I’m a Pro-Choice Adoptive Parent
Our second child is the result of a crisis pregnancy. Our daughter’s first mom found herself pregnant at a time in her life when she was not ready to be a parent. She could have had an abortion and in many ways that would have been easier. Placing her daughter for adoption was not a simple decision; it sidetracked her life plans and caused her a great deal of anguish. But she continued her pregnancy because she felt it was the right thing for her to do.
I’m a fourth generation feminist and pretty early on I was aware of the way that a woman’s life can take a sudden turn for the worst when the rabbit dies. My family tree is made up of women whose reproductive lives were out of their control. Infertility may be not be a party, but then neither is fertility run amok. In some ways I feel I have more in common with the woman waiting at the abortion clinic after the poisonous positive test than I do with the average mom on the playground with two or three carefully planned and perfectly spaced kids.
I appreciate that there is irony in my position. After all, when I suffered through miscarriages I mourned a baby that would not be. My tears were not for a cluster of cells or a faceless embryo; they were for the child I would never hold in my arms or see grow to adulthood. If someone had come to me and said, “But it wasn’t really a baby,” it wouldn’t have assuaged my sorrow. In my heart, each miscarriage was my potential child lost.
But I can hold these seemingly contrary views because I believe that ultimately our experience of pregnancy is about context. Within the parameters of my yearning, an 8-week old embryo held the promise of a specific baby with my husband’s eyes and my own love for show tunes. Had my life been different at the moment of its conception, that same embryo may have meant further poverty, greater emotional demands on an already strained psyche, or a dangerous drain on my health.
Really who better can understand the anger and frustration a woman must feel when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy than an infertile woman? Our best-laid plans – the families we meant to have, the lives we meant to lead – are so easily upset when our fertility betrays us. No one knows the way our lives can slip off-course courtesy of wayward uteruses and disobedient ovaries more than the women who can’t get pregnant and the women who too easily do.
I am grateful that my daughter’s first mother had options. I’m glad that her decision to continue the pregnancy was made freely and that she was not coerced by legal constraints into continuing her pregnancy. And I strongly believe that her commitment to the daughter we share is made more meaningful because it was not forced upon her.
Dawn Friedman is a free-lance writer and blogger living in Columbus, Ohio.
There is one thing that isn’t even mentioned in this article: Your adopted daughter is a human being with a right from God to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
I am glad that right was not taken from her. How sad that her biological mother could have had her own daughter killed, depriving her of her God given rights – and all under protection of law!
The government has failed us on this one. The murder of the unborn is plainly and simply wrong.
ThirstyJon
Thirsty Jon you’re missing the point. And fanatical religious views have no place in this piece. Though you’re entitled to your opinion.
That’s so sweet – her decision was more meaningful because she was not forced.
What a crock. Your meaning is worth nothing if the child is dead. I haven’t met a child yet that would sacrifice their life for your meaning. And, unless she was really coerced (rape) she made her decision for life already.
The only relevant context here is life. Everything else is motive, motive for murder.
Afraid I must concur. What’s more important — the “meaningfulness” of your adoptive daughter’s life, or the life itself?
And although you as a parent may find this question to be beside the point; as far as the pro-choice/pro-life trench wars, they are anything but.
This is so sad – to think people think of babies in the womb as merely unliving protoplasm not worth a bucket of spit. I cringe when I hear this kind of tripe. I am not severely religious but, I believe that killing a baby for the sake of convenience is murder just as sure as if you put a gun to somebodies head.
You see, I don’t happen to think that a fetus is unliving protoplasm – it is indeed a living, sentient and vital being with a soul and worth. To cast it aside like so much garbage is just the embodiment of the liberal mantra – do anything you want and it won’t have any consequences. Got news for you folks, God will even things out and all the women and their abortionists are committing murder and will pay a price much greater than the inconvenience they “might” have experienced.
This is a lovely piece. You, and we all at one time, speak of the ability to choose between options to have or not to have…..but only on the back end of pregnancy, never on the front end.
