Delighted to share that Ryan Hanlon (of the National Council for Adoption, and Adjunct Professor in CUA’s National Catholics School of Social Services) and I have published an article in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy entitled, “Informing Choice: The Role of Adoption in Women’s Pregnancy Decision-Making.”
In this article, we describe the “adoption paradox,” i.e., the reality that adoption is a widely admired but rarely chosen institution. By a ratio of 50:1, women choose to terminate a pregnancy over placing a child for adoption. Accordingly, many scholars (and the dissenting justices in Dobbs) question adoption’s relevance in abortion policy specifically and in family policy more generally.
To investigate this tension, Hanlon and I share never before-published survey data and analysis from the largest study on birth mothers’ decision-making and coercion experiences and aggregate and analyze existing social science studies of pregnancy decision-making regarding adoption. We found that most women who do make adoption placements under contemporary adoption practices experience their decision as free and voluntary, and such women experience the highest satisfaction with their decision.
We also find that such free and informed decision-making is not available to all women. Instead, we find that decision-making often takes place in a situation of insufficient information or misunderstanding, for example, prevalent confusion between private domestic adoption and the foster care system. The prevalent stigma against the choice of adoption is also explained by many external influences, such as the social pressure to parent, and internal factors, such as feared emotional distress and concern for the child’s safety.
Based on this data, we recommend several law and policy reforms to promote informed decision-making and education about adoption. For example, the article includes the most comprehensive fifty-state survey of abortion-specific informed consent laws and, in light of our findings about the factors that most influence women’s decision-making, we argue that major reform is needed.
This practical article can be useful to any state legislator seeking to promote adoption or to anyone seeking to strengthen or defend state informed consent laws.
Please share with anyone you think might find it helpful, and of course I welcome your feedback!
