I've noticed that adoption is a solution offered by many to those who are facing an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy. Having given a child up for adoption, I know that this isn't quite the magical fix-it that some seem to think it is. For one thing, no matter how much you thought you didn't want to have a baby and how surely you knew that you couldn't give a child the life it deserves, it is AGONIZING to part with a baby you've given birth to. Not many women can face the pain and grief that they'll have to go through, which is why so many adoptions fall through at the last minute.

Furthermore, even though it seems like there's an endless supply of childless couples dying to adopt a baby, few people realize that if your baby isn't white and 100% healthy, there might actually be a problem with finding a home. Nowadays, even couples who are willing to accept a black or bi-racial baby face problems with the numerous agencies and advocates who believe black children should only be raised by black families. Never mind that there are far more black babies than families willing/qualified to adopt them. Therefore, if you're a young black girl who wants to choose adoption, you could very well be told that your baby will have to placed in a group-home (which is what we're calling the orphanage these days) or be shuffled through foster homes until a suitable family with the right skin color is found. There's not such a controversy about Hispanic babies but with the Hispanic population increasing in this country, it won't be long before another advocacy group decides that white families will also rob those babies of their proud heritage and noble birthright.

Even if your baby is the right color to ensure that a willing family will be allowed to adopt it, what if the baby isn't healthy? Even though there are many families and couples who are compassionate and loving enough to take any child they can get, there are just as many (if not more) who don't want one with Down's syndrome, brain damage, a defective heart, undeveloped lungs, blindness, deafness, or any of the thousands of conditions that a child can be born with. "We just want a healthy baby," many of them will state without the slightest compunction. "It isn't that we're being selfish, you understand. We're just not equipped to deal with a special-needs child." I think anyone who feels this way shouldn't be allowed to adopt any child, but agencies who want to protect their profit margins will definitely pander to the wishes of their clients and skip right over the "defective products" in search of that perfect, rosy-cheeked bundle of joy.

The point I'm trying to make is not that adoption isn't a wonderful alternative to abortion. (After what I went through, nobody had better accuse me of that!) I was lucky enough to find a family while I was pregnant who said that they would make that child their own no matter what, just as they would if the wife were actually pregnant. However, I'm educated enough to know that it doesn't work that way all the time. Then what? A young girl who was told that adoption would be the perfect answer is suddenly faced with the agonizing fact that the couple she (or the agency) chose backed out when they learned that her baby was... let's say, for example, born with a hole in its heart. It's going to be a few weeks before they can place the child, but don't worry... there's a facility nearby that will see to the baby's needs until someone is found.

Now, it doesn't matter how badly she didn't want a baby, unless she's just utterly heartless, a woman is going to feel love and attachment to anything she's carried in her body for nine months. If suddenly forced to decide between keeping her baby and letting it be put in some "facility" until someone decides it's good enough for them, many women will decide that their baby deserves to be loved from the start and take it home. Now, you've got a woman trapped by circumstance into not only having a baby she didn't want (or wanted badly and couldn't care for) but caring for one that's even more beyond her ability.

I just wanted to point this out in the hopes that those who say "adoption is always the answer" will realize that life is never as simple in practice as it was on paper.