"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, June 19, 2010

PUSHING ADOPTION AS ANOTHER CHOICE FOR UNWANTED PREGNANCIES

NYTIMES: Campaigning for Common Ground in Abortion Debate
What if groups that demanded reproductive choices for women actually offered them?

Corinna Lohser of Adoption Access Network, which seeks to make adoption a subject that women feel more comfortable talking about at abortion clinics.

Mark these words: Adoption Access Network. Few people have ever heard of it, but it’s the rare phenomenon (we’re talking meteor-strike rare) that feminists on both sides of the abortion debate — the Sarah Palin-mama grizzly variety, as well as the old-school, march-on-Washington kind — can get behind.

The idea is simple. It is about choice. Not choice as a euphemism for the right to have an abortion, but choice in the true sense of the word: options, informed consent and support for women trying to figure out what to do with an unwanted pregnancy.

Imagine this: a woman enters her local Planned Parenthood office and notices, in the bathroom, a poster that says: “Questions about adoption? We can answer those, too.”

Such posters, which should be up in the hallways of at least 15 abortion providers in New York within the month, are produced by the Adoption Access Network as part of a campaign to make adoption a subject that patients and social workers alike feel more comfortable broaching in abortion clinics. The thinking is that all the clinics’ clients, whether they seem uneasy about abortion or not, should have a clear understanding of how adoption works, rather than just be handed a list of references — a list that essentially says, adoption is fine, but it’s not our thing.

I THINK THIS IS A GREAT THING.

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