Adoption Uncovered

There are a lot of opinions flying around these days about women who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. With abortion allowances varying from state to state and people of different political persuasions imposing their expectations on these women, it is easy to forget who they are, if we ever knew.

Often, women in this condition handle their situation in private as much as possible.(1) Understandably, they might want to be shielded from the opinions around them so they can determine the path they want to take. Up to this point, there have been few scientific studies that have attempted to assess the similarities or differences these women might have. Within the past few decades, a handful of researchers have tried to shed light on the women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. The women have many differences, but thier similarities may not be what we expect. Their commonalities can affect the ways we support women and children and help us understand that these women are not having this experience in isolation. Their lives and their children’s affect the communities they live in and we live in as well.

Women are not weighing abortion vs adoption.

It is comforting for people who want to divert women from abortion that there is an easy equivalent solution available to them. If they just hold on to that pregnancy and give birth, they could both allow the baby to live and have the child out of their lives. It turns out as researchers spend time communicating with women in just this circumstance, that is not the view these women seem to have. (2) .  Gretchen Sisson, in the book Relinquished, tells us about some insights that were gained through what was called the Turnaway study. This study followed women, some of whom were able to get abortions and some of whom were not able to get them for a variety of reasons.

“A Turnaway Study participant who was able to get her abortion shared similar thoughts: ‘If I had given birth… no, I would never give it up for adoption. I wouldn’t let it leave my sight.’

Even among those denied abortions, interest in adoption was low. Michelle, a Turnaway Study participant who was already parenting two children when she was denied her desired abortion, explained how she ruled out adoption:

There’s no way that I would be able to carry a baby that long and then give it away knowing that I have two other children at home and then have that kid maybe come back one day and say,

‘Why didn’t you want to take care of me?’ I couldn’t do it.

Michelle is not unique. Only 25 percent of those denied abortions reported even considering adoption, and as detailed above, only 9 percent did relinquish.

Some adoption researchers and anti-abortion advocates see these enduringly low numbers of relinquishments in recent decades and posit that pregnant people just don’t know enough about adoption to consider it or pursue it at higher rates, but this isn’t true, either. One study of teen mothers-both those who parented and those who relinquished-found that knowledge of and positive attitudes about adoption did not correlate with relinquishment; the researchers concluded that “strengthening positive attitudes toward adoption alone may have little effect.”

From Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson, pg 64 (3)

From what I have learned from Gretchen and other research is that often those who are leaning toward abortion when they discover they are unexpectedly pregnant are focused on not being pregnant. Sometimes that is because there are people in their lives who would never understand their situation, or worse, harm them because of it. (4) These women hope that significant people in their lives will never know they were ever pregnant. Some women have health concerns regarding themselves or their babies going forward. Maternal death rates are higher in America than in many other first-world countries. (5)  The risk increases as mothers have less access to health care based on income.(6) If women who have health issues are forced to complete a pregnancy they weren’t expecting, they may face crises for themselves or for their child over the course of their pregnancy.(7)

Moving from ending a pregnancy to seeing a pregnancy through just isn’t a simple pivot for many women. (8) It isn’t a choice of being uncomfortable for a month vs 9 months. It could be life or death in a few cases.(9)

What this means when it comes to adoption is that continuing a pregnancy and allowing another family to raise the child you give birth to is not looked at as similar or even connected to many women. Women understand that if they find themselves in the situation of seeing a pregnancy through, they will be connected to the child growing inside them.

Most often, the women who are considering adoption are weighing that option against parenting the child themselves(10) Usually, by this point, they would prefer to parent the child. If they eventually decide not to, it is often the result of many things going wrong simultaneously to cause this decision. It could be their relationship going sour, combined with a lack of financial resources, with a topping of obligation to a family who is anxiously awaiting the birth of their child, so they can begin their dream of raising that child.(11)

Birth mothers don’t forget.

I remember growing up with the impression from those around me in the church I attended that, of course, you shouldn’t get pregnant outside of marriage, but if you did, you could offer your child for adoption and move on with your life. One thing research and interviews with birth mothers have been clear about is that women do not move on.(12)

When a woman starts down the path of being pregnant, there are significant changes in her body. No matter how that beginning resolves, the mother remembers.(13) Even if a pregnancy ends in a noticeable miscarriage, that can affect a woman for the rest of her life. She can experience each stage of grief with the life that didn’t continue to term. (14) If the life does continue to term and then grows to adulthood outside of her realm of everyday experience, that journey is still a part of her.

