Ok...this has been swirling around in my head for days now. Bumping against the edges of my brain and bouncing back again, like a pinball machine.
I have written this post and deleted it many times in my mind...
Going all moral, political, opinionated here on the farm blog is just not my thing. Its not what I do...its not what I'm comfortable with.
But it will not let me rest, I have some things to say and I hope someone will stick around to listen...
As you know from this last week's posts that I am a mother that has lost children and have been a mother lucky enough to adopt a child, a wonderful little girl.
I look at my sweet daughter and know all to well if it wasn't for the steadfast belief in life of her birth mother she could have very easily ended up as an abortion statistic.
My Sweet Girl had a less than 1% chance of ever being given voluntarily up for adoption...
less than 1%!
and the stats are dropping...before 1973 it was 8.7% and now it is .9%
I want to know...
How can this be?
There are so many wonderful families praying and desperately hoping for a child...willing to spend a small fortune, have every aspect of their lives examined by strangers all to have a child to love, to nurture, to raise as their own.
How is it possible that a woman would possibly think that her baby is better off dead than adopted?
I have heard all the arguments that there are against giving birth and then adopting...
What if I give up a child to be adopted and he's abused?
I would dare say that with the rigorous screening process of adoptive parents, the hoops we have to go through, the background checks, the home visits, that the chances of a child being abused in an adoptive home are less than a biological home where you get pregnant, have a baby, take it home...no social worker no background check at all. I am not saying it never happens but what I am saying is it is not very likely...
I could not have a child out there and not know where she was or how she was doing.
A birth mom gets to choose among many families that have all been screened by an agency or government. They get to choose the age, race, family make up,the hobbies, the location, the religion of the home her child will be raised in. She can choose an open adoption if she likes, one in which she gets updates or contact with the child. This seems to negate that argument.
I do not want to go through the physical changes of pregnancy and the pain of labor and delivery.
Having delivered 6 children myself I understand this argument. But I also know that aborting a child comes with its own unique pain that will last a lifetime. Pregnancy and delivery pain are temporary...the other is not.
I don't want to go through the disapproval of my family and the embarrassment of being pregnant...abortion is just easier, no one knows that way.
You know, God knows...you have a child growing within your body. There is a unique, one of a kind human being in there...not just an extension of your body like a lung or a kidney. There will never be a child just like this ever again and this tiny baby is depending on you for its very life. Yes abortion may in some ways be easier but life is not always about what is easy it is about what is right. It is about being a stronger person than you thought you could be. It is about not always thinking of yourself but of someone else. It is about giving someone one a gift that no one else can give...giving life to another living soul.
I am not here to debate pro life or pro choice...what I am really here to do is advocate for adoption. It just seems to me that it is the best solution all around.
A parent that cannot or does not want to raise a child doesn't have to...
A parent who wants a child to raise gets to...
And most importantly
A child gets to live.
A child who will get to experience life with all it laughter and tears, its sorrows and joys...all the wondrous things that life has to offer.
A win, win, win situation!
Why deviate so far from gardening and camels and such?
Why put up a post that covers a topic that is a lightening rod for controversy?
It is as simple as wanting to touch the heart of just one person, one confused or scared pregnant woman. If I could get one mom to at least consider adoption for her unborn child. Then I will have accomplished what I set out to do when I wrote this post...
I cannot look at my sweet girl and do any less.
