Dear "Life Chain," Your Signs Stigmatize Adoptees

I grew up in a small town where Life Chain was a big deal.  Each year my church, along with other churches and community groups, gathered and stood along major roads in neighboring towns holding signs with anti-choice messages.  I was reminded of this when friends still living in that area who I have on my Facebook page started posting pictures of this year's event and I saw the sign I used to hold "Adoption, the Loving Option."  Rather than being nostalgic, I was mortified.  Even more mortified to see people I know holding it.  To be perpetually seen as some "survivor" of an event that people think I was destined for is disempowering.  It's stereotyping.  It's completely misinformed.  It is stigmatizing not only to me but to my mother.

Abortion and adoption have nothing to do with one another.  Abortion is a decision about health care and pregnancy.  Adoption involves a decision about whether or not to parent a child who has been born.   Adoption did not "rescue" me from anything and I am less than thrilled that all some pro-lifers can think to do is value my mother by her reproductive choices.  Many women experience unplanned pregnancy; yet mothers who surrender to adoption and adoptees are the only ones to carry this stigma.

Most states place restrictions on the availability of abortions.  Contraception, pre-natal care, and child care are also extremely difficult to come by.  However, instead of advocating for contraception, adequate health care, and affordable, quality child care that women and families deserve, some are content to instead slap the concept of adoption around.  As a woman and as an adoptee, I find this insulting to say the very least.  Has no one ever asked themselves "what if a woman who doesn't have an abortion doesn't want to give her baby up for adoption?"  Because that's actually the reality here.  Do the signs have an answer for that?  Where is the "adequate support for mothers!" sign?  Where is the "free and reliable child care!" sign?  Where is the "safe and affordable health care and contraceptives!" sign?  When you peel away all of the rhetoric, I see nothing left but misinformation and certainly not genuine concern for women and their families.

Resources and care for families and children....THAT'S the loving option.

And that is all I really have to say.