It’s as if the government only owns you and your choice capacity. What ever happened to choice on the front end, where choices are more abundant, even infinite, in every aspect of our lives? What aren’t we feminists and erstwhile feminists, willing to see here? Responsibility?
Feminsts are so bold in standing up for their—now I’m no longer in the ‘our’ camp—right to choose. But it’s only because they’ve given up their choice when it really matters, before the fact, rather than after. It’s only after the fact that women call in father-figure government.
What you’re really saying is that women need the right to re-choose, because we refuse to choose on the front end.
What about so called accidents? Perhaps we can think that out in advance too? If I get pregnant when I don’t want to, I’ll give the child to adoptive parent who can better care for it. Otherwise, I’ll be much more careful.
Best wishes to you and that new baby.
As a woman too old now to have children I am sorry I listened to my sisterhood when they told me time and again that having children would ruin my life.
I wish the sisterhood had given me the choice instead of preaching that having babies was the worst thing a female could do to herself and her life.
I will never forgive feminism for ripping out the woman’s egg while castrating the male’s sperm only to replace it with the ugly words ‘wait until you are ful-filled with life’s narcissism and greed then you can afford to buy a 16 year old’s eggs to have a child of your own with the help of an anonymous sperm donor’.
Gloria Steinem may have burned our bras but she left a legacy of sagging sized-DDD siliconed breast worn on skeletal, anorexic bodies with stiffened botoxed faces screaming about the miserable plight of Eve Ensler’s vagina.
Feminism is as dead as the many lives they aborted.
This is the old argument that life begins at wantedness. It’s all about the parents and their wants. But children do not exist to make us happy.
Congratulations on your adoption. I wish you well, I really do. And I believe parenthood will teach you to put the needs of your child, who is our future, ahead of your plans and even ahead of your dreams.
Oh, come on, Syn. Feminism could nag and harangue, but you made your own choice to listen to them. It was stupid advice, but you didn’t have to do what you were told.
I would like someone to explain to me how a fetus is a potential life, and not a life. She was just a little pregnant. Those cells are not the mother’s cells, so what are they if not a young person? How do they become a child? Oh, I forgot – at the moment of the mother’s decision assuming she does not change her mind. Or at some other equally arbitrary benchmark set for the convenience of the parents.
All the context is considered except the child’s life. To think that the opposite decision, leading to the death of this particular child, would be applauded – would have equal meaning – the irony is finally explained by the one thing that applies to both.
What the mother wants is always right.
Well C. Siegel by your logic women who have consensual sex made their own choices as well, why then do they have the right to unnaturally take the life of another human being?
If women choose to have consensual sex then they must be responsible for the consequences of their choices.
That said, what choice does a women have if the man repeats what feminism advocates ‘it’s your body, you take care of it’?
All that femimism did was to screw womanhood.
What does ‘pro-choice’ mean?
Does it mean she chooses to call it life if she needs government funded pre-natal care?
or;
Does it mean she chooses to call it a clump of cells because she needs government-funded financing to rid herself of a terrible infection?
Which choice is ‘pro-choice’?
Both choices are pro-choice. That is the essence of pro-choice. The choice to have the child and get the care you and it needs, or the choice to terminate your pregnancy and have children later, when you’re ready. That is the essence of choice — to choose either option, to have a dozen babies or none at all. To make that choice FOR YOURSELF.
Those of you who want to force a woman to give birth because YOU would not make that choice, you are no better than the fascists, the Nazis, the big government you curse with every breath. The only person who makes the choices in MY life is ME, just as the only person who makes the choices in YOUR life is YOU. My government’s only obligation is to keep ALL my choices safe, accessible, and LEGAL. Period.
Had my life been different at the moment of its conception
So the baby exists from conception after all. But your only concern is for your own life, or should I say lifestyle.
This piece resonated with me as a fellow pro-choice adoptive parent. I, too, am grateful that my child’s first mother had all options available to her.
OK….you are confused.
