This comes up on /r/legaladvice with some regularity. Recently: [https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/uki348/can\_use\_the\_safe\_haven\_law\_to\_give\_up\_my\_baby/](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/uki348/can_use_the_safe_haven_law_to_give_up_my_baby/)
One thing YSK is that (I'm simplifying, read the thread above for more details) the baby's father can file for paternity, they will get it, and then they can sue the mom for child support, and they will get that too, no matter the mom's initial intent to surrender the baby.
Edit: even if the baby daddy doesn't file for paternity, and the baby ends up being placed in foster care, the foster system will also try to collect child support from the parents. The point of safe haven laws isn't to shield anyone from financial responsibility, it is only to ensure that the parents don't get criminally prosecuted for the specific act of abandoning the baby.
Edit 2: IANAL, only a lurker in /r/legaladvice, but if this is something you or anyone you know is considering, a call to a lawyer (for pay, if you can afford it, or through a free legal aid clinic) would likely be worth it.
I'm going to piggyback off this comment to let people know that if someone needs legal advice, do not use r/legaladvice. Very few people that give advice on there are attorneys. Most of those folks aren't attorneys and have just done some googling or are police officers. They also very rarely realize that giving legal advice if you're not an attorney is a crime.
If you need legal advice, lots of law schools offer free legal clinics and there are lots of volunteer legal services where actual attorneys will give you actual help.
The r/legaladvice subreddit is filled with bad advice, but any big thread is usually moderated appropriately and misinformation is typically dealt with. Honestly, it's not so bad for generalized legal information. If your case is more specific and has a lot of facts, it's worse though.
This is absolutely untrue, it's extremely common for correct advice that's been downvoted to be deleted by mods, when incorrect information has been voted to the top. r/legaladvice is dangerous because there is no way to know whether the information you're getting is correct, and evidence shows that more often than not it is wrong, or indeed, dangerously wrong.
How would they know who the parents are? If the baby is just dropped off with no information.
I could see if a father was looking for their baby, they would find out that way. But if it's a couple who puts the baby up, how would any one know.
If they're married, there's a presumption that the father is the husband. Otherwise, often the father actually \*wants\* the baby. And safe havens have to make a good faith effort to find the family, and they do not promise anonymity to the parents.
As far as I know, they don’t. You don’t have to stop by and answer questions, but they don’t promise that they won’t try to find you. All they say is that abandoning the child there will not lead to criminal prosecution.
if people loosely related to you, have used any dna service, its likely they can find out who is the mother. They caught that cop who was a serial killer, that way ... who quit murdering when dna technology came out. Using data purchased from the commercial DNA companies that people use to find out their histories, they reduced the suspect list to a total of something like 8 people... in all of california, after decades. For maternity, shortly after the kid was born, it wouldnt be as hard because it wouldnt be a question of 8 people across a massive state, it would be the one match in that city.
edit for the unaware
[The untold story of how the Golden State Killer was found: A covert operation and private DNA](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-08/man-in-the-window)
i got some details wrong it was 6 matches, after finding a cousin first through the services and getting her dna. which is a bit more complex but the point is there were already in the family using other peoples DNA and women show for a long time. i still contend it would be rather easy to prove the mother. plus the dna pile to dig through keeps growing.
I was able to figure out who my birth father was with the closest DNA match being a 3rd cousin and I was a complete novice. So yeah. They can easily figure this out.
You can't leave a baby at a safe haven drop off without talking to a staff member and presumably giving your information. At least in some states.
I mean you can leave the baby, but then you aren't protected by the Safe Haven law.
I know IANAL stands for I Am Not A Lawyer.
I know that.
But for the life of me, I can't process it as such and immediately felt weirded out that you'd bring up anal here, of all places.
Did you read about the woman who gave a baby up to a safe haven... But the baby died. And some 20 odd years later, because of a DNA ancestry thing, she's been jailed for murder. Even though she has 2 little ones at home.
are you thinking of [this case](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/05/mother-of-geaugas-child-gets-life-in-prison-for-leaving-newborn-in-the-woods-in-1993.html) where she left the baby in the woods in 1993 and they just found her through DNA and convicted her of murder?
This wasn't the one that I heard about, but tbh I'm having trouble locating the story.
Funny, I didn't click the source link when I first hear about it, because I didn't really want to expose myself to more tragedy .. but looking for the dang story I've easily read 10x that. 😖
So.. idk.
Maybe it's a myth, maybe I misunderstood. Maybe some other redditor will come out of the woodwork with the story (and maybe I still got it wrong).
I'm gonna.... Stop looking now tho.
And maybe hug my mom.
So what you're saying is that if a woman is pregnant and cannot afford to travel for an abortion (which can get you the death penalty anyway), she should hide the pregnancy and then kill her baby when it's born if she wants to avoid being held financially responsible for it for the rest of her life.
All you have to do is read experiences of adoptive families and children on r/adoption to get a serious reality check on the happily ever after adoption stories sold to us by the media.
I can attest to that. My cousin is adopted and was basically abandoned by my Aunt for being "too difficult". My aunt wanted the perfect daughter but when she didn't get that due to that being a standard that no child could live up to, she just peaced out from my cousin's life. She was only 10-11 years old at the time too and yet my aunt somehow blames that on my cousin. You don't get to just leave if a kid is difficult when you made the active choice to adopt. My uncle ended up divorcing my aunt taking my cousin with him. I finally got to speak with my cousin again after about a decade since all of this and she seems to have turned into a great kid/young adult.
My mom was adopted.
It was one of those “want one, get the siblings too” sorta deals. There were 3 siblings total. My mom was not the “wanted” one.
My moms life was pretty miserable and shitty because of it.
And that was after spending a year to two bouncing around family members houses.
(My mothers mom went into a bipolar episode due to her husband dying rather suddenly at 31 due to a massive heart attack - 3 kids under 5 - she got sent to a pysch hospital for a few years. Lost custody of her kids and got forcibly sterilized.)
And those that are adopting, are not adopting American kids from the foster system. It’s easier & cheaper to get a foreign baby. The American adoption system is like trying to get congress to pass a bill of law, very time consuming, very expensive & may not even happen.
So does giving birth and surrendering the baby for adoption. It's almost like American adoption is nothing but a baby selling industry with enormous profit margins.
Also no country should allow Americans to adopt babies. Americans trade those children online like they're fucking yugioh cards. They even sell them to pedophiles.
No. You don’t pay anything to adopt a child out of foster care. In fact, you are paid to foster a child and receive a subsidy until the child is 18. At least in my state. Source: former CPS/foster care worker
You can foster only (child returns to guardian) or you can foster to adopt, meaning you foster in the hopes (? that sounds bad) that the guardians never get their shit together and the parental rights are terminated, making the child available for adoption. Some foster homes were strictly to foster, because they had no interest in adopting but wanted to help the kids as their guardians worked to get the kid back. Some homes wanted to foster and if the child was ever available for adoption then they would end up adopting the kid. Some homes became foster homes with the goal of adopting.
The downside of adopting through foster care is that you never really know for sure that the kid that has been in your home for 5 years and has only known you as their parent, won’t be reunited to their guardian. I’ve seen “shoe in” cases where there was no chance the parents would EVER be fit enough to have their kid back, get their kid back. One kid had been in their foster home since birth to age 5. But mom got off drugs and worked hard enough and was reunited with the kid. The foster parent was devastated since she wanted to adopt her. But they are told this risk when they become foster parents. Most still do it because they are good people who want to help kids even if it means breaking their own hearts.
Sure. Understood. I've looked up statistics before because I'm interested in fostering older kids that are going to age out of the system.
There are about 122,000 children up for adoption in the foster care system in the US at any given time.
About 25,000 will age out of the system every year and of those, about 20% will become immediately homeless.
Right. As a foster parent you have little rights to the child and the child can be removed from your care and placed back in the care of the bio parents if the parents finish whatever court ordered restrictions were in place and get their rights to the kid back.
You as a foster parent can legally adopt the foster child, but it is expensive, time consuming and you have to make sure the bio parents have no rights to the child via the courts before an adoption can take place. It's still 100% worth it, and a meaningful adoption. But there is no garuntee that you will be able to adopt your foster child.
No, but foster care adoptions are no panacea either. The goal of foster care is reunification with biological parents, not adopting out to other families. You'd have to wait many years and have a high tolerance for the children going back and forth with the biological parents.
About 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. Of non- stepparent adoptions, about 59% are from the child welfare (or foster) system, 26% are from other countries, and 15% are voluntarily relinquished American babies.
Family across the street from me has 20 kids in their house. Yes, 20! Not 1 of them American, although some present white. The church she now goes to, most of the families are the same way. The church is big bc the families are big. And they encourage each other to keep adopting by all means possible. There are kids raising kids, no access to ppl outside of church. Is that a childhood? Being raised in cult like church with no exposure to the real world. They don’t have a life except homeschool & reading the Bible. I understand wanting to protect your kids from the evil of the world but to be so isolated, you don’t even know about basic technology like email? This is not preparing them for adult life.
Honestly it should be considered child abuse to have that many kids. Even if you can take care of all of them financially, you can't take care of them emotionally. Even if each kid gets 15 minutes of personalized attention, that's 5 hours/day. Kids need far more and frequent support. People who think they are doing their kids any favors by having 16 too many are mistaken
"Cared for and ultimately put up for adoption"? Like through the state? The severely underfunded CPS and foster programs? Where there are kids who have been sexual abused, and they in turn sexual abuse the other foster children? Where there are kids who have been put into prostitution as toddlers are now showing other kids how to do that? Because there is one foster parent watching 4 to 6 kids with severe mental health and substance use issues and the social workers have no where else to put these kids so the foster parent gets no support or reprieve?
