to hate the, ''the baby could be adopted'' argument.

Anonymityitis, thank you for your post about the trauma the adopted child suffers. I don't feel that most people understand this because it seems illogical that a newborn could have any memory of what happened.

I find it hard to understand myself but I feel it. A therapist said to me that even if you don't remember in words and pictures, your body holds a memory of your feelings during a trauma and disruptions to bonding during early life affect the physical development of the brain.

I do think it must be harder for adoptive parents than natural parents. It is hard enough having your own children, but an adoptive parent has a baby who is resistant to bonding because of the pain of being removed from its birthmother whose natural instinct it was to try to bond with. It must be a really sensitive and gradual process to rebuild the trust. For babies who have been removed because they have been abused it must be even more difficult.

When I met my birthmother as an adult I desperately wanted to bond with her, and have criticised her for being a bit closed off emotionally, but she pointed out that I didn't act in any way like I wanted to bond with her, I acted like nothing bothered me and I was fiercely independent and didn't need anyone. She didn't want to overstep the mark by trying to get too close. I was still resistant to bonding even though I wanted to. I was protecting myself from getting hurt.

I'm wondering whether my adoptive parents had enough support for the additional bits of parenting required for an adopted child that you mentioned. It sounds like things have progressed a lot since then.

Sorry for hijacking, the thread has made me think about it all again when normally I don't think about it much.

Then again, loopyu, if you carry that argument to extremes, then you would feel guilty about contraception too, or just not having sex. Think of all the children I have failed to give birth to over the years because I had a headache/dh couldn't be arsed/we were watching the telly. Would it not be better for them all to have the chance of living?

But mugglewump, as loopyloops has said, you cannot presume your dd would rather be dead that go through the adoption process.

Sorry if this sounds very black and white, but as a child who was fostered and longed to be adopted, I ask you this:

IS it better to have a less-than-brilliant childhood
or
to be dead?

I had a horrible childhood but am so glad to have had the chance of living.

Silver1, I would have rather killed my baby than put myself and DD through the adoption process, yes.

I felt like killing myself as it was, never mind having to tell everyone about it and live with the judging forever.

I know loads of people who were adopted and who have adopted children. There was no 'passing from foster parent to foster parent' going on. That only happens when the mother refuses to sign the adoption papers because she wants to retain the option of having the child back. I think adoption is an ideal solution where someone becomes pregnant and does not feel they are in a position to raise a child. Abortion is something I could never do, regardless of the pain of having a child adopted.

I understand your point, Silver, not least since my family is also part adopted. But I think there is a serious risk that if the number of babies to be adopted were to rise dramatically, the rigour of the adoption process would have to relaxed, perhaps to the point where it would be better for some of those babies not to be born.

It is well known that not all foster homes are ideal- because there simply aren't enough of the good ones to go around. The same could happen with adoptive families.

Sorry the point to my post was we go through all of that, only to be told by some that they would rather kill their un-born child than have them raised by people as dedicated as current prospective adopters.

I understand what you are saying.

But, I do wish adoption were put forward as a more realistic option. I had an abortion at 18, which really messed me up for a while. I wanted to have the baby adopted, and my GP very strongly recommended against it. He said it was a very traumatic experience, whereas abortion was simple and never upset anyone. ]

I see what you're saying about it being idealistic to assume people will approve of adoptions, but it would be nice if that attitude could change.

Yes, but the point is that the (relatively few) parents who adopt babies today are parents who can pass a very rigorous investigation. You could say that they are very high quality prospective parents. If the number of babies to be adopted were to increase dramatically due to changes in abortion law, are we sure that there would be enough parents who could still pass the test, or would it have to be dumbed down?

Edam your statement reflects a lot of current day thinking about adoption- it is based on the harsh experiences of women in the last century.
Adoption has moved on since then, adopters are better prepared for the trauma even a tiny baby can suffer through adoption.
There is letterbox and sometimes even direct contact between birth parent and child.
There is now a system called concurrency care in some areas, where babies and young children can go straight to the adopters (acting as foster carers) where it is appropriate until the final order is made. So no "pillar to post"

Adoptees have better support in place.
sterrryerryoh has written a good post so I shall try not to repeat.

Adoption is about what is best for the child. We adopters go through a rigorous process of education and interviews, health checks and referees we are grilled about our friendships and family relationships the information is scrutinised and double checked.When it all works out every one says oh they make it sooo hard to adopt, When a bad adopter slips through it is too easy to adopt.
Social workers don't just hand a kid over and wave bye bye.
There are introductions at the FCs then your house where they make sure the match looks like it will be ok.
There are fortnightly then monthly visits for at least six months-when finally they write to the court and say they are ok with it.
All through this the birth parents can still contest the placement order. They rarely win but the stress is still very high.

So the comments on here about adoption are hard for me to swallow. It is not a punishment for errant women, it is not snatching a child and raising them behind a brick wall- we adopters no matter what the birth parents did have to keep them in contact of how well their children are doing. Even as we spend all our time repairing the damage.
We are told to keep their birth names unless there is a security risk.
Most women who give up or lose their children to adoption often see us not as the parents but as glorified foster carers until they can come back into the child's life, and the whole contact system is set up so that birth families don't feel "left out"
no matter how much they left out caring for the child when it was in the birth family.

at "just adopt"

YANBU.