I suggest you take a long, hard, deep look @ the precious human being you are raising, & remind yourself that ‘freedom of choice’ would have flushed her down a toilet in pieces.
Are you really OK w/ the ‘freedom’ to kill someone else if we don’t want them?…because, finally, if you want your child you will have your child…kinda like the young woman who gave you hers.
Somehow, I am not convinced by your story.
No, it would not. Choice IS legal, right now. The mother of this woman’s adopted child CHOSE not to abort. Because being pro-choice is the right to say no OR to say Yes. The choice belongs to the mother, not to anyone else, ever.
Sidestepping the whole debate about the child’s rights versus the mothers, I was also struck by the “meaningful” part of the quote: “I strongly believe that her commitment to the daughter we share is made more meaningful because it was not forced upon her.”
Okay, you strongly believe that. Why? And why would it matter whether you believe it or not? How do your feelings affect the reality one way or the other?
You are very confused if you use poverty as a potential justification for a woman to have aborted the child you just adopted.
Thank you for giving voice to the thousands of us out here who are pro-choice adoptive parents. Without the right to choose safe, legal abortion, there can be no non-coercive adoption. How can a birth mother choose to make an adoption plan if other reproductive choices are not available to her? Brava for telling your story.
there can be no non-coercive adoption
By that argument there can be no non-coercive parenting unless parents have the right to kill their children.
Keeping the baby is an option. There are plenty of reproductive choices available before conception. These children are wanted. There is no excuse.
Thank you Dawn, for a great thinking, non-judgemental piece.
I must admit that my sister and sister-in-law had abortions and when I found out about it my opinion of each of them diminished. To think they both didn’t want the baby and for whatever reason they cast it aside like pork fat. It made me cry in both instances and I had it out with my sister – and she is still mad at me. That is just too bad, it takes two to tango but, life is precious and if you can toss it aside so easily is it any wonder our children (the ones you haven’t murdered) have little regard for life anymore?
great essay
I disagree with you, but whatever, it was still a nice piece
(hugs)
This is a lovely essay, Dawn. I’m a pro-choice adoptive parent too, and I feel just the same.
As another fellow pro-choice adoptive parent, I also am grateful my daughter’s first mother had all the options available. Brava, Dawn, on the piece.
How you experience pregnancy may rely on context, but our humanity does not. That would make our status different in different times and places and would leave no room to object to slavery or the non-personhood of women in Islamic nations.
Can’t you just imagine Dred Scot’s “owner” telling us that our experience of slaveholding depends on context? Or the guy who just ended the life of his sister for an honor killing telling us that the personhood of women depends on context?
thank you for pointing out the interesting parallels between the two ends of the spectrum of having no control over fertility.
i’m grateful that choices abound at both ends of the spectrum.
What fascinates me is that now that I’ve had a surprise pregnancy at a bad time (and decided to parent), then gone on to be infertile and finally conceive twins — I would expect myself to be less pro-choice. Instead, I’ve become fiercly pro-choice. Somehow during my oldest’s infanthood I came to feel that that an embryo is both very much a baby, and yet developmentally so NOT a baby. So while I do feel like abortion is killing something, I have a hard time feeling like it’s killing a fully-fleshed person — especially when there are so many post-birth humans walking around in need of food, shelter, health insurance. It just seems crazy to me that the people we are killing so we can drink Coke (Ganges River polution) or drive huge cars (war for oil) — that those children of God have less value than a freaking soda or a gallon of gas — but people get all up in arms about a bunch of cells that will be a baby half a year into the future.
There is no such thing as a potential human life. Life is not defined by a mother’s emotional state.
What you are advocating is for women to continue to be allowed to kill their children on a whim. Children that in many cases could be adopted.
neither is fertility run amok
Infertility is a tragic disability. Fertility is not. Fertility does not run amok, people run amok.
There are parents who want to adopt the child. The mother and baby are healthy. Yet still you think the woman should have the right to kill the child.