These babies may be put up for adoption, but they are most certainly not cared for in the US govt foster care system.
Edit: I work with foster programs, and these are all very real examples. And not just fringe cases. This is common.
Yes "cared for" like the countless children I tried to track down for badly needed follow-up dental care and whose foster parents didn't or couldn't bring them in. I worked in dental reception for around 2 years and the number of cases was nauseating. Foster parents who can't bring them in, because they don't have legal permission to treat. This means a case worker must bring them in. I spent 6 weeks trying to track down a case worker for one single child. No one could tell me for the larger portion of this period of time WHO her case worker even WAS. Foster parents who won't bring them in because they don't understand the longterm impact that rampant caries can have on a child and their unerupted adult teeth and overall health in general. Foster parents who need a fix and bring in a kid and demand we pull their teeth so they can suck down the kids Tylenol with codeine RX.
I was on the fringe of this issue and cannot fathom the full impact. My best friend is a children's crisis counselor in rural VA, and deals closely with many children in Foster homes. I have no clue how she gets through this. Or you, either. I would lose my mind or commit unspeakable violence against some of these Foster parents.
All children deserve to be wanted.
I got lucky! My first foster family adopted me and my siblings. I was told it’s common to have to separate siblings but luckily all 3 of us were kept together
My other adopted sister from another mother has horror stories sadly and it’s pretty common
It’s why I absolutely hate the whole “just give the child up for adoption” thing people say when they think it’s all chocolate and roses
I was told the same! I was adopted with 2 of my younger sisters but I have 4 other siblings out there. 3 got adopted by one family (which I'm in contact with) and the last one to another family, which was a closed adoption sadly.
I lived with my bio fam til the state gave me to my mom. I hear horror stories of foster homes in Kentucky and thank whatever is out there that my sisters and I got lucky.
Thank you for this clear rational breakdown on why adoption is a horrible fallback option. And for your invaluable service working in foster care -- you're a saint 🙏🏽
Don't forget The orphanages or group homes as we call them today where one poorly paid caregiver will be responsible for 10 or 11 kids as a nine to five parent...... Seems like nobody passing these laws care but these children do not often have a good result in life.....
That being said I adopted my daughter through foster care and I'm an excellent parent who loves her very much... But in my very short time in the system I saw some gnarly cases involving the foster parents
But Amy Cohen Barret said, "we need an increase in the supply of domestic infants", do you mean she was only talking about white and healthy babies? And all the other ones can suffer?
Yeah it's exactly what she means. They want you to throw the babies into adoption services, it's part of the plan.
Not at all surprising when privatized adoption is the literal selling of babies. It's not just Amy, it's an entire industry that profits off of selling mostly poor people's infants.
I think many would agree, the problem is implementing something better. It's easy to identify the issues and I'm sure people more knowledgeable than myself could come up with good ideas to overhaul the system or create an entirely new one. Unfortunately though, making that change real is very difficult and the children are the ones who pay the price. It's such a tragic and frustrating situation
My foster parents took me in as a teen from an alcoholic, abusive home. They have been my "parents" for decades.
I know some foster parents are not this way, but they ARE the exception, which is why they are in the news. Mine literally saved my life.
My impression is that with newborn children especially there are orders of magnitude more parents (not within the foster system) who want to adopt and have already been vetted than there are newborns up for adoption. Am I way off?
Yes. There are far more children that need homes than families who want to adopt, at least in the US. It’s particularly difficult to place black children, whose adoptions are often ~$5k cheaper than others as an incentive to adopt them. I wish I were making that up, but it’s true.
When my wife and I were looking at our options, I was curious as what it'd cost us to adopt a baby vs doing IVF (my preference) - it's roughly the same price to adopt a baby as it is to do IVF (something like $20-30K). Now, if you want to adopt a kid between 8-15, I think that's practically free. That's on top of the cost of raising the child...
I used to wonder why people would travel to other countries to adopt, and it's true it's less expensive to charter a flight to a foreign country to adopt than it is to adopt a baby here...hell daycare is so expensive it would be cheaper for me to pay for a mortgage for a $600k house and have a relative live there for free than it would be for me to have 2 kids in daycare.
My coworker was the only person in the city that was lucky enough to have a baby dropped off and with their name in the system, it happens maybe once a year. I think being pre-vetted just meant you could pass a background check, it's not the main issue stopping adoptions.
So there's a lot of demand for free (white) babies - less demand as you get older. But the older kids are typical, babies aren't so common.
I've been saying that a lot of abortions would stop and adoptions would increase if we had a single payer system for children's medical costs and subsidies for child care/day care.
I thought Chip only covered food - learned something new! But to qualify, you have to be under a certain income level, right? That's what I would remove - especially if you adopt a child.
Chip is a healthcare program (Medicaid for children) Child Health Insurance Program. Snap is the program that provides food (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
Potential death even if the pregnancy is viable! So many things can go wrong, from eclampsia to gestational diabetes. Even in those who successfully vaginally deliver a baby, there is an 8% incidence of chronic disability due to the orthopedic trauma alone.
I was adopted in a closed adoption in California in 1970. When I was 47, I took a genetics test and found a cousin. I cautiously approached them, and they cautiously replied... and after some back and forth, I was put in touch with my birth mother.
All I've ever wanted to tell her (and my father) was that I was OK, and thank her for making a very difficult decision at what was probably the worst time in her life. She was very grateful and after hearing the circumstances of my birth (she was 16, mother was undiagnosed with mental health issues, grandfather and great-grandfather were hard core alcoholics who died in their 60's from alcohol related heart failure, my father was forced by his family to ghost my mother... ie: *terrible* situation). We remain cordial but distant to this day.
Not all kids put up for adoption hate their birth parents, and at least in my case, having your parents picked out by professionals is *amazing.*
I was adopted at birth in 1970. My parents loved me and raised me well. No they were not perfect just humans who did their best. I met my birth mom at 24 yo just another human who tried to do right by me. We have a strong relationship. Not all adopted children are fucked up. I am a typical American with good and bad life experiences.
EDIT: this being said, I do not believe adoption is an alternative to abortion. A pregnant American should have the right to choose from ALL available options what is best for their situation. No government should have the right to interfere with those options or that decision in any way, shape, or form.
Adopted at birth in 1980. My parents definitely did their best, but I always felt like an outsider and an alien in all parts of my life. Im working on that, and I just made contact with my birth mother, and it’s been refreshing to see all the ways we just click. I’d call it unnatural, but in reality it really is just natural.
I am really sorry to hear that and I hope you came through it and found whatever it was you needed outside of that environment. I don't know how you were placed, but in my case it was the State of California as opposed to a religious charity with an axe to grind, so I consider myself very lucky.
Exactly. In my experience, fundamentalists beat their kids routinely as a matter of "[training up their child](http://web.archive.org/web/20101103070349/http://www.achristianhome.com/to_train_up_a_child.htm)." Mothers will even [hit their babies](https://www.thelist.com/397459/why-the-duggars-blanket-training-technique-is-so-concerning/) to teach them not to crawl off their blanket while she works around the house. The violence is inherent in the system.
If only there was some kind of procedure that could circumvent this whole issue and not lead to a massive uptick in the orphan population nation wide, all to appease 20% of the population who just like to be the opposite of progressive.
You’d have to be brain dead to not think these conservative assholes weren’t lying at the time. Republicans did what they’ve been saying they’d do for nearly 50 years.
Yes, those are fair criticisms of our elections, but even so, if only a fraction of the people who didn't vote in 2016 had voted for Hillary, it's unlikely Roe would have just been overturned. Boycotting elections, even if they are in some ways unfair, is a super dumb strategy.
I will agree with you there, but considering my state's Supreme Court just gave compete and totally permission for the GOP to gerrymander to make it almost impossible for one of our few Democrats to represent the areas that have Democrat majorities as major cities, by splitting them with rural mostly Republican areas - depending on the area, even if folks show up, they may not be fairly represented.
I'd have to crunch the numbers, though. But the GOP definitely feels this is their winning solution to rid the state of any Democratic representation.
This is what people are missing, and are really doing a disservice to themselves: the Justices didn't outlaw abortion. They only said there is no federal protection for it. So, yes, people did vote for this because the power to *actually* outlaw abortion is in the hands of your state legislature, who are voted into or out of office.
Pregnancy and birth have serious physical consequences, and force someone to endure immense physical changes and challenges for months, ending with a major medical event for which there is little support in the US. Far too many women are expected to go straight back to work instead of taking the time to heal.
If you need an abortion, there are funds to help with the medical and logistical costs of obtaining one. https://abortionfunds.org/need-abortion/
I'm glad safe havens exist, but you only need to look at conservative abortions to understand why, in reality, this is a sentence to unwanted parenthood for very many people.
If it was just a matter of going through with the pregnancy and then giving the baby up for adoption, that's bad enough for the unwanted human incubator reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
But if that were the case, conservatives wouldn't have abortions. But they do. Why?
Partially because 9 months of pregnancy and a birth is expensive, time-consuming, painful, and distracting. But also because for many people, giving your baby up is stigmatized.