I also dislike it when people say to infertile couples 'just adopt'.

3) YABU. There is a shortage of babies available for adoption in this country at present

I was unaware babies were a commodity to be handed around!

So we should all have babies we don't want & give them away! There was no way I would ever have considered adoption.

A private detective who specialises in tracing birth families for adoptive people described adoption to me as 'punishment for women who transgress'.

Maybe it's different these days, but back when my mother was adopted, abortion was illegal and adoption was forced on unmarried mothers. They were made to carry their babies and give birth and have the baby taken away. Incredibly painful and the cause of life-long trauma for the mother and probably most of those children.

I don't think any sensible or reasonable person would want to return to those days.

(Of course, the men who got women pregnant outside marriage got off scot free...)

Lots of interesting points and theories on this thread - some of them not factually correct. In terms of ?giving a baby up for adoption? it certainly isn?t as easy as that - most babies/children up for adoption in this country (over 95% of them according to the latest figures I have seen) were not relinquished by the birth family - they were removed into care. Adoptions of relinquished babies are very different, and the birth mother will be subject to lots of counselling and discussion, and social services will almost always look to family members to see if they can raise the child, before they go through the court processes of placement orders and foster care, and then waiting for a family to be matched (which, even if straightforward can take months and months)
If a pregnant woman does not want to continue with her pregnancy for whatever reason - or has come to the (no doubt very painful) decision that she doesn?t want the baby, to then have to subject herself and her unborn child through all of the above, and knowingly place her child into the care system, would probably be more than most women could take. Relinquished babies are rare for a reason.
OP - you stated ?My friend has told me how most young babies are actually passed from foster parent to foster parent in the first few months/ year of their life before they'll even get a chance to be adopted. For the unlucky, they just move on into care?

I don?t know where your friend got this information, but I would question it. It is not the case in my experience that young babies are passed from foster home to foster home - social services will always try to minimise disruption unless there is a problem, and the foster carers that I have met (particularly those with very young babies and newborns) will have that one child from as early as possible right until the adoption, in order that the child is given the best chance to form good attachment with his/her future parents.
I don?t know what you mean by ?For the unlucky, they just move on into care? - that?s what a foster home is - care!
It is true that there are children waiting to be adopted - many of them older children, those with disabilities or special needs, those with serious trauma and sibling groups mainly - but if there are healthy babies in the system, they are usually matched with an adoptive family very quickly - there are more adoptive parents waiting for ?babies? than there are babies waiting for adoptive parents.
There are lots and lots of families who want to adopt - just because you can have a biological child doesn?t prevent you from adopting as well, and I think your statement that ?To assume that your child will be lucky and will be adopted by a kind, loving family is misguided and unfair on the child? is actually a little unfair on adopters. CURRENT processes mean that adopters go through an extremely rigorous, lengthy and exhaustive assessment and judging process before being able to adopt and even when matched with a child, the assessment and matching continues to ensure that everyone is 100% sure of the match. No adopter goes into adoption with their eyes closed, and I doubt anyone would put themselves through it if they didn?t intend to give that child a kind and loving home
You are right, OP when you say that adoption is probably as difficult as abortion - it is certainly not an easy option for a birth mother, - but there ARE people queuing round the block, as you put it, to adopt and have a family

Carrying a baby to term (when you don't want to, when your mental and/or physical health will be affected, when your family life and home life and work life will be affected), labouring, birthing, and then going home and picking up where you left off... sounds easy peasy.

Less than 2% of abortions are carried out after 20 weeks (almost 90% are performed before 16 weeks) - and besides terminations for disabilities, the women who choose to terminate at that stage are often very vulnerable and fragile, and often haven't presented to medical authorities earlier either because they haven't known about the pregnancy and/or have been in self-denial and/or or live very chaotic lives. We're not talking about women who rock up at 23 weeks requesting a termination because they've got a last-minute holiday planned and don't want to be pregnant in their bikini.

Roobie - In some ways, abortion can be a form of child protection. Distasteful as it might sound, if you?re carrying a baby you don?t want that you feel forced into carrying that you know you?re going to be giving away, how much care are you going to be taking in pregnancy ? about what you eat, how much alcohol you drink, whether you take the correct vitamins and folic acid, whether you attend antenatal appointments or not? I?d warrant almost certainly nowhere near as much as you would if you were carrying a wanted baby. Are there going to be enough adoptive parents clamouring after these babies - or just the healthy ones from nice, stable middle-class backgrounds?

"2)To assume that your child will be lucky and will be adopted by a kind, loving family is misguided and unfair on the child."

I am adoptive parent and more than anything else in your argument I take issue with this simplistic statement. No, not because I am defending adoptive parents in a defensive way but because I think it underestimates the trauma felt by all adopted children to a greater or lesser extent.

