With pregnancy centers regularly ministering to moms in unplanned pregnancies, couples seeking to adopt often reach out to these centers to try and connect with a prospective birth mom.
At Women First Pregnancy Options on Long Island, we receive a heartfelt letter from a couple seeking a baby every few months. Usually included are photos of the couple, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the family dog. They describe the love they hope to share with a child, explaining their daily lives, Christian faith, financial stability, and willingness to share any level of communication the birth mother chooses.
These couples plead with center workers to share their letter with any mother considering abortion. Often a website and 800# are set up, with questions encouraged, and they offer to pay any expenses incurred by the birth mother.
Telling someone there are a lot of people looking to adopt is one thing. Being able to show them pictures of an actual couple and reading their words is vastly different. The potential adoptive family becomes real.
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Tracie Shellhouse, vice president of Ministry Services for Heartbeat International, offered a reminder on the long list of waiting families. Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and globally.
“In a post-Roe world, where many are concerned about unwanted children being born due to abortion restrictions, it is important to remember that 2 million American families are seeking to adopt each year, while there are only about 150,000 adoptable children available,” Shellhouse said. “Through adoption, there is plenty of love to share with children and their birthmothers.”
Lifetime Adoptions works with both sides of an adoption. Birth mothers are frequently referred from pregnancy centers, and couples looking to adopt reach out to the fully licensed agency.
They offer a 24-hour phone and text line, an adoption app, profiles of waiting families, literature and videos for pregnancy centers, and adoption training sessions by Zoom for center staff.
One thing Lifetime emphasizes to pregnancy center workers is not trying to “sell” the adoption concept to a client.
“We find it’s best to state up front that all three options will be discussed with the mom,” said Diana Vandra, Adoption Outreach & Education coordinator.
“Definitely at the beginning of establishing a relationship with a client we don’t want to overwhelm her,” Vandra said. “Letting her read our information later at home is probably better at the beginning.”
Last year a client of Trinity Pregnancy Resource Center in Chowchilla, Calif., expressed interested in adoption.
This young mom had first come to Trinity in her first pregnancy, Director Bethany McLain shared, and now has a one-year-old daughter. This client had stayed in touch with Trinity through various classes and earned diapers, car seat, and baby clothes. When she found herself pregnant again, she felt she couldn’t possibly handle a second child alone, and immediately sought guidance again from Trinity.
“We always explain all three options to the young pregnant women who come to us,” McLain said. “In this case, the birth mother was already leaning towards adoption. She did not want an abortion. So, we immediately connected her with Lifetime.”
From there, the birth mom got to consider waiting couples and decide on factors such as distance, faith, home ownership, whether they had other children, their ethnic background, and preferred level of communication. Lifetime was able to share numerous profiles with her, and after she had begun to lean toward a couple, she was able to speak to the couple by phone.
“This mom chose a Christian married couple from Arkansas, and that couple decided to come to our area to spend some time with the birth mom,” said McLain. “That was terrific for them to really get to know each other. In fact, the adoptive parents came into our center to meet us too, and that’s never happened before where we’ve met the adoptive parents, because we’re not an adoption agency.”
When the baby was born, the adoptive mom and dad were there.
“It was wonderful for the birth mom to be able to hand her baby to this couple she now knew, rather than to complete strangers,” McLain said.
Another way Trinity is there to help women in the community is through grief counseling.
“While this birth mom didn’t suffer the death or miscarriage or abortion of a child, adoption is another type of loss,” said McLain. “She was feeling a void, and we were happy she allowed us to be part of her healing process.”
Many months later, the child is doing well, and the birth mom and adoptive parents have spoken numerous times.
What about the response pregnancy center workers hear so often from abortion minded women when adoption is brought up: “I could never give my baby away.”?
Vandra explained that how the topic of adoption is raised is important.
“Adoption should be expressed not as an abandonment of the baby – which abortion is,” she said, “but of finding the best life for the child, the right parents to raise this child.”
“It’s usually best to introduce the idea gradually, as part of discussing the three choices, so we don’t overwhelm them,” she said. “We explain that they can certainly be as active in the child’s life as they want to be, as this type of adoption is more common today. The birth mom can visit, take the child out, talk on the phone, receive photos, etc. All these decisions are up to the birth mom in choosing a waiting family.”
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Another resource many pregnancy centers now use is BraveLove.
The organization promotes adoption and seeks to break down any stigmas or unfamiliarity with it. BraveLove focuses on the adoption journeys of birth mothers in offering offers events, dinners, and retreats around the country.
One feature of the BraveLove website is the video testimonies of both birth moms and adoptive parents, explaining how they each feel about their decision, how things are going in the years following the adoption.
Additional adoption resources are available HERE.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