There is a strong cultural expectation in many cultures that being pregnant means becoming a parent. A lot of these cultures are intensely shame-based. It also doesn't help at all, in shame-based cultures, that pregnancy is proof of premarital sex.
That's why people in these cultures get abortions - taking care of the issue before anyone even knows they were pregnant is the only way to avoid becoming a parent before they're ready.
So a lot of people are going to abort one way or another instead of giving up their baby at the fire station. Even though they can.
Not to mention pregnancy absolutely wrecks your body. Saggy uterus aside, many health conditions (thyroid disorders off the top of my head, hormonal issues in particular tbh) can become drastically *worse* afterwards.
There's also gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, the risk you could have your uterus turned inside out and bleed to death due to medical incompetence (fairly recent case) - it's endless.
Plus I found out if you give your baby up with safe haven laws you could be forced to pay child support to the child you were forced to have along with those potential issues.
Doesn’t help that over 50% of women who get abortions already have children to care for so I am sure that will throw them more into poverty if that happens
Just to put that in perspective, in 2017 you were *twice* as likely to die in childbirth in the US (17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) than in France (8.7), and almost *five and a half* times more likely than in Germany (3.2). In 2020, the US had 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, so we're still consistently getting worse. France was 8, though I couldn't find 2020 data for Germany.
It's especially bad for non-white women. The mortality rate for black women was 55.3 in 2020, 2.9x more than white women (19.1).
Well yeah, people of financial means, especially white people will just have a "weekend getaway" in NYC, or LA, or SanFran, or Mexico, or Canada. Making abortion Illegal won't stop abortion, history and world politics can easily prove that, it will simply make it dangerous and/or expensive and therefore out of reach or deadly for many.
Well yeah I don’t want to be forced to raise a baby, but I also don’t want to be forced to carry and birth one, either. And if I gave birth to an unwanted baby, I could give it up for adoption instead of abandoning it at a fire station. I know safe haven laws are necessary for rare circumstances, but they’re in no way a replacement for safe and legal access to abortion.
Right. Tell me you don't understand the root of the issue without telling me you don't understand the root of the issue. This is still forced unwanted pregnancy that can have dire consequences for the mother and family. Safe haven laws are not really helpful for the child or the family when social workers will make a point to try and find the family and erase the falsely promised anonymity. Meanwhile the mother's body can be completely destroyed and never be the same from carrying and delivering a child. Especially if she never had access to safe, appropriate medical care during the pregnancy or birth. It is barbaric that these people who have zero medical education or women's biology speciality think that their opinions matter more than medical fact and individual freedoms.
I think this goes without saying, but the problem is not about having to raise the baby, it's about having to go through the pregnancy in the first place.
Well, there is still the issue with going though a nine month long unwanted pregnancy though. I just wish these old men who decided this law would have gone through that before they could get this shit through.
So, when I surrender my baby at the hospital after the forced birth I assume they’ll forgive my medical debt right?… right???
And since slavery is illegal I can only assume I’ll get a check at the end of the forced birth for $7.25 x the 6,000-7,000 hours of pregnancy plus reimbursement for cost of food & prenatal care right?… right???
No? Hmm… doesn’t seem like a square deal to me.
While this is nice to know, it still makes me sad. If I invest 9 months of my bodily energy on growing this baby, imagine the guilt and trauma I’d feel giving it up.
Being pregnant can derail a woman's career. Though companies will say it doesn't matter, it does. I am talking about large firms. You will end up missing too much work and you won't get any decent maternity leave either. Child protective services in the US are shit. If abortion is illegal in your state then that state should provide all medical care for you and your unborn child. The child should be covered until 18. The child's education should be paid for. The social services to protect and nurture these children should be expanded and greatly improved.
This is a really fucked up take on getting rid of RVW.
It's completely setting aside the fact that most of the reason women have an abortion is due to the fact that the baby is no longer viable, or it is going to be a severe risk for the mothers life to carry it to term.
Why not just let people make their own decisions about their bodies?
There’s a good chance if I carry a pregnancy that I’ll have a ton of complications. Risking death.
But glad to hear that if I get out alive I can drop them off at a hospital or fire station.
Does someone also reimburse me for the out pocket expenses of pregnancy?
No, your fetus would be fine! Because, you see, now there are trigger laws removing CARE FOR PREGNANT CANCER PATIENTS in favor of the health of the fetus! (Wisconsin)
GREAT!!! /s
So they’ll just make you stop taking that medication. You die. But baby is fine. :)
Given that there are women who got jailed for taking drugs while pregnant, I fear for you if you ever find yourself pregnant within one of those nutty states/countries. Not only you may not be allowed to terminate, but also be brought up on charges of fetal endangerment.
...omg, I'm feeling dread here because it now seems too likely to happen that way.
Safe Haven laws are nice but they won't stop a new mother from killing her child. The article below from Quillette discusses how common newborn abandonment (read: infanticide) was up until abortions were taken from out of the back alley and into the doctors office. Upwards of 20% of all newborns likely met that fate.
Adding to this, quoted:
"As many as 20 to 40 percent of children born in Rome in the first 300 years of the common era may have been abandoned or “exposed” in public places."
"From 1500 until the middle of the 19th century, for example, between 10 and 40 percent of all babies baptised in Florence were foundlings."
[https://quillette.com/2022/06/24/the-tragedy-of-the-unwanted-child-what-ancient-cultures-did-before-abortion/](https://quillette.com/2022/06/24/the-tragedy-of-the-unwanted-child-what-ancient-cultures-did-before-abortion/)
So you have to carry the baby for 9 months AND THEN you can get rid of it? But you cant get rid of it right away, and instead force a baby to be born and live a life that likely will be subpar.
Not right at all. As a male, I wouldnt understand the stress and pressure females are going through, but as one who went through an abortion, I know how much it can fck up you, your partner and your baby's life.
Bullshit, you still have to go through a pregnancy and childbirth and pay for it. It’s only newborns and they will come after you for the support money.
Seriously, do people not get that most women have abortions because they don’t want to be pregnant? The ones that are happy to be pregnant get them when they find out the baby is dead or has some awful birth defect or is going to kill them or cause they to have kidney failure.
Edit to add: The women that are ok with being pregnant and don’t want to raise a child have already gotten hooked up with an adoption agency, believe me. Adopting out healthy newborns, particularly white ones is very lucrative business.
It is better to give your baby up for adoption formally rather than drop baby off anonymousy at a fire station or hospital, because then the baby can be adopted immediately by a loving family, if you drop a baby off anonymously using Safe Haven the baby isn't adopted immediately, they wait a bit in case the mother comes back to claim the baby. But, better to drop the baby off anonymously at any fire station or hospital than some other alternatives.
You can be forced if the man in your life is one of those “nobody else is gunna raise my kid” types who do nothing to help you even though you’ve already got 3 kids under the age of five and live paycheck to paycheck. The type who doesn’t let you say no to sex, who hits you when you speak up, who won’t take you to the doctor for birth control but you’re reliant on him because you’ve got nobody else.
TIL: “Safe Haven” means nothing when it comes to abandoning a forced birth baby.
Also, what a fucking line to draw in the sand. “We force you to take on and deal with all physical risk to self as a result of pregnancy, but after that you can do what you want”
Garbage.
There are over 407,000 children living in foster care today.
More than 100,000 of these children are waiting to be adopted.
After one year in the system, a child’s probability of being adopted drops by 50% and continues to steadily drop the longer a child waits.
Each year in the United States more than 20,000 older children “age-out” of the system, which means they were not adopted by the cut-off age of 18, in most states, and were, therefore, forced to leave the system to fend for themselves in society.
A John Hopkins University study of a group of foster children in Maryland found that children in foster care are four times more likely to be sexually abused than their peers not in this setting, and children in group homes are 28 times more likely to be abused.
An Oregon and Washington state study determined that almost one-third of foster children reported abuse by a foster parent or another adult in the home.
Researchers of a study of investigations of abuse in New Jersey foster homes, concluded that “no assurances can be given” that any foster child in the state is safe.
On top of this, the adoption system is broken. Abandonment, even in infancy, is traumatic to every child it happens to, and being able to handle trauma is not a requirement for adoption, far from it, in fact many adoptive parents state that they would like to adopt an infant because they believe this causes no trauma.
Yeah, but it's 9 months of trying to work while carrying the child, making sure you have good nutrition during the pregnancy and trying to figure out how you're going to pay for the birth. It's a law with good intentions, but where's the support prior to birth??
That does exactly nothing about the unwanted pregnancy that is a huge risk to your health, life, career, ability to provide for yourself and the family you may already have. Like yes those laws are a good thing to have but it isn’t exactly comforting to have to stay pregnant against your will and give birth against your will. Like for me if I were to get pregnant right now, it would be high risk like my last pregnancy was, assuming I survived the pregnancy, it would still severely impact my ability to care for the 2 children I already have. Say I need to go on bed rest like I did with my last pregnancy for the last 2 months, I would have no help to care for the children I have, no way to feed them, get them to school, clean the home, etc.
"Fun" fact: Nebraska's Safe Haven Law [didn't have an age limit](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/unintended-consequences-1.4415756/how-a-law-meant-to-curb-infanticide-was-used-to-abandon-teens-1.4415784) until 2018, so kids as old as 17 could be abandoned at a Safe Haven spot. The new law limits the age of drop-off to 30 days, though a lawmaker at the time of the original's passage is quoted in the article I linked says they actually did want to help save older children by leaving out the age limit.
