Is Adoption Right For Me?

A former Kirsh & Kirsh client speaks about her experience

Today I would like to talk to you about a subject very dear to me. It is emotional because I talk about my daughter. The subject is adoption.

This is my daughter Shelby. She is adopted. Shelby could have been an abortion.

When a young lady becomes pregnant with an untimely pregnancy (notice I did not use the term unwanted) there are several options that present themselves. We will discuss all three.

To all of you, both male and female, do not turn me off at this point and say “this will never happen to me.” Every person who ended up with an unwed pregnancy said the same thing.

First, we will talk about abortion: You have been led to believe that this is a simple solution to a very complex problem. In our society, women who choose to abort their babies receive more support than those who make an adoption plan.

Abortion is a volatile subject that even has people campaign against a political figure or attempt to block appointments to the United States Supreme Court.

No one has told you that you will make a decision with lasting long term ramifications. Once made, there are no mulligans or do overs. It is final. It is also a decision that many look back on and regret later. The anguish that you will feel will be enormous. It will last a lifetime. You see the baby is gone but you do not forget about it. Guilt is a very strong emotion that plays with the mind for a long time.

There have been many young girls who have been interviewed who have gone through this process and a large number of them say “I wish I had made a better choice. I think about it every day”.

Abortion seems to be a simple solution to the problem. There is much more to it than that. You have a baby growing inside you. Do you know what that means? I do not care that it is very tiny, it is a life. Let me explain. Abortion rights activists will tell you that it is not a baby until it is born. How many of you have held a tiny baby that was born maybe a month or two premature? I see many of you. That baby, if it were not born premature would look exactly the same inside the mother that it does as a premature baby. Now can you explain to me how that is not a baby, just because it has not been born?

I think the point is obvious, abortion destroys a life.

What about the Child’s right to choose? You may say the baby does not know. I disagree. I think the child wants to live and would choose to do so. Do I have any proof? Shelby was ill when she was born. She was a meconium baby. That means the baby swam in defiant before she was born. The result is a very sick baby. There were other problems as well. The birth mother was hooked on valium, a drug.

Shelby was in the hospital for seven days with numerous needles in her as they ran all types of antibiotics through her system. I assure you she was trying to live.
Babies that are aborted are not given any choice, but I think given the choice, they would choose life.

The second alternative is for you to raise the child, probably on your own as a single mom. That is the way it ends up in most cases. The guy that is responsible and in some cases promised you that he would stand by you will probably be gone within the first three to five years. Also gone are his support payments because he can’t or will not make them. Good luck getting a judge to make him pay.

Now, I admire that you did not abort. One of my best days was about six years ago. I was coaching track one day after school and a young girl who had heard this same talk came walking across the track. She told me that she had become pregnant and because of this talk decided to not abort and to raise the child. Yes the father had dumped her leaving her to raise the child with the help of her parents.

Raising a child is expensive. More importantly, it takes an enormous amount of time. When your friends call and want to go out on a Friday night, “sorry I have to stay with my child.” Your plans for college? Sorry, but the money is no longer there, nor the time. You want to go out and get a job? The problem is you have to hire a baby sitter and you end up paying the baby sitter a large portion of what you make partly because you do not have the schooling to get a really good job.

You want to go on a date? You would like to get serious with a guy? The guy realizes that he would be marrying into a ready made family and the child is not his. Wow! It takes a pretty special person to raise the child as if it were his own when it is not his.

What sometimes happens is that your parents end up taking the responsibility of raising the child. Yes, the child’s grandparents. They are older and have been saving for retirement and looking forward to you being out of the house. They love you, but when you get older it is time for you to be out of the house. Now they are raising their grandchild. It is very noble of them and wonderful that you have parents that would do that for you but it is not their responsibility, financially or morally.

You say “but I could not place the child in an adoption plan. I could never do that to my child. I love my child”. Of course you love your child. There is no way you can carry a child for nine months and not love the child. So I have a question for you. How much do you love the child?

This is where adoption comes in as an option. If you take into account all of the needs of the child, not just the financial but the emotional as well, you may want to consider an adoption plan. You give the child something it dearly wants, life. You give the child something that it desperately needs, two loving parents. Both a mom and a dad.

When talking to girls who were pregnant, one of the things most said was “I want my child to have a dad.” So, you want your child to have two parents, be financially secure, to have a family and you realize that you cannot provide these, at least not right now. Ask yourself the question, how much do I love the child? Do I love it enough to give it all it deserves? Do I love the child enough to place its needs above mine? Do I love it enough to give it a better life? You see, if you love your child enough, you will consider that adoption may be the perfect choice.

Will it be easy? Of course not. Will you feel good about what you have done? Yes, eventually you will know what you have done is one of the most courageous decisions that you have ever made.