Friday, June 22, 2007
Countering Abortion
Adoption is widely touted as an answer to abortion and yet as this story from MSNBC points out, it is not that simple.
Evangelical activism in adoption is definitely a must, but it has to extend beyond merely adopting more. We have to change the fundamental nature of both the foster care and adoptive processes in this country. The law and policy regarding such in this nation is philosophically based on something that I find utterly abhorent, the child is treated essentially as property. Much of that legal base has come out of efforts precisely not to treat children as property, but has we have transitioned from private care of orphans to public, such is a natural and unavoidable outcome of a bureacracy. For me personally another reason not to adopt was I did not want to feed that beast.
Were there abusive and substandard orphanages in the bad old days? Of course there were, just as there are many such foster "homes" today. We have not with our great burecratic efforts solved the problem we set out to solve, we have simply made it happen in small enough packages that it is below the general public radar. Some solution!
It is admittedly very difficult for me to be objective about this, but I think this needs to be one of the higher public policy objectives of Christians involved in public policy. We need to encourage and deregulate private adoption and adoption agencies. Then churches need to get back into the adoption and orphan care business. The Catholic Church, the last remaining church to be active in it, is getting out because of government regulation. We have to fight and fight hard.
Related Tags: orphans, adoption, the church, Christians
Prominent evangelical Christians are urging churchgoers to strongly consider adoption or foster care, not just out of kindness or biblical calling but also to answer criticism that their movement, while condemning abortion and same-sex adoption, doesn't do enough for children without parents.I have written many times about the childless nature of my marriage, but I have never discussed much why we elected not to adopt. The last paragraph in that pull quote sums it up pretty well. As we looked into it all we found were hurdles, barriers, blockages, and difficulty. Given our already advanced years, by the time all the bridges had been built, streams forded, hurdles jumped, and objections overcome we would have been much older indeed and we simply did not think it fair to a child to have grandparents for parents. Sure that happens sometimes, but we just felt that to set up such a situation purposefully was wrong, most definitely for a first and quite possible only child. Not to mention that fact that the somewhat reversible nature of adoption in this age was something that we flat out feared. It scared us to death. Selfish perhaps, but it was a major factor.
With backing from Focus on the Family and best-selling author Rick Warren, the effort to promote "orphan care" among the nation's estimated 65 million evangelicals could drastically reduce foster care rolls if successful.
Yet sensitive issues lie ahead: about evangelizing, religious attitudes on corporal punishment, gay and lesbian foster children, racially mixed families, and resolving long-standing tensions between religious groups and the government.
Evangelical activism in adoption is definitely a must, but it has to extend beyond merely adopting more. We have to change the fundamental nature of both the foster care and adoptive processes in this country. The law and policy regarding such in this nation is philosophically based on something that I find utterly abhorent, the child is treated essentially as property. Much of that legal base has come out of efforts precisely not to treat children as property, but has we have transitioned from private care of orphans to public, such is a natural and unavoidable outcome of a bureacracy. For me personally another reason not to adopt was I did not want to feed that beast.
Were there abusive and substandard orphanages in the bad old days? Of course there were, just as there are many such foster "homes" today. We have not with our great burecratic efforts solved the problem we set out to solve, we have simply made it happen in small enough packages that it is below the general public radar. Some solution!
It is admittedly very difficult for me to be objective about this, but I think this needs to be one of the higher public policy objectives of Christians involved in public policy. We need to encourage and deregulate private adoption and adoption agencies. Then churches need to get back into the adoption and orphan care business. The Catholic Church, the last remaining church to be active in it, is getting out because of government regulation. We have to fight and fight hard.
Related Tags: orphans, adoption, the church, Christians