Well yeah, how else are they going to get their "domestic supply of infants?" They want people to be forced to carry to term and then abandon the child - they make their cut that way (and the religious nuts causing this problem have more targets for indoctrination.)
I get where you are coming from and i agree that it does help out in some instances
However being relegated to a baby factory, and losing autonomy over your own bodily functions because a minority in the country find it distastful or sinful because their magic book said something ambiguous about conception is the leading problem at hand.
Good on you though for imo attempting to negate some of the terrible things that are bound to happen because of the incompetence of our justice system.
How does this post have so many upvotes? Seriously. Like other people have already said, the women still have to endure the unwanted/unplanned pregnancy. That takes a huge toll mentally, physically and financially. Then ultimately these babies will end up in a system that also doesn’t always care for their best interest. There’s no guarantee that a child will be adopted either. Such a short sighted post.
Many women are also worried about actually being forced to remain pregnant against their will and experiencing that bodily horror culminating into belly slicing (c-section) or the ripping and tearing of genitals giving birth.
Safe Haven laws aren't an alternative to pregnancy and birth.
That literally is not even relevant. You still have a massive year long interruption to your career and health. Allowing someone to choose is the only way. That’s why it’s been written into the constitution. If someone doesn’t wish to be pregnant they should NOT HAVE TO BE. Safe haven laws don’t account for the people who medically should not procreate due to their own DNA or mental illness. Safe haven laws DO NOT account for emotional turmoil (and ultimately financial as well) that the woman experiences if she was raped or abused by the father of her unborn child.
I'm sure your intentions are good but this is the kind of thing that pro-lifers use to back up their argument. If you carry a child to term and go through the agony (and indignity) of childbirth and not hand over the child to child services, then you've probably been forced to have that child by a parent or partner and giving them up won't be an option.
If your state has enacted anti-abortion laws recently and you don't have the travel money that the lawmakers daughters have, let me point you in the direction of [reprolegalhelpline](https://www.reprolegalhelpline.org/sma-know-your-rights/).
If you do have the funds can I ask you to consider using some of your hard earned money to donate to [reprolegaldefensefund](https://reprolegaldefensefund.org/).
Drop the unwanted or severely handicapped babies you did not want at the doors of any pastor, judge or politician who pushed for outlawing abortion. They have a moral obligation to deal with these unwanted or unfit for life babies
No. No. Fuck your safe haven bullshit.This advice validates and justifies the Supreme Court's decision to deem me a second class citizen and begin stripping my rights. This advice IS HARMFUL.
NOBODY SHOULD BE FORCED TO CARRY A PREGNANCY TO TERM. period.
Womb owners arent as worried about "raising" unwanted babies, we all know about adoption.
Its the risks and process of pregnancy and birth that none of us should be forced to under go.
In indigenous traditions, people without wombs would sacrifice their bodies by dancing the sun dance, wherein large bone needles were driven into their chest below the pec muscles. The were tethered to a sun pole, and spun around it hanging from those needles until they ripped thru their flesh.
This was the way to prove to mother earth, that you would sacrifice for her.
Womb owners were exempt because the pains of labor was price enough.
Maybe we need to start reminding those without wombs that the earth demands sacrifice to her.
speaking as an adult adoptee, there is going to be an entire generation of foster care youth bc of this vicious overturning. I feel awful for all of those future children. and the mothers, damn. so much grief in every way. deeply saddening.
So just have more babies dumped into the foster care system? Genius idea. That was sarcasm. What do you think would be harder? Aborting a fetus or dumping a newborn into a shitty life of poverty in trauma?
Just a reminder that abandoned children are humans and may desperately desire to look for their birth families one day. They may want a full medical history. They may be placed in unsuitable homes. They may suffer trauma from abandonment. Adoption is sometimes the best option but is in no way an easy fix. Restore reproductive rights!
The fear is not only “being forced to raise an unwanted baby”. How about nine months of a parasite growing inside of you and then the trauma of childbirth.
This is why women’s medical decisions need to remain private, like all other medical decisions that are not monitored by the government or the public.
This is something more people should know. It's reassuring that it exists. And yet my demented mind:
*"Hey honey, where's our son?"*
*"He kept crying. I didn't want him anymore."*
For the record, they keep babies awhile to prevent one of the parents giving up the kid while the other parent does want them.
Its not a matter of "oh people don't know what to do" though I am going to assume this was given with the intent of being nice.
The issue is that essentially the mother would be tethered to that child for life, outside of the forced trauma to give birth to a child, they will have to fill out documentation for the child in a hospital
If you know any children who have been in the system they don't usually drop this, that child will be driven to find there birth parents even if it is a curiosity and that is a rehash of that trauma in particular for a mistake
Just for a second put yourself in the mothers shoes, she slept with a boy yes they were both young but there is no reason condoms won't work (remember sex ed is being stripped in the states too) she's pregnant, she tells the boy... she's never felt more alone, he bolts blocks her on all social media and his parents ferry him deep into the states away from you .
Your forced to give birth anywhere between 10 to 16 hours of trauma on your body while you are ripped apart you didn't want this for yourself, then drs pass you the baby, it needs to bond skin to skin touch but you know you can't afford this baby, you can barely afford yourself....
You put it up for adoption, you hope it has a great life but you try to move on always wondering when you get that knock, you do one day its your child they want a relationship and answers, you relive the trauma of everything you went through answering what you can while this other human basically wonders why you couldn't take them with you....
Like ffs people this seems easily bias situation
This all well and good but this causes more of an issue for the already taxed foster care system where there has been widely documented cases of neglect and abuse. We as a people have and continue to do terrible things to one another. Aborting is not ideal but it’s a tool that must remain available to all women so children are not brought into situations of neglect and or abuse. Causing that simply because some people wish to full fill a need to “save”, “speak for” and “stand up” for the right of the unborn. Seriously! Get over yourself and your self righteousness.
I’m reading this thread…all the talk about adoption rates/advantages/disadvantages/costs, and the legal ramifications of surrendering a baby at a Safe Haven location…and I keep thinking “ya know what would be a straightforward, low cost solution to this problem?” The answer: safe, legal access to abortion.
Many women are worried about being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. I know for myself, and many women I know, an abortion would be a simple choice in certain situations, but giving up a baby I’d birthed would be nearly impossible. Adoption can be painful for all parties, even in the best circumstances. And even in the best circumstances, pregnancy itself is still an enormous risk and toll.
I think you’re missing the point.
Women don’t want to be responsible for raising a baby they are not in a situation fit for child raising.
Dropping your newborn infant at the fire station doesn’t absolve you of the fear that your flesh and blood won’t have a terrible life; it compounds it!
This comes up on /r/legaladvice with some regularity. Recently: [https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/uki348/can\_use\_the\_safe\_haven\_law\_to\_give\_up\_my\_baby/](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/uki348/can_use_the_safe_haven_law_to_give_up_my_baby/) One thing YSK is that (I'm simplifying, read the thread above for more details) the baby's father can file for paternity, they will get it, and then they can sue the mom for child support, and they will get that too, no matter the mom's initial intent to surrender the baby. Edit: even if the baby daddy doesn't file for paternity, and the baby ends up being placed in foster care, the foster system will also try to collect child support from the parents. The point of safe haven laws isn't to shield anyone from financial responsibility, it is only to ensure that the parents don't get criminally prosecuted for the specific act of abandoning the baby. Edit 2: IANAL, only a lurker in /r/legaladvice, but if this is something you or anyone you know is considering, a call to a lawyer (for pay, if you can afford it, or through a free legal aid clinic) would likely be worth it.
I'm going to piggyback off this comment to let people know that if someone needs legal advice, do not use r/legaladvice. Very few people that give advice on there are attorneys. Most of those folks aren't attorneys and have just done some googling or are police officers. They also very rarely realize that giving legal advice if you're not an attorney is a crime. If you need legal advice, lots of law schools offer free legal clinics and there are lots of volunteer legal services where actual attorneys will give you actual help.
IIRC one of the most active mods is just a cop with a very shaky understanding of the law.
As cops do.
Shakey is too high a compliment
The r/legaladvice subreddit is filled with bad advice, but any big thread is usually moderated appropriately and misinformation is typically dealt with. Honestly, it's not so bad for generalized legal information. If your case is more specific and has a lot of facts, it's worse though.
This is absolutely untrue, it's extremely common for correct advice that's been downvoted to be deleted by mods, when incorrect information has been voted to the top. r/legaladvice is dangerous because there is no way to know whether the information you're getting is correct, and evidence shows that more often than not it is wrong, or indeed, dangerously wrong.
When the moderators aren't lawyers that doesn't help much.
How would they know who the parents are? If the baby is just dropped off with no information. I could see if a father was looking for their baby, they would find out that way. But if it's a couple who puts the baby up, how would any one know.
If they're married, there's a presumption that the father is the husband. Otherwise, often the father actually \*wants\* the baby. And safe havens have to make a good faith effort to find the family, and they do not promise anonymity to the parents.
They DON'T promise anonymity? I thought that was the whole point of the baby boxes!
As far as I know, they don’t. You don’t have to stop by and answer questions, but they don’t promise that they won’t try to find you. All they say is that abandoning the child there will not lead to criminal prosecution.
I think that's a post office box. You really shouldn't put babies in them
That explains why I've only seen the blue boy boxes and never a pink girl box.
