[John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. He is especially interested in moral theology and the thought of John Paul II. The following appeared on July 18, 2025, in the National Catholic Register (www.ncregister.com) and is reprinted with permission.]

“Adoption, not abortion!” has been among the staples of pro-life mantras. It was emblazoned on the very first pro-life bumper sticker I got for my parents’ car right after Roe v. Wade was decided.

The problem is: There’s no follow-through.

Americans have always been ambivalent about abortion. When asked specifically about particular cases or stages of pregnancy, many have a visceral opposition to abortion. But when it comes to actually translating those feelings into law, they pull back. The same can be said of adoption. Most Americans will applaud adoption, salute adoptive families, and consider adoption an alternative to abortion. But again, the problem is: no follow-through.

Brad Wilcox’s Institute of Family Studies in Virginia, just published “Why Most Americans Admire Adoption But Don’t Choose It.” Numbers don’t lie: in 2022, there were about two million abortions but only 25,000 adoptions in the United States. That’s 1.25%. The odds of a woman placing a child for adoption versus procuring an abortion are 50:1.

Why? Authors Kirk and Hanlon cite three reasons.

First, many woman imagine their child will live in a bad situation. They think of adoption as being put into some kind of welfare or perennial foster care system, where kids are neglected or abused. They believe they have no say in their child’s placement and will be forever cut off from him. Some even imagine it will cost them money they don’t have. None of these things is true.

Second, adoption ranks third among pregnancy “options.” Fifty years of “choice” rhetoric has tarnished the idea of delivery and handing over a child for adoption as “giving up” rather than exercising self-defining autonomy. For women not culturally pressured into “getting it over with” and having an abortion, the usual second choice is raising the baby herself. Sometimes family pressures encourage this; at other times, that decision leads to family abandonment. The father is often out of the picture. As the clock for a “safe” abortion ticks away, time pressures multiply and arranging an adoption is seen as the most arduous, time-consuming process.

Third, an emotional attachment. Many women simply cannot conceive that they can “give away” a baby they gave birth to. They imagine they cannot cut the emotional bond that delivery produced. It’s paradoxical but true: they may feel less connection to a baby suctioned up a vacuum tube at 12 weeks than a baby she’s carried for 40 weeks and delivered. We shouldn’t be surprised: pregnancy naturally is supposed to be a bonding experience.

The authors suggest women with a crisis pregnancy are often victims of a lot of misand disinformation. The great advocate of “reproductive health care,” Planned Parenthood, would make no money steering babies to adoption. Abortion has always thrived on the myth that somehow the procedure will make “everything go away,” as if “it never happened.” When that kind of magical thinking accompanies the pressures of “doing something,” it seems like a quick-and-easy solution compared to the additional process adoption involves. And let’s be honest: adoption always leaves open the possibility that, maybe even decades later, an unknown person will knock at the door and say, “Mom?”

Kirk and Hanlon’s main recommendation is that states require women seeking abortions, under the bioethical criterion of “informed consent,” to receive detailed information about adoption possibilities in that state. That information must be more, they insist, than “perfunctory” or “pro-forma” lists of adoption agencies. It should involve explanations that adoption is not foster care, private adoption can involve the birth mother, and that legal and financial help is available. They also advocate inclusion of that information in high school health, physical education, and/or family life requirements so that every person graduating in the state has an accurate view of what adoption is and isn’t.

Let me extend their list further. Every parish should include such an “adoption information handout” in the parish bulletin at least annually. The handout should be in any welcome kit for new parish registrants. There should be an annual presentation in the parish about adoption options, both for people wanting to surrender their child and those wanting to adopt. Parish offices and pro-life groups should have the local Catholic adoption agencies’ telephones on speed dial.

A similar presentation on adoption should occur annually at priests’ gatherings or presbyteral councils. It would not be a bad thing for each bishop to write a pastoral letter now on the value of adoption.

State Catholic conferences also have to get loud about local restrictions that handicap Catholic adoption agencies, like “gender-affirming” requirements for placements. We must not let politicians drive us out of business at this moment, and must be ready to sue on religious freedom grounds to stop them if they try. That is doubly true in states (Massachusetts, New Jersey) where the local political establishment also targets crisis pregnancy centers.

Roe’s reversal three years ago caught the pro-life movement in a reverse whiplash from 1973. In 1973, local control of abortion was lost. In 2022, it all came back, even though much of our local support structure had atrophied because of 50 years of abortion federalization.

But with local control, abortion has become not just a political but also a social issue in the local community. Pro-life advocates are now confronted not just by the theoretical legal status of abortion but the practical needs of mothers in distress here and now. And, while adoption seems a solution, the data suggests it’s less of a solution than we perhaps imagine.

The Kirk-Hanlon research confirms what we’ve been learning for a while: adoption consistently comes in last among “choices” for problem pregnancies. Speaking at the 2024 Cardinal O’Connor Conference for Life at Georgetown, Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley noted the same phenomenon, asserting there are 86 abortions for every adoption. Based on Kirk-Hanlon numbers, the cardinal is generous.

If adoption is to be more than a theoretical option—nominally on the table but rarely exercised—we need to invest more in its promotion.