Is Adoption Worse than Death?

At the women’s empowerment group earlier this week one woman admitted she had an abortion earlier in the day. The previous week she expressed concern over her ex finding out she was expecting and trying to gain custody of their son and the unborn baby. She professed feeling more capable to be able to handle two kids on her own, after hearing some of the other single mom’s talk about it. But, circumstances changed or her fear became more realized and she decided to terminate the pregnancy. I will be honest, it was hard to hear. But, the hardest part to swallow was when she said, “And I guess I could have had my baby be adopted or whatever, but I could never do that to my child.” And so never giving them the option to live was a better choice than adoption in her mind. I know that sounds judgmental, but she was sitting in a room with a woman who found out at 44 years old she had been adopted and two adoptive mothers. Hearing her rate adoption as a worse fate than death felt judgmental to me. I am probably over-sensitive to this because I have a hard time accepting abortion, but her words stung. In my opinion, my children are not better off not being here than they are being adopted. Sure, things are not easy and yes, there are life-long ramifications for people who were adopted. But, does that mean it is better for them all to have not existed in the first place? Most likely this woman did not mean her statement to sound like it did. She was probably referring to what a hardship adoption can be on the adopted person specifically, as well as the mother making that decision. I’m sure she was also thinking of the child she has at home and how that might be a tough pill for the adopted child to swallow, since there really isn’t an easy way to explain to a child why one sibling was kept and one was adopted. I was glad her statement was made at the end of the group meeting because I didn’t have to sit an mull over it in front of the group. I had shared briefly about my infertility, but to be honest, this latest development makes me feel less like I want to share any more of my pain in never being able to be pregnant. Which is sad because my biggest revelation of the night was realizing that I was still angry about my infertility and that I had turned that anger into self-loathing and I probably over-eat as a way to punish myself.