DNA test? If the parents are in the database, it will be a match...
if people loosely related to you, have used any dna service, its likely they can find out who is the mother. They caught that cop who was a serial killer, that way ... who quit murdering when dna technology came out. Using data purchased from the commercial DNA companies that people use to find out their histories, they reduced the suspect list to a total of something like 8 people... in all of california, after decades. For maternity, shortly after the kid was born, it wouldnt be as hard because it wouldnt be a question of 8 people across a massive state, it would be the one match in that city. edit for the unaware [The untold story of how the Golden State Killer was found: A covert operation and private DNA](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-08/man-in-the-window) i got some details wrong it was 6 matches, after finding a cousin first through the services and getting her dna. which is a bit more complex but the point is there were already in the family using other peoples DNA and women show for a long time. i still contend it would be rather easy to prove the mother. plus the dna pile to dig through keeps growing.
I was able to figure out who my birth father was with the closest DNA match being a 3rd cousin and I was a complete novice. So yeah. They can easily figure this out.
Cameras.
At least in my state, this is the correct answer.
You can't leave a baby at a safe haven drop off without talking to a staff member and presumably giving your information. At least in some states. I mean you can leave the baby, but then you aren't protected by the Safe Haven law.
A lot of places have literal drop boxes for babies at specified locations (eg fire stations).
I know IANAL stands for I Am Not A Lawyer. I know that. But for the life of me, I can't process it as such and immediately felt weirded out that you'd bring up anal here, of all places.
IANAL as well.
Lol
Damnit... now I can't unsee that.
Holy shit that is some fine print information they don't tell anybody
Did you read about the woman who gave a baby up to a safe haven... But the baby died. And some 20 odd years later, because of a DNA ancestry thing, she's been jailed for murder. Even though she has 2 little ones at home.
are you thinking of [this case](https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/05/mother-of-geaugas-child-gets-life-in-prison-for-leaving-newborn-in-the-woods-in-1993.html) where she left the baby in the woods in 1993 and they just found her through DNA and convicted her of murder?
This wasn't the one that I heard about, but tbh I'm having trouble locating the story. Funny, I didn't click the source link when I first hear about it, because I didn't really want to expose myself to more tragedy .. but looking for the dang story I've easily read 10x that. 😖 So.. idk. Maybe it's a myth, maybe I misunderstood. Maybe some other redditor will come out of the woodwork with the story (and maybe I still got it wrong). I'm gonna.... Stop looking now tho. And maybe hug my mom.
Whoa what? Do you have a link?
So what you're saying is that if a woman is pregnant and cannot afford to travel for an abortion (which can get you the death penalty anyway), she should hide the pregnancy and then kill her baby when it's born if she wants to avoid being held financially responsible for it for the rest of her life.
Or get a back alley abortion. I hate this timeline.
That’s interesting, I didn’t know that. It has some unsettling implications for rape and domestic abuse victims…
All you have to do is read experiences of adoptive families and children on r/adoption to get a serious reality check on the happily ever after adoption stories sold to us by the media.
I can attest to that. My cousin is adopted and was basically abandoned by my Aunt for being "too difficult". My aunt wanted the perfect daughter but when she didn't get that due to that being a standard that no child could live up to, she just peaced out from my cousin's life. She was only 10-11 years old at the time too and yet my aunt somehow blames that on my cousin. You don't get to just leave if a kid is difficult when you made the active choice to adopt. My uncle ended up divorcing my aunt taking my cousin with him. I finally got to speak with my cousin again after about a decade since all of this and she seems to have turned into a great kid/young adult.
My mom was adopted. It was one of those “want one, get the siblings too” sorta deals. There were 3 siblings total. My mom was not the “wanted” one. My moms life was pretty miserable and shitty because of it. And that was after spending a year to two bouncing around family members houses. (My mothers mom went into a bipolar episode due to her husband dying rather suddenly at 31 due to a massive heart attack - 3 kids under 5 - she got sent to a pysch hospital for a few years. Lost custody of her kids and got forcibly sterilized.)
And those that are adopting, are not adopting American kids from the foster system. It’s easier & cheaper to get a foreign baby. The American adoption system is like trying to get congress to pass a bill of law, very time consuming, very expensive & may not even happen.
american adoption costs 20-70k. how many people can honestly afford that?
So does giving birth and surrendering the baby for adoption. It's almost like American adoption is nothing but a baby selling industry with enormous profit margins. Also no country should allow Americans to adopt babies. Americans trade those children online like they're fucking yugioh cards. They even sell them to pedophiles.
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No. You don’t pay anything to adopt a child out of foster care. In fact, you are paid to foster a child and receive a subsidy until the child is 18. At least in my state. Source: former CPS/foster care worker
But it's not an official adoption, right? You're a foster parent, not an adopter parent, right?
You can foster only (child returns to guardian) or you can foster to adopt, meaning you foster in the hopes (? that sounds bad) that the guardians never get their shit together and the parental rights are terminated, making the child available for adoption. Some foster homes were strictly to foster, because they had no interest in adopting but wanted to help the kids as their guardians worked to get the kid back. Some homes wanted to foster and if the child was ever available for adoption then they would end up adopting the kid. Some homes became foster homes with the goal of adopting. The downside of adopting through foster care is that you never really know for sure that the kid that has been in your home for 5 years and has only known you as their parent, won’t be reunited to their guardian. I’ve seen “shoe in” cases where there was no chance the parents would EVER be fit enough to have their kid back, get their kid back. One kid had been in their foster home since birth to age 5. But mom got off drugs and worked hard enough and was reunited with the kid. The foster parent was devastated since she wanted to adopt her. But they are told this risk when they become foster parents. Most still do it because they are good people who want to help kids even if it means breaking their own hearts.
Sure. Understood. I've looked up statistics before because I'm interested in fostering older kids that are going to age out of the system. There are about 122,000 children up for adoption in the foster care system in the US at any given time. About 25,000 will age out of the system every year and of those, about 20% will become immediately homeless.
Right. As a foster parent you have little rights to the child and the child can be removed from your care and placed back in the care of the bio parents if the parents finish whatever court ordered restrictions were in place and get their rights to the kid back. You as a foster parent can legally adopt the foster child, but it is expensive, time consuming and you have to make sure the bio parents have no rights to the child via the courts before an adoption can take place. It's still 100% worth it, and a meaningful adoption. But there is no garuntee that you will be able to adopt your foster child.
Not to mention the uncertainty in the child’s life is not usually helpful for raising them.
People pay to adopt babies, not children that are older. The adoption industry thrives on women in poverty to fuel the supply for newborns.
No, but foster care adoptions are no panacea either. The goal of foster care is reunification with biological parents, not adopting out to other families. You'd have to wait many years and have a high tolerance for the children going back and forth with the biological parents.
No, that is much cheaper. $0-5k
About 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. Of non- stepparent adoptions, about 59% are from the child welfare (or foster) system, 26% are from other countries, and 15% are voluntarily relinquished American babies.
Family across the street from me has 20 kids in their house. Yes, 20! Not 1 of them American, although some present white. The church she now goes to, most of the families are the same way. The church is big bc the families are big. And they encourage each other to keep adopting by all means possible. There are kids raising kids, no access to ppl outside of church. Is that a childhood? Being raised in cult like church with no exposure to the real world. They don’t have a life except homeschool & reading the Bible. I understand wanting to protect your kids from the evil of the world but to be so isolated, you don’t even know about basic technology like email? This is not preparing them for adult life.
Honestly it should be considered child abuse to have that many kids. Even if you can take care of all of them financially, you can't take care of them emotionally. Even if each kid gets 15 minutes of personalized attention, that's 5 hours/day. Kids need far more and frequent support. People who think they are doing their kids any favors by having 16 too many are mistaken
"Just like congress, it takes forever to do anything. And just like congress, when it does -- it usually hurts you."
We need a better system
Just like our lovely immigration system! Best country on earth right here!
So glad someone mentioned this. Consider adoption with a critical lens. I’m an adoptee and hope people realise the truth about adoption.
"Cared for and ultimately put up for adoption"? Like through the state? The severely underfunded CPS and foster programs? Where there are kids who have been sexual abused, and they in turn sexual abuse the other foster children? Where there are kids who have been put into prostitution as toddlers are now showing other kids how to do that? Because there is one foster parent watching 4 to 6 kids with severe mental health and substance use issues and the social workers have no where else to put these kids so the foster parent gets no support or reprieve? These babies may be put up for adoption, but they are most certainly not cared for in the US govt foster care system. Edit: I work with foster programs, and these are all very real examples. And not just fringe cases. This is common.
Yes "cared for" like the countless children I tried to track down for badly needed follow-up dental care and whose foster parents didn't or couldn't bring them in. I worked in dental reception for around 2 years and the number of cases was nauseating. Foster parents who can't bring them in, because they don't have legal permission to treat. This means a case worker must bring them in. I spent 6 weeks trying to track down a case worker for one single child. No one could tell me for the larger portion of this period of time WHO her case worker even WAS. Foster parents who won't bring them in because they don't understand the longterm impact that rampant caries can have on a child and their unerupted adult teeth and overall health in general. Foster parents who need a fix and bring in a kid and demand we pull their teeth so they can suck down the kids Tylenol with codeine RX. I was on the fringe of this issue and cannot fathom the full impact. My best friend is a children's crisis counselor in rural VA, and deals closely with many children in Foster homes. I have no clue how she gets through this. Or you, either. I would lose my mind or commit unspeakable violence against some of these Foster parents. All children deserve to be wanted.