The only reason I can find here for this is the argument that denying abortion is coercive. Assuming the pregnancy did not result from rape (this has not been alleged), that argument rings hollow. So the author bends over backwards to be non-judgmental and act as though the pregnancy was some sort of disability – the woman got pregnant “too easily.” This is the argument of a teenager.
This phony argument does not help women make responsible decisions. The same risky behavior that caused the pregnancy could cause much more serious problems that do not have a quick fix. The baby’s life is not the only life at stake.
With unexpected pregnancy, each of the choices has a life-long consequence. So many women in that situation are forced either subtly or not so subtly into making a choice that they don’t want to make, whether that choice is keeping the baby, aborting, or placing for adoption. Those are all decisions that should be made without the influence of shame from friends or family members who, no matter how close to the first mom, will not be the ones living with the decision and dealing with the consequences. I’m glad that your daughter’s first mom was able to make a decision that was right for her. I’m glad she had a choice.
she felt it was the right thing for her to do
Did she feel that, or did she know that? Which would have more meaning?
Dawn, I know you’re not reading comments, but I’m leaving one in case you ever do.
First… thank you. Thank you for being who you are, for advocating for us first moms, for being such a fabulous mother to both your children, for being a fabulous adoptive mom in your relationship with your daughter’s first mom, and for being willing to write about all of it. I learn so much from you.
Second, I’m humbled by your ability to reach out and empathize with those of us who seem to be too fertile. It’s something I’m struggling with lately, having empathy with infertile women who go on to adopt. It’s my own block, related to personal and complex adoption-related feelings, but it’s an ugly fact that I’m having a hard time empathizing. Your ability to do so here inspires me to try again.
Third, the way you continuosly, day after day, honor your children and your daughter’s first mom humble me.
Finally… thank you for not reducing us first moms to a birthing vehicle, and for not reducing children to objects to be bought and purchased. Thank you for recognizing the complexities of all the realities.
Thank you for your graciousness, Dawn.
I will note again, this time with reference to the comments: The word “feel” (and equivalents) keeps coming up as if it is somehow persuasive. I find that frightening. Feeling something is more a result of what one has been advertised into than a result of thought.
Zealous flamers!! Not one of you anti-adoption I noticed! They don’t take into consideration the problems that bring about the “need” for abortion, they only want to shout murder and other such dramatic words.
If you really care about saving children then make the world an easier place for mothers so that when we are pregnant it’s not a crisis.
How about making laws stronger to “encourage” the fathers to be financially responsible. Free and good childcare in colleges, schools and workplaces. Free health insurance like they have in some countries.
Special shops with affordable toys, books and clothes where you can give them back if they are still in good condition to be used by the next family.
A special sponsorship program with older mothers adopting younger/newer/vulnerable mothers, helping with advice, support and time.
Getting the media to drum up a positive image of single mothers.
All this is where their energy could be going, if you really want to stop abortions peoples then start by supporting mothers.
I’m so happy for your daughter. Even though she never had HER choice, she lives. May she bring much happines to you. I only hope that some day all those babies in the womb will have their choice to live and maybe be adopted by someone like you.
Murder is murder. What part of that don’t you get?
Being faced with raising a child when circumstances are difficult is a very trying experience. I am glad you did not allow hardship to give you cause to kill a child. If I were to take the joy of choice to its logical end you should want laws against murder repealed. That way you could be happy every time you choose not to kill someone.
I was harsh in the above paragraph because the stakes are high with an outcome so harsh. Please remember that women and girls are faced with horrifying circumstances. It is our obligation to support those women and girls allowing them to see light at the end of a very dark channel.
Thanks, Dawn, for sharing your story,although it has attracted its share of the batshit crazies.
This is a beautiful piece Dawn, thank you for sharing it. I’d respond further but there is obviously no point, sheep are sheep.
Thank you, Kimkim! I *love* the irony of pro-lifers who are all about “saving babies” (AKA zygotes and embryos) but not about helping LONG-TERM once the child is born. Besides, having been through pregnancy 4x, twice after fertility treatments, I am more convinced than ever that no one woman should be forced to go through nine months of pregnancy if it is not something that she wants.