We are a "kind and loving family" in my opinion and I ache with love for my son and concern for his welfare and happiness, however as an adoptive parent I need to give our son a lot more than love to help him grow into a well adjusted adult.

The first and greatest loss for an adopted child is the separation between mother and child which breaks the precious bond of attachment between a child and the one who gave him birth. This means that even a child who was reliquished carries this psychological trauma for the rest of their lives. So even if a child is not in care due to child protection issues s/he is still a traumatised individual. The bond has been broken. This leads to attachment difficulties which require a careful and well researched form of parenting to manage.

Of course love and care, and meeting a child's basic needs are vitally important. However so is a willingness to understand a child's birth history and explain it to them in an age appropriate way, and a willingness to seek specialist help to deal with the early trauma. This loss, despite the most loving of homes does not ever leave the child.

With regards to the abortion question, I never have and never will carry a child. I therefore feel that my emotive response to abortion is something that should be kept in the privacy of my own heart and as someone said earlier, not expected to influence policy. I have a friend whose baby was born at 22 weeks and is now a healthy 2 yr old, I also have a friend whose 21 week old baby boy died an hour after birth, I have a friend whose abortion happened as a result of a teenage error of judgement and one whose abortion was recommended at 20 weeks for medical reasons.

Of course it was traumatic, but less so than adoption would have been. I had my 5yr old to think of too.
It's behind me now and I have no regrets.

I honestly didn't know, I didn't know about my second pregnancy either until I mc at 8 weeks. I have symptom free pregnancies, and with that one, I had no periods because I had a mirena coil, only put on 5lb, and my weight fluctuates by that much anyway, and as a size 6-8 at the time, I didn't show at all until 20 weeks, and of course I knew about it by then.
It was easy to hide though because I wasn't very big at all.

With DD I was in my ordinary clothes until later than that.

I've since been sterilised, have an implant and do pregnancy tests if I'm having sex.

"I've said on here before, that no way could I have carried on with my life if I'd had the baby adopted."

some research shows that this is a really common view - that women would prefer to end the pregnancy than know that a baby of theirs is out in the world and they're not taking care of it. I completely understand that.

YANBU.

The argument also doesn't take into account the fact that pregnancy has a huge impact on a woman and her body. It's not like you just wait 9 months, out it pops and on you go with your life!

If you've never seen it, this is fascinating I think:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violinist_%28thought_experiment%29

Mugglewump I am sorry you have suffered this. I don't want to make judgements on others but I just feel it is an awfully traumatic thing to go through. And should be avoided in as many circumstances as possible.

When I was 23 weeks I needed doors widened to get through them. I cant imagine not knowing at 19 weeks.

We all have different experiences and different views on here. I would hate it if
mine caused anyone any hurt.

My mother was young and too scared to accept that she was pregnant. She tried to deny it to herself or just think everything would be ok and avoid thinking of all the consequences. By the time she was able to let people know the truth it was too late for an abortion.

I'm wondering which option would have been more traumatic, having a later abortion or the adoption. I think both would have been emotionally scarring and it really doesn't seem to be clear to me which option would have been easier for her. I visualise her in each situation and feel awful for her in both.

Maybe there just isn't a clear cut answer to what is right and wrong in a lot of situations even though we want there to be.

Often it can seem clear that one way is right and one way is wrong when you haven't been involved in the situations you are talking about, but then you experience something and feel differently. This happened to me in an unrelated situation where I thought I had strong and definite views, then I was involved in it and felt completely differently. It showed me that you can't be sure you are right and will always feel the same way.

I agree that having an abortion (which can be kep secret)is, for the majority of women seemingly, a more attractive way out of an unwanted pregnancy than keeping the baby and having it adopted. I cannot see the current status quo ever changing.
Personally however the choice as I see it is between a dead baby and a live baby - I know which one I would choose. Regardless of the potential (although unlikely) trials and tribulations the baby may endure under the care system, I don't see abortion as a form of child protection.

I did it in secret at 23 weeks and didn't know until I was 19 weeks, it does happen.

I told my best friend, who disowned me, and my bf who of course I wanted to tell.
I also told a friend at the other end of the country who I knew would be supportive.

I could have done it just telling my BF though.

'I find it hard to believe that someone could be 24 weeks pregnant and not know.'

Obtaining an abortion in the late 2nd trimester is not as easy as you'd think.

What commonly happens is the person discovers she is pregnant at say, 20 weeks, then has to spend another 4 obtaining the abortion.

And it is more common than you think to get to that stage of pregnancy and not know, particularly, again, if you are overweight, peri/menopausal, using contraception that stops periods or have suffered a traumatic incident such as rape.

Also, a common cause of such late terminations is that a disability has been discovered, particularly if the woman has had an amniocentesis - there is a wait time of up to a fortnight for results.

'My baby died in the womb at this stage and I delivered it. To think that someone would choose to do this is hard to accept. To think that they would be able to accept this over having a baby and keeping it or putting it up for adoption is unbelievable to me.'

This is why, thankfully, one person's own personal experiences aren't allowed to determine policy.