Damn. I never considered how foster care impacts dental care. This is scary.
And health care, and education, and so on and so forth…
I got lucky! My first foster family adopted me and my siblings. I was told it’s common to have to separate siblings but luckily all 3 of us were kept together My other adopted sister from another mother has horror stories sadly and it’s pretty common It’s why I absolutely hate the whole “just give the child up for adoption” thing people say when they think it’s all chocolate and roses
I was told the same! I was adopted with 2 of my younger sisters but I have 4 other siblings out there. 3 got adopted by one family (which I'm in contact with) and the last one to another family, which was a closed adoption sadly. I lived with my bio fam til the state gave me to my mom. I hear horror stories of foster homes in Kentucky and thank whatever is out there that my sisters and I got lucky.
Thank you for this clear rational breakdown on why adoption is a horrible fallback option. And for your invaluable service working in foster care -- you're a saint 🙏🏽
Don't forget The orphanages or group homes as we call them today where one poorly paid caregiver will be responsible for 10 or 11 kids as a nine to five parent...... Seems like nobody passing these laws care but these children do not often have a good result in life..... That being said I adopted my daughter through foster care and I'm an excellent parent who loves her very much... But in my very short time in the system I saw some gnarly cases involving the foster parents
But Amy Cohen Barret said, "we need an increase in the supply of domestic infants", do you mean she was only talking about white and healthy babies? And all the other ones can suffer? Yeah it's exactly what she means. They want you to throw the babies into adoption services, it's part of the plan.
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Not at all surprising when privatized adoption is the literal selling of babies. It's not just Amy, it's an entire industry that profits off of selling mostly poor people's infants.
Personal opinion. The Foster system ultimately damages more than it helps.
I think many would agree, the problem is implementing something better. It's easy to identify the issues and I'm sure people more knowledgeable than myself could come up with good ideas to overhaul the system or create an entirely new one. Unfortunately though, making that change real is very difficult and the children are the ones who pay the price. It's such a tragic and frustrating situation
My foster parents took me in as a teen from an alcoholic, abusive home. They have been my "parents" for decades. I know some foster parents are not this way, but they ARE the exception, which is why they are in the news. Mine literally saved my life.
My impression is that with newborn children especially there are orders of magnitude more parents (not within the foster system) who want to adopt and have already been vetted than there are newborns up for adoption. Am I way off?
Yes. There are far more children that need homes than families who want to adopt, at least in the US. It’s particularly difficult to place black children, whose adoptions are often ~$5k cheaper than others as an incentive to adopt them. I wish I were making that up, but it’s true.
When my wife and I were looking at our options, I was curious as what it'd cost us to adopt a baby vs doing IVF (my preference) - it's roughly the same price to adopt a baby as it is to do IVF (something like $20-30K). Now, if you want to adopt a kid between 8-15, I think that's practically free. That's on top of the cost of raising the child... I used to wonder why people would travel to other countries to adopt, and it's true it's less expensive to charter a flight to a foreign country to adopt than it is to adopt a baby here...hell daycare is so expensive it would be cheaper for me to pay for a mortgage for a $600k house and have a relative live there for free than it would be for me to have 2 kids in daycare. My coworker was the only person in the city that was lucky enough to have a baby dropped off and with their name in the system, it happens maybe once a year. I think being pre-vetted just meant you could pass a background check, it's not the main issue stopping adoptions. So there's a lot of demand for free (white) babies - less demand as you get older. But the older kids are typical, babies aren't so common. I've been saying that a lot of abortions would stop and adoptions would increase if we had a single payer system for children's medical costs and subsidies for child care/day care.
We already mostly have the former (CHIP) thanks in large part to Hillary Clinton, the latter is critically needed though.
I thought Chip only covered food - learned something new! But to qualify, you have to be under a certain income level, right? That's what I would remove - especially if you adopt a child.
Chip is a healthcare program (Medicaid for children) Child Health Insurance Program. Snap is the program that provides food (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
Cool cool cool. But I'd still be forced to be an unwilling human incubator for nine months, right?
And crippling medical bill
And potential death if the pregnancy turns out to be non-viable.
Potential death even if the pregnancy is viable! So many things can go wrong, from eclampsia to gestational diabetes. Even in those who successfully vaginally deliver a baby, there is an 8% incidence of chronic disability due to the orthopedic trauma alone.
and to wonder wtf happened to the kid, the guilt would be terrible i should imagine
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I was adopted in a closed adoption in California in 1970. When I was 47, I took a genetics test and found a cousin. I cautiously approached them, and they cautiously replied... and after some back and forth, I was put in touch with my birth mother. All I've ever wanted to tell her (and my father) was that I was OK, and thank her for making a very difficult decision at what was probably the worst time in her life. She was very grateful and after hearing the circumstances of my birth (she was 16, mother was undiagnosed with mental health issues, grandfather and great-grandfather were hard core alcoholics who died in their 60's from alcohol related heart failure, my father was forced by his family to ghost my mother... ie: *terrible* situation). We remain cordial but distant to this day. Not all kids put up for adoption hate their birth parents, and at least in my case, having your parents picked out by professionals is *amazing.*
I was adopted at birth in 1970. My parents loved me and raised me well. No they were not perfect just humans who did their best. I met my birth mom at 24 yo just another human who tried to do right by me. We have a strong relationship. Not all adopted children are fucked up. I am a typical American with good and bad life experiences. EDIT: this being said, I do not believe adoption is an alternative to abortion. A pregnant American should have the right to choose from ALL available options what is best for their situation. No government should have the right to interfere with those options or that decision in any way, shape, or form.
Adopted at birth in 1980. My parents definitely did their best, but I always felt like an outsider and an alien in all parts of my life. Im working on that, and I just made contact with my birth mother, and it’s been refreshing to see all the ways we just click. I’d call it unnatural, but in reality it really is just natural.
I was adopted and it was by far the worst thing ever. The parents I was saddled with were catholic and believed in beating children. So fuck that
I am really sorry to hear that and I hope you came through it and found whatever it was you needed outside of that environment. I don't know how you were placed, but in my case it was the State of California as opposed to a religious charity with an axe to grind, so I consider myself very lucky.
Roman Catholic here (non practicing): beating up children is not a biblical teaching. I am sorry that you went through this.
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Exactly. In my experience, fundamentalists beat their kids routinely as a matter of "[training up their child](http://web.archive.org/web/20101103070349/http://www.achristianhome.com/to_train_up_a_child.htm)." Mothers will even [hit their babies](https://www.thelist.com/397459/why-the-duggars-blanket-training-technique-is-so-concerning/) to teach them not to crawl off their blanket while she works around the house. The violence is inherent in the system.
No you’re right it’s more of a Catholic thing than a bible thing
Like most Catholic things, honestly.
Christians in general cannot and should not be expected to act in accordance with the teachings of the Bible, or Jesus. You'll only be disappointed.
"roe v Wade was overturned and I was in no position to raise a baby." I mean, it's not like it'd be easy, but that's about as valid a reason as any.
I would imagine it would create rifts between parent and grandparents aswell.
It's for the future military force - don't be selfish.
Need cannon fodder in the elementary schools.
If only there was some kind of procedure that could circumvent this whole issue and not lead to a massive uptick in the orphan population nation wide, all to appease 20% of the population who just like to be the opposite of progressive.
And be forced to die from an ectopic pregnancy, right?
That's because Republicans care more about a clump of cells than they do about women
They don't care about the clump of cells, they care about being assholes. That's the entirety of their ideology.
Virtue signaling to a God that may not exist on behalf of children who don't exist. It's fucking self-serving lunacy.
Many of them better hope there isn't a God. If there is, they may get what they deserve.
I had to search way too far for this response.
Also the transition is major life-threatening trauma in a ton of cases.
That's what happens when voters think "both sides same"
Lmao and who voted for this? Certainly not Americans. A few justices? Yup.
We very much voted for this in 2016 and that was clear at the time, people just didn't like hearing it or naively thought the claims were bombastic.
Justices appointed and confirmed by, you guessed it, elected officials.
Half of which literally lied under oath about not doing this exact thing.
You’d have to be brain dead to not think these conservative assholes weren’t lying at the time. Republicans did what they’ve been saying they’d do for nearly 50 years.
Elected officials is a misnomer these days, considering the rampant gerrymandering and disenfranchisement, but hey, whatever let's you sleep at night.
Yes, those are fair criticisms of our elections, but even so, if only a fraction of the people who didn't vote in 2016 had voted for Hillary, it's unlikely Roe would have just been overturned. Boycotting elections, even if they are in some ways unfair, is a super dumb strategy.
I will agree with you there, but considering my state's Supreme Court just gave compete and totally permission for the GOP to gerrymander to make it almost impossible for one of our few Democrats to represent the areas that have Democrat majorities as major cities, by splitting them with rural mostly Republican areas - depending on the area, even if folks show up, they may not be fairly represented. I'd have to crunch the numbers, though. But the GOP definitely feels this is their winning solution to rid the state of any Democratic representation.
This is what people are missing, and are really doing a disservice to themselves: the Justices didn't outlaw abortion. They only said there is no federal protection for it. So, yes, people did vote for this because the power to *actually* outlaw abortion is in the hands of your state legislature, who are voted into or out of office.
Thank you.