Often, first mothers develop rituals that occur every year on the birthday of the child that isn’t with them. Sometimes the memory of that choice haunts them for months or years. (15) Sometimes this is tinged with gratitude for the life their child has, and sometimes the adoptive parents see fit to allow the first mother to play a role in their child’s life.

There are times when forces in the first mother’s life cause her to shove down the memories of the child she has allowed another family to raise, but we know now, based on interviews with many first mothers, that this typically isn’t their preference.(16) If the woman was in a situation where cultural, religious, or family pressure has imprinted on her the idea that this child needs to be hidden,(17) it doesn’t mean that course is psychologically healthy. Pressure to conform or hide things that don’t coincide with the ideal outward image of a woman doesn’t make her an ideal woman. It makes her a woman who is half hidden. With the need to hide comes stress and shame. (18) She may acknowledge and recognize this or not. Hidden stress has a tendency to make itself known, whether that is through emotions only the first mother feels or physical symptoms that can force their way through her body.

A healthy path forward isn’t one thing for every woman. Seeing her relinquished child every week or month or year might thing that is best for her, but it might not. She may find that sometimes contact is cathartic, while at other times it is traumatizing. (19) Either way, now that we have more knowledge of what first mothers are experiencing, we should be able to allow them space to remember in the way they prefer.

First mothers are rare.

For as much time as the public spends discussing the adoption of babies in this country, the actual occurrence of a mother offering her child to another family to raise is estimated to happen in only 1% of births. (20)

It is often said off-handedly that, well, if we can’t give birth biologically, we can always adopt. If a family is relying on the option of adopting a healthy baby if they cannot have thier own, they should understand the desert of possiblities that await them. It is estimated that there are 30 or more families waiting to adopt every healthy infant that becomes available for adoption. (21) That means many families that want to include children in their lives will not attract a woman who has chosen to place her child.

This also means that adoption is just not going to be an answer for many people who seek out abortions and don’t get them. The vast majority of those women who are considering abortions won’t give adoption a second thought if the abortion falls through. They may view parenthood as their penance or their duty if the pregnancy must continue. (22) Adoption is often looked at as an abdication of their responsibility. It can be seen as a cop-out. If there are already children in the home of the woman considering her options, it might be hard for her to face her children and tell them that their new brother or sister won’t live with them or grow up with them like in the quote above. Adding more financial strain or childcare duties is something these women can imagine. Answering questions of where their child is and what their life is like, or what the woman’s life will be like with the absence in their life is hard to comprehend.

There are not enough supports in place for the first mothers willing to come forward and seek community, but more are starting to find each other. (23) More of them are letting us in on the complicated questions they are struggling with and what the reality of the decision to relinquish a child looks like. They are more than a dot on a graph. They aren’t an easy answer to a hard question. The issues that drive them to a place where the options they have are things many of us could never imagine should make all of us desire to keep more women from that place. The more we learn, the more we see that the answer often isn’t taking a child out of a woman’s hand. It is relieving the pressure on her to be in that position to begin with. (24) Helping women afford to raise their children and choose healthy relationships is a harder problem to solve than continuing to offer their children to more affluent families to raise.

Individual Solutions Won’t Work for Big Multifaceted Problems.

Sometimes the choice for a woman to place her child is the right one for everyone involved. That situation is far more rare than most of us realize. It is rare enough that infant adoption should be seen as a unique solution for specific women and certain families. Based on what we are learning, domestic infant adoption will not solve the problem of women seeking abortion, the problem of infertility, or sufficiently fulfill the desire of families to adopt.

