Response to a pushy adoption web site
I saw a post on feministing today about a web site called 16andpregnant. This web site is pushing for adoption as the best option in cases of unplanned pregnancy. Ok, adoption is a valid option. Though I am pretty sure this web site only wants to give babies to white, heterosexual, married couples, I am still not opposed to them advertising this idea. I did not see any blatant lying on the site about abortion, but the thing that SUCKS is the way the web site pretends to be presenting options when really they are pushing for one agenda. The “real life” stories are about regretting abortions and all the info about abortions is rather vague. They make adoption sound like heaven and say that it puts you in control by being able to choose the parents. It also pushes for open adoption and doesn’t even mention what a closed adoption is.
The difference between pro-choicers and idiots: Pro-choicers are happy when people make the best decision for themselves. Whether it is abortion, adoption, or becoming a parent, we pro-choicers are happy to give out lots of accurate information and we DON’T shame women for thinking their life, health, and happiness is important or that they are more than just a vessel for a precious fetus (or not so precious, if its mixed race or turns out to be gay or something) to be carried in. Also, pro-choicers don’t go around killing doctors (at least not that I’ve heard).
To share my thoughts with them, I used the email form of another web site 16andpregnant directed me to. I put in my email but not my phone number, so hopefully they won’t use that information to track down my address and post it on a web site with encouragement to harm me for a being a baby-hater.
I copied what I wrote in order to paste it here, but accidentally copied something else first. The gist was that they are shaming women for thinking of abortion and also pushing an agenda while pretending to be open-minded about many options.
On the list of blog posts that have substantially broadened my thinking on a topic, Rethinking Adoption… by Bitch PhD is rather high up on the list. Not having read the book itself, I don’t know whether the women quoted were those who were heavily pressured into an adoption or not, but the pain they describe is an oft-forgotten dimension of the issue.
I have to put that book on the list. Adoption pushers want it both ways. They portray adoption as the easiest thing that you will never regret and abortion as a decision one would only make in panic which will haunt you for the rest of your life. But if choosing abortion doesn’t take any serious thought, then the converse is that adoption shouldn’t be arrived at easily either. Hmm, this thought is not coming out right. I definitely feel the double standard but am not sure I am expressing it the way I want to.