wade