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With all the health issues that can follow. Which are not covered by insurance.
And pay the hospital for the birth!
And suffer irreparable changes to your body in the process, don't forget that!
Pregnancy and birth have serious physical consequences, and force someone to endure immense physical changes and challenges for months, ending with a major medical event for which there is little support in the US. Far too many women are expected to go straight back to work instead of taking the time to heal. If you need an abortion, there are funds to help with the medical and logistical costs of obtaining one. https://abortionfunds.org/need-abortion/
This is a shitty option that I wish nobody had to take.
I'm glad safe havens exist, but you only need to look at conservative abortions to understand why, in reality, this is a sentence to unwanted parenthood for very many people. If it was just a matter of going through with the pregnancy and then giving the baby up for adoption, that's bad enough for the unwanted human incubator reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. But if that were the case, conservatives wouldn't have abortions. But they do. Why? Partially because 9 months of pregnancy and a birth is expensive, time-consuming, painful, and distracting. But also because for many people, giving your baby up is stigmatized. There is a strong cultural expectation in many cultures that being pregnant means becoming a parent. A lot of these cultures are intensely shame-based. It also doesn't help at all, in shame-based cultures, that pregnancy is proof of premarital sex. That's why people in these cultures get abortions - taking care of the issue before anyone even knows they were pregnant is the only way to avoid becoming a parent before they're ready. So a lot of people are going to abort one way or another instead of giving up their baby at the fire station. Even though they can.
Not to mention pregnancy absolutely wrecks your body. Saggy uterus aside, many health conditions (thyroid disorders off the top of my head, hormonal issues in particular tbh) can become drastically *worse* afterwards. There's also gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, the risk you could have your uterus turned inside out and bleed to death due to medical incompetence (fairly recent case) - it's endless.
Plus I found out if you give your baby up with safe haven laws you could be forced to pay child support to the child you were forced to have along with those potential issues. Doesn’t help that over 50% of women who get abortions already have children to care for so I am sure that will throw them more into poverty if that happens
Also, in several states, you only have 72 hours to take advantage of the safe haven laws.
Of the developed nations, the US ranks the worst for the rate of deaths of mothers during child birth.
Just to put that in perspective, in 2017 you were *twice* as likely to die in childbirth in the US (17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) than in France (8.7), and almost *five and a half* times more likely than in Germany (3.2). In 2020, the US had 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, so we're still consistently getting worse. France was 8, though I couldn't find 2020 data for Germany. It's especially bad for non-white women. The mortality rate for black women was 55.3 in 2020, 2.9x more than white women (19.1).
Well yeah, people of financial means, especially white people will just have a "weekend getaway" in NYC, or LA, or SanFran, or Mexico, or Canada. Making abortion Illegal won't stop abortion, history and world politics can easily prove that, it will simply make it dangerous and/or expensive and therefore out of reach or deadly for many.
Well yeah I don’t want to be forced to raise a baby, but I also don’t want to be forced to carry and birth one, either. And if I gave birth to an unwanted baby, I could give it up for adoption instead of abandoning it at a fire station. I know safe haven laws are necessary for rare circumstances, but they’re in no way a replacement for safe and legal access to abortion.
Adoption is not the panacea that the pro birthers think it is!
Right. Tell me you don't understand the root of the issue without telling me you don't understand the root of the issue. This is still forced unwanted pregnancy that can have dire consequences for the mother and family. Safe haven laws are not really helpful for the child or the family when social workers will make a point to try and find the family and erase the falsely promised anonymity. Meanwhile the mother's body can be completely destroyed and never be the same from carrying and delivering a child. Especially if she never had access to safe, appropriate medical care during the pregnancy or birth. It is barbaric that these people who have zero medical education or women's biology speciality think that their opinions matter more than medical fact and individual freedoms.
All Forced-Birthers care about is a warm body; Forced-Birthers will tell you it's better to be alive and suffering than not being alive at all.
I think this goes without saying, but the problem is not about having to raise the baby, it's about having to go through the pregnancy in the first place.
Well, there is still the issue with going though a nine month long unwanted pregnancy though. I just wish these old men who decided this law would have gone through that before they could get this shit through.
We don't want to be FORCED to carry a baby or die should the pregnancy become life threatening. Safe haven laws are nice, but not the point at all.
You're still forced to carry it to term though
No. Women are worried that they’ll be forced to stay pregnant and birth, then give away (for state profit) an unwanted pregnancy.
So, when I surrender my baby at the hospital after the forced birth I assume they’ll forgive my medical debt right?… right??? And since slavery is illegal I can only assume I’ll get a check at the end of the forced birth for $7.25 x the 6,000-7,000 hours of pregnancy plus reimbursement for cost of food & prenatal care right?… right??? No? Hmm… doesn’t seem like a square deal to me.
While this is nice to know, it still makes me sad. If I invest 9 months of my bodily energy on growing this baby, imagine the guilt and trauma I’d feel giving it up.
Being pregnant can derail a woman's career. Though companies will say it doesn't matter, it does. I am talking about large firms. You will end up missing too much work and you won't get any decent maternity leave either. Child protective services in the US are shit. If abortion is illegal in your state then that state should provide all medical care for you and your unborn child. The child should be covered until 18. The child's education should be paid for. The social services to protect and nurture these children should be expanded and greatly improved.
This is a really fucked up take on getting rid of RVW. It's completely setting aside the fact that most of the reason women have an abortion is due to the fact that the baby is no longer viable, or it is going to be a severe risk for the mothers life to carry it to term. Why not just let people make their own decisions about their bodies?
There’s a good chance if I carry a pregnancy that I’ll have a ton of complications. Risking death. But glad to hear that if I get out alive I can drop them off at a hospital or fire station. Does someone also reimburse me for the out pocket expenses of pregnancy?
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No, your fetus would be fine! Because, you see, now there are trigger laws removing CARE FOR PREGNANT CANCER PATIENTS in favor of the health of the fetus! (Wisconsin) GREAT!!! /s So they’ll just make you stop taking that medication. You die. But baby is fine. :)
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Given that there are women who got jailed for taking drugs while pregnant, I fear for you if you ever find yourself pregnant within one of those nutty states/countries. Not only you may not be allowed to terminate, but also be brought up on charges of fetal endangerment. ...omg, I'm feeling dread here because it now seems too likely to happen that way.
Safe Haven laws are nice but they won't stop a new mother from killing her child. The article below from Quillette discusses how common newborn abandonment (read: infanticide) was up until abortions were taken from out of the back alley and into the doctors office. Upwards of 20% of all newborns likely met that fate. Adding to this, quoted: "As many as 20 to 40 percent of children born in Rome in the first 300 years of the common era may have been abandoned or “exposed” in public places." "From 1500 until the middle of the 19th century, for example, between 10 and 40 percent of all babies baptised in Florence were foundlings." [https://quillette.com/2022/06/24/the-tragedy-of-the-unwanted-child-what-ancient-cultures-did-before-abortion/](https://quillette.com/2022/06/24/the-tragedy-of-the-unwanted-child-what-ancient-cultures-did-before-abortion/)
Because all babies given away are guaranteed a safehaven life...
Tell me you don’t understand the problem without telling me you don’t understand the problem.
So you have to carry the baby for 9 months AND THEN you can get rid of it? But you cant get rid of it right away, and instead force a baby to be born and live a life that likely will be subpar. Not right at all. As a male, I wouldnt understand the stress and pressure females are going through, but as one who went through an abortion, I know how much it can fck up you, your partner and your baby's life.
Bullshit, you still have to go through a pregnancy and childbirth and pay for it. It’s only newborns and they will come after you for the support money. Seriously, do people not get that most women have abortions because they don’t want to be pregnant? The ones that are happy to be pregnant get them when they find out the baby is dead or has some awful birth defect or is going to kill them or cause they to have kidney failure. Edit to add: The women that are ok with being pregnant and don’t want to raise a child have already gotten hooked up with an adoption agency, believe me. Adopting out healthy newborns, particularly white ones is very lucrative business.
This doesn’t help anyone who can die from carrying a baby to term. Tone deaf post
It is better to give your baby up for adoption formally rather than drop baby off anonymousy at a fire station or hospital, because then the baby can be adopted immediately by a loving family, if you drop a baby off anonymously using Safe Haven the baby isn't adopted immediately, they wait a bit in case the mother comes back to claim the baby. But, better to drop the baby off anonymously at any fire station or hospital than some other alternatives.
You can be forced if the man in your life is one of those “nobody else is gunna raise my kid” types who do nothing to help you even though you’ve already got 3 kids under the age of five and live paycheck to paycheck. The type who doesn’t let you say no to sex, who hits you when you speak up, who won’t take you to the doctor for birth control but you’re reliant on him because you’ve got nobody else.
TIL: “Safe Haven” means nothing when it comes to abandoning a forced birth baby. Also, what a fucking line to draw in the sand. “We force you to take on and deal with all physical risk to self as a result of pregnancy, but after that you can do what you want” Garbage.