Sources

1. Cruz, Deborah. “My Unexpected Pregnancy at 39.” motherhood the truth, http://www.motherhoodthetruth.com/unexpected-pregnancy-at-39-what-to-do/ .
2. Fuentes, Liza, et al. ““Adoption is just not for me”: How abortion patients in Michigan and New Mexico factor adoption into their pregnancy outcome decisions.” PubMed Central, 22 Feb. 2023, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10008919/#:~:text=While%2084%25%20of%20United%20States,child%20for%20adoption%20%5B4%5D.
3. Sisson, Gretchen. Relinquished. St. Martin’s Press, 2024, p. 64.
4. Magee, Fairriona. “When Pregnancy Makes You a Target.” Center for Health Journalism, 16 Dec. 2024, centerforhealthjournalism.org/our-work/reporting/when-pregnancy-makes-you-target.
5. Burrows, Sydney. “Why Childbirth Is Still Dangerous in America—and What We Can Do About It.” urmc.rochester.edu, 30 Sept. 2025, http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/publications/health-matters/why-childbirth-is-still-dangerous-in-americaand-what-we-can-do-about-it .
6. Nicholls-Dempsey, Laura, et al. “How does high socioeconomic status affect maternal and neonatal pregnancy outcomes? A population-based study among American women.” Pub Med Central, 12 Oct. 2023, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10590715/.
7. Barbuscia, Anna, et al. “Unplanned births and their effects on maternal Health: Findings from the Constances Cohort.” Science Direct, Nov. 2024, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624008049.
8. Brauer, Marieke, et al. “Understanding Decision-Making and Decision Difficulty in Women With an Unintended Pregnancy in the Netherlands.” Pub Med Central, 21 Dec. 2018, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7322937/#:~:text=Women%20often%20know%20whether%20they,et%20al.%2C%202005).
9. “Maternal Mortality in the United States After Abortion Bans.” Gender Equity Policy Institute, Apr. 2025, thegepi.org/maternal-mortality-abortion-bans/#:~:text=Women%20who%20lived%20in%20states,high%20in%20the%20banned%20states.
10. Al-Arshani, Sarah. “Conservatives argue that kids should be adopted in place of abortion. But a psychologist says adoption can be a ‘traumatic event’ for everyone involved.” Business Insider, 9 July 2022, http://www.businessinsider.com/conservative-adoption-abortion-argument-neglect-womens-traumatic-experiences-psychologist-says-2022-7.
11. Kelly, Mary Louise, et al. “Sociologist says women are more likely to choose abortion over adoption.” NPR, 3 Dec. 2021, http://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061333491/sociologist-says-women-are-more-likely-to-choose-abortion-over-adoption.
12. Binford, Jacquelyn. “As a Birth Mother, Time Doesn’t Heal All Wounds.” Her View From Home, herviewfromhome.com/birth-mother-time-doesnt-heal-all-wounds/?srsltid=AfmBOopO8dbLt0O7tZcsW0gvvPgfr82qTitWQjyRL3SwffY2RonErdAe.
13. “How Mother-Child Separation Causes Neurobiological Vulnerability Into Adulthood.” the associaciton for psychological science, 20 June 2018, http://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/how-mother-child-separation-causes-neurobiological-vulnerability-into-adulthood.html.
14. LeBow, Hilary I. “Miscarriage Grief: How to Cope with the Emotional Pain.” psych central, 11 May 2022, psychcentral.com/health/miscarriage-grief.
15. “Birthmother Holidays & Adoptee Birthdays.” adoptionbirthmothers.com, 22 Mar. 2012, http://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/category/a-birthmothers-life/birthmother-holidays-adoptee-birthdays/#:~:text=The%20Normality%20of%20Adoption%20Birthday,alone%20in%20feeling%20this%20way. .
16. Dusky, Lorraine. “Do First/birth mothers want to be found?” first mother forum, 2 Feb. 2011, http://www.firstmotherforum.com/2011/02/do-firstbirth-mothers-want-to-be-found.html.
17. Smith, Whitney, et al. “Social Norms and Stigma Regarding Unintended Pregnancy and Pregnancy Decisions: A Qualitative Study of Young Women in Alabama.” PubMed Central, 11 May 2016, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5022769/ .
18. Rathblott, Ruth. “Why Hiding Feels So Exhausting.” ruthrathblott.com, 10 July 2025, ruthrathblott.com/why-hiding-feels-so-exhausting/.
19. Herel, Barbara. “Open Adoption From the Other Side.” Adoptive Families, 27 Sept. 2024, http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/openness/open-adoption-stories-from-birth-mothers/.
20. Sisson, Gretchen. “Estimating the annual domestic adoption rate and lifetime incidence of infant relinquishment in the United States.” Pubmed Central, Jan. 2022, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34418378/.
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22. “Responsibility of the mother.” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/philosophical/responsibility.shtml .
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24. Seymore, Malinda L. “Adoption As Substitute For Abortion?” Law Review Colorado, 1 June 2024, lawreview.colorado.edu/print/volume-95/adoption-as-substitute-for-abortion-malinda-l-seymore/.