What's wrong with the adoption option?

Each and every woman has a fundamental right to decide for herself if and when to become a mother--free of even mild coercion from the state, the church, or anyone else. For this reason, I have long been a staunch supporter of reproductive rights, have served on the boards of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (which recently modified its name to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice) and the National Abortion Rights Action League (which has just changed its name to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League) and co-edited, with James W Prescott, the book Abortion Rights and Fetal "Personhood" (Centerline Press, 1990).

Several years ago, I gave a talk on religious freedom and church-state problems at a meeting in Dallas, Texas. The talk included a defense of abortion rights. At its conclusion, a young fundamentalist couple told me they believed that abortion was immoral and should be outlawed, and added that the appropriate alternative was to continue the pregnancy to term and give the baby up for adoption.

I responded that adopting children and giving children up for adoption were laudable, even noble, actions, but that no one has the right to compel a woman--whether she is 14 or 40--to continue a pregnancy against her will. I added that, based upon admittedly limited information, I believed that giving up a child for adoption would result in severe and long-lasting trauma for the mother, an outcome far worse for the woman than having a first-trimester abortion.

We know that carrying pregnancies to term is seven to 25 times more likely to result in the death of a woman than a first-trimester abortion; that 91 per, cent of all abortions in the United States are performed during the first trimester; and that, according to Dr. Carl Hogue of the Centers for Disease Control, abortion generally does not affect subsequent fertility.

We also know, thanks inadvertently to Ronald Reagan, that "there is so little evidence of psychiatric problems following abortion, and so much evidence of relief, that therefore abortion does not cause more psychiatric problems than unwanted pregnancy." This was the conclusion of the paper submitted by the American Psychiatric Association to Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop, who had been directed by Reagan in 1987 to prepare a report on the physical and mental health effects of abortion on women. Although Koop reported in 1989 that the Public Health Service's studies were inconclusive, the Human Resources and Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Relations, chaired by the late Representative Ted Weiss, dug out and published the surgeon general's real findings. The committee also found transcripts of Dr. Koop's meetings with anti-choice groups in which he told them that the adverse effects of abortion on women were "minuscule," affected very few women, and did not constitute a public health problem.

The question of the effects of relinquishing a child for adoption intrigued me, and I thought surely there would be a vast literature on the subject. But when my colleague Al Menendez and I tried to find it, it simply wasn't there. I consulted social workers and social scientists. The subject had apparently not been studied, even though about 100,000 women give up their babies for adoption annually in the United States.

I had almost given up hope of finding data when, out of the blue, a friend in Philadelphia tipped me off to a new book: Birthmothers: Women Who Have Relinquished Babies for Adoption Tell Their Stories by Merry Bloch Jones (Chicago Review Press, 1993, 296 pp., 21.95).

Overcoming the difficulties and legal barriers to locating birthmothers, the author was able to conduct extensive interviews with over 70 of them, each with a different story to tell. Her book is so rich in detail it cannot be easily reviewed or summarized--only read. While we can empathize with the women, including mid-teens, who chose to give up their babies so that some childless couple could give them a proper home, we cannot fail to be deeply moved by their horrendous experiences.

Jones takes us into their lives as they make their painful choice to relinquish their children and then follows their almost invariably traumatic relations with birthfathers, medical personnel, adoption agencies, relatives, friends, and, later, spouses. She walks us through birthmothers' searches for their children and what happens when they sometimes connect.

The author concludes with the profile of a syndrome specific to birth, mothers, which includes signs of unresolved grief, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, diminished self-esteem, and so forth, and offers suggestions for how birthmothers, therapists, family members, and others can help relieve the pain.

Jones acknowledges that her sample of women was not scientific and notes that she did not find a single woman who relinquished her child happily. She urges that society develop viable alternatives so that fewer women need to relinquish their babies. She does not, however, mention the alternatives of better sexuality education, better contraceptives, and readier access to abortion as indispensable means for decreasing the number of unwanted pregnancies.

Counselors and social workers should read this book, as should abortion opponents who urge women to relinquish babies for adoption. It should also be read by defenders of abortion rights, for it will enable them to show that compelling women to continue unwanted pregnancies is often to condemn them to a life-long hell on earth. A great many of the anti-choice folks, of course, want to see women suffer for not adhering to a Puritan ethic or for giving up a baby.

Adoption is usually a good option for unwanted kids, but it is rarely a good one for birthmothers.

Edd Doerr is executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty, a former vice, president of the American Humanist Association, and a member of the board of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.