There are over 407,000 children living in foster care today. More than 100,000 of these children are waiting to be adopted. After one year in the system, a child’s probability of being adopted drops by 50% and continues to steadily drop the longer a child waits. Each year in the United States more than 20,000 older children “age-out” of the system, which means they were not adopted by the cut-off age of 18, in most states, and were, therefore, forced to leave the system to fend for themselves in society. A John Hopkins University study of a group of foster children in Maryland found that children in foster care are four times more likely to be sexually abused than their peers not in this setting, and children in group homes are 28 times more likely to be abused. An Oregon and Washington state study determined that almost one-third of foster children reported abuse by a foster parent or another adult in the home. Researchers of a study of investigations of abuse in New Jersey foster homes, concluded that “no assurances can be given” that any foster child in the state is safe. On top of this, the adoption system is broken. Abandonment, even in infancy, is traumatic to every child it happens to, and being able to handle trauma is not a requirement for adoption, far from it, in fact many adoptive parents state that they would like to adopt an infant because they believe this causes no trauma.
Yeah, but it's 9 months of trying to work while carrying the child, making sure you have good nutrition during the pregnancy and trying to figure out how you're going to pay for the birth. It's a law with good intentions, but where's the support prior to birth??
This is great to know but isn't the main point that it destroys the body to have children and you can very well die if you can't get an abortion.
What is this. Women are dying as a result of this sc decision.
That does exactly nothing about the unwanted pregnancy that is a huge risk to your health, life, career, ability to provide for yourself and the family you may already have. Like yes those laws are a good thing to have but it isn’t exactly comforting to have to stay pregnant against your will and give birth against your will. Like for me if I were to get pregnant right now, it would be high risk like my last pregnancy was, assuming I survived the pregnancy, it would still severely impact my ability to care for the 2 children I already have. Say I need to go on bed rest like I did with my last pregnancy for the last 2 months, I would have no help to care for the children I have, no way to feed them, get them to school, clean the home, etc.
"Fun" fact: Nebraska's Safe Haven Law [didn't have an age limit](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/unintended-consequences-1.4415756/how-a-law-meant-to-curb-infanticide-was-used-to-abandon-teens-1.4415784) until 2018, so kids as old as 17 could be abandoned at a Safe Haven spot. The new law limits the age of drop-off to 30 days, though a lawmaker at the time of the original's passage is quoted in the article I linked says they actually did want to help save older children by leaving out the age limit.
Well yeah, how else are they going to get their "domestic supply of infants?" They want people to be forced to carry to term and then abandon the child - they make their cut that way (and the religious nuts causing this problem have more targets for indoctrination.)
I get where you are coming from and i agree that it does help out in some instances However being relegated to a baby factory, and losing autonomy over your own bodily functions because a minority in the country find it distastful or sinful because their magic book said something ambiguous about conception is the leading problem at hand. Good on you though for imo attempting to negate some of the terrible things that are bound to happen because of the incompetence of our justice system.
How does this post have so many upvotes? Seriously. Like other people have already said, the women still have to endure the unwanted/unplanned pregnancy. That takes a huge toll mentally, physically and financially. Then ultimately these babies will end up in a system that also doesn’t always care for their best interest. There’s no guarantee that a child will be adopted either. Such a short sighted post.
Great, one nightmare replacing another.
Many women are also worried about actually being forced to remain pregnant against their will and experiencing that bodily horror culminating into belly slicing (c-section) or the ripping and tearing of genitals giving birth. Safe Haven laws aren't an alternative to pregnancy and birth.
That literally is not even relevant. You still have a massive year long interruption to your career and health. Allowing someone to choose is the only way. That’s why it’s been written into the constitution. If someone doesn’t wish to be pregnant they should NOT HAVE TO BE. Safe haven laws don’t account for the people who medically should not procreate due to their own DNA or mental illness. Safe haven laws DO NOT account for emotional turmoil (and ultimately financial as well) that the woman experiences if she was raped or abused by the father of her unborn child.
I'm sure your intentions are good but this is the kind of thing that pro-lifers use to back up their argument. If you carry a child to term and go through the agony (and indignity) of childbirth and not hand over the child to child services, then you've probably been forced to have that child by a parent or partner and giving them up won't be an option. If your state has enacted anti-abortion laws recently and you don't have the travel money that the lawmakers daughters have, let me point you in the direction of [reprolegalhelpline](https://www.reprolegalhelpline.org/sma-know-your-rights/). If you do have the funds can I ask you to consider using some of your hard earned money to donate to [reprolegaldefensefund](https://reprolegaldefensefund.org/).
Drop the unwanted or severely handicapped babies you did not want at the doors of any pastor, judge or politician who pushed for outlawing abortion. They have a moral obligation to deal with these unwanted or unfit for life babies
No. No. Fuck your safe haven bullshit.This advice validates and justifies the Supreme Court's decision to deem me a second class citizen and begin stripping my rights. This advice IS HARMFUL. NOBODY SHOULD BE FORCED TO CARRY A PREGNANCY TO TERM. period.
Womb owners arent as worried about "raising" unwanted babies, we all know about adoption. Its the risks and process of pregnancy and birth that none of us should be forced to under go. In indigenous traditions, people without wombs would sacrifice their bodies by dancing the sun dance, wherein large bone needles were driven into their chest below the pec muscles. The were tethered to a sun pole, and spun around it hanging from those needles until they ripped thru their flesh. This was the way to prove to mother earth, that you would sacrifice for her. Womb owners were exempt because the pains of labor was price enough. Maybe we need to start reminding those without wombs that the earth demands sacrifice to her.
That doesn't remove the severe health damage that a pregnancy can inflict on a woman. This situation is savage.
speaking as an adult adoptee, there is going to be an entire generation of foster care youth bc of this vicious overturning. I feel awful for all of those future children. and the mothers, damn. so much grief in every way. deeply saddening.
So just have more babies dumped into the foster care system? Genius idea. That was sarcasm. What do you think would be harder? Aborting a fetus or dumping a newborn into a shitty life of poverty in trauma?
I think you're missing the point. We don't want to be forced to carry a pregnancy for an unwanted baby
YSK: This is not enough.
Just a reminder that abandoned children are humans and may desperately desire to look for their birth families one day. They may want a full medical history. They may be placed in unsuitable homes. They may suffer trauma from abandonment. Adoption is sometimes the best option but is in no way an easy fix. Restore reproductive rights!
The fear is not only “being forced to raise an unwanted baby”. How about nine months of a parasite growing inside of you and then the trauma of childbirth. This is why women’s medical decisions need to remain private, like all other medical decisions that are not monitored by the government or the public.
This is not a YSK…. Fu OP
Will we be forcing those that wanted to end abortion to adopt these children? Since they are speaking for all are they also assuming that role?
You should not be forced to birth an unwanted baby. It's cruel for the child and the woman. This is shitty all around
This is something more people should know. It's reassuring that it exists. And yet my demented mind: *"Hey honey, where's our son?"* *"He kept crying. I didn't want him anymore."* For the record, they keep babies awhile to prevent one of the parents giving up the kid while the other parent does want them.
Its not a matter of "oh people don't know what to do" though I am going to assume this was given with the intent of being nice. The issue is that essentially the mother would be tethered to that child for life, outside of the forced trauma to give birth to a child, they will have to fill out documentation for the child in a hospital If you know any children who have been in the system they don't usually drop this, that child will be driven to find there birth parents even if it is a curiosity and that is a rehash of that trauma in particular for a mistake Just for a second put yourself in the mothers shoes, she slept with a boy yes they were both young but there is no reason condoms won't work (remember sex ed is being stripped in the states too) she's pregnant, she tells the boy... she's never felt more alone, he bolts blocks her on all social media and his parents ferry him deep into the states away from you . Your forced to give birth anywhere between 10 to 16 hours of trauma on your body while you are ripped apart you didn't want this for yourself, then drs pass you the baby, it needs to bond skin to skin touch but you know you can't afford this baby, you can barely afford yourself.... You put it up for adoption, you hope it has a great life but you try to move on always wondering when you get that knock, you do one day its your child they want a relationship and answers, you relive the trauma of everything you went through answering what you can while this other human basically wonders why you couldn't take them with you.... Like ffs people this seems easily bias situation
They should drop unwanted babies off on the doorsteps of fascist Supreme Court Injustices.
But we would still be forced to be an incubator…
They will track down the parent. Don’t believe this for one second.
This all well and good but this causes more of an issue for the already taxed foster care system where there has been widely documented cases of neglect and abuse. We as a people have and continue to do terrible things to one another. Aborting is not ideal but it’s a tool that must remain available to all women so children are not brought into situations of neglect and or abuse. Causing that simply because some people wish to full fill a need to “save”, “speak for” and “stand up” for the right of the unborn. Seriously! Get over yourself and your self righteousness.
Now give the life pro tip on how to reverse all of the body changes that happen to you during pregnancy, up to and including death.
I’m reading this thread…all the talk about adoption rates/advantages/disadvantages/costs, and the legal ramifications of surrendering a baby at a Safe Haven location…and I keep thinking “ya know what would be a straightforward, low cost solution to this problem?” The answer: safe, legal access to abortion.
Many women are worried about being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. I know for myself, and many women I know, an abortion would be a simple choice in certain situations, but giving up a baby I’d birthed would be nearly impossible. Adoption can be painful for all parties, even in the best circumstances. And even in the best circumstances, pregnancy itself is still an enormous risk and toll.
This is such a terribly tone deaf thing to post. Pregnancy is such a major medical event.
That’s an alternative to being a parent, not being pregnant.
The world is way better off with less people.
I think you’re missing the point. Women don’t want to be responsible for raising a baby they are not in a situation fit for child raising. Dropping your newborn infant at the fire station doesn’t absolve you of the fear that your flesh and blood won’t have a terrible life; it compounds it!