Less than a week after the Trump administration took several federal agency websites offline for updates, some of those pages have been restored, including the site for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Hill reported that one major change was noticeable on the CDC site: when a user searches for the word ‘abortion,’ the site now prompts them to ‘also try: adoption.’
When a user clicks on that adoption suggestion hyperlink, he or she is directed to search results that include both abortion and adoption information. Adoption pages associated with the experiences of men and women concerning adoption are listed among abortion pages. Pro-abortion advocates complained that this minor change is a “clear attempt” to change how people perceive unplanned pregnancy and the conversations around it.
“It’s a very strange thing to do because the decision tree around pregnancy is to either continue the pregnancy or not,” Meghan Eagen-Torkko, director of the school of nursing at Eastern Michigan University, told The Hill. “If the pregnancy is continued, then the decision becomes parenting or not. There’s no point in that when abortion and adoption are on the same branch.”
This attitude is a complete disservice to women who deserve to consider adoption immediately after becoming pregnant. Most of the fears women struggle with when facing an unexpected pregnancy have more to do with parenthood than with the pregnancy itself.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that the most common reasons a woman has an abortion are “that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%).” In addition, it noted, “Younger women often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependents.”
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In addition, a study published by the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons found that nearly three-quarters (73.8%) of women who have undergone an abortion reported feeling at least subtle forms of pressure to have an abortion. That pressure can come from parents, boyfriends, friends, doctors, or even from the woman herself as she considers her financial and educational goals in a society that says motherhood stands in the way of women’s dreams.
Research proves that most women who consider abortion are doing so because of the pressures they will feel after the baby is delivered and are not associated with the physical act of being pregnant. Denying women information on adoption denies them the opportunity to choose life even in stressful circumstances. The only true choice during an unexpected pregnancy is parenting or adoption, however, the stigma surrounding adoption often influences a woman’s decision to abort — making it vital that adoption education is available to help women and men learn the truth about placing a baby with an adoptive family.
