“Just Adopt”: Why It’s Actually Really Hard To Adopt In The U.S.

The widespread availability and popularity of abortion, as well as cost and foster care dynamics, all mean adoption isn’t as easy of an option as it seems for infertile couples.

Adoption is one of the most misunderstood industries in the U.S. Although the idea of babies sitting unloved and unwanted is a core belief for many pro-abortion advocates, the reality in the U.S. is very different: For every baby eligible for adoption, there are dozens of couples waiting to adopt. Adopting children is getting more difficult – and more expensive – year by year, providing a laundry list of answers to the question “Why don’t they just adopt?”

Rising infertility has left many prospective parents looking for alternative ways to have children. Their search has fueled the rise and popularity of the for-profit fertility industry, including practices like IVF, surrogacy, and sperm and egg donation, which all come with significant ethical baggage. While the controversy around these practices has led many to advocate for their prohibition, women who want to avoid the for-profit fertility industry are finding themselves with few alternatives for family building. While the purpose of adoption is to find families for children, not children for families, the challenges of the fertility industrial complex do shed light on the deterioration of alternatives for infertile women. So why has adoption gotten so difficult?

Abortion Trends

One of the biggest pieces of misinformation among pro-abortion advocates is the idea that giving a baby up for adoption isn’t an option, since there are already so many babies waiting to be adopted. In reality, estimates say that an average of 36 couples are waiting for every one baby available to be adopted. This lopsidedness is a fairly recent trend, coinciding with the rise in abortions since the ‘70s. Back then, it was much more common for unwanted pregnancies to end in adoption rather than abortion, and the number of children born to unmarried women who were placed for adoption was around 9%. Now, most unwanted babies are simply killed before birth, meaning that number has dropped to fewer than 1%. In 2014, for instance, only 18,000 babies were put up for adoption, but around one million were aborted.

An average of 36 couples are waiting for every one baby available to be adopted.

While the availability of adoptive parents might be comforting for those on the fence about abortion as a concept, it often isn’t much comfort to women with unwanted pregnancies, who often fear that giving a child up for adoption will be emotionally more difficult than aborting the baby. “Women just generally aren’t interested in adoption as a reproductive choice. It’s an extremely rare pregnancy decision.” says University of California at San Francisco sociologist Gretchen Sisson, who says women have an overwhelmingly “dim view of the adoption process,” which they see as “guilt-inducing,” “traumatic,” “emotionally distressing,” and “morally unconscionable.” 

Contrary to most pro-abortion messaging, much of the hesitation to go through with pregnancies comes chiefly from social stigma, not medical fears of the pregnancy itself. Women worry both about how they will be shamed for their unwanted pregnancies by family, friends, and other people in their lives, as well as about how they will feel or be seen for “giving up” their baby for adoption. For many, abortion feels like the socially easier way out.

Foster Care Dynamics

While far fewer children are available for adoption, this doesn’t mean every child is in a loving home. Even though the number of children in foster care is going down, decreasing about a third since the late ‘90s, the number of children eligible to be adopted is dwarfed by the number in limbo, meaning that adoption is only an option for about a quarter of them. Much of this lopsided dynamic stems from public policies that are well-intentioned and aimed at prioritizing reuniting children with their biological families at all costs. Unfortunately, the strategy is a gamble, meaning many children can spend years or entire childhoods going in and out of foster care rather than being adopted by non-biological parents. 

Still, most children’s experience with foster care is as a temporary piece of their lives. The median amount of time children spend in foster care has increased slightly in the past decade, rising from 13.2 months in 2011 to 17.5 months in 2021, but 83% of children are out of foster care, either with adoptive parents or back home with their biological families, in under three years. Thankfully, the number of children who age out of foster care annually, reaching the age of 18 without finding permanent homes or reuniting with their birth families, is also declining. At its peak in 2008, 30,000 children aged out of foster care without permanent families, a number that declined by over a third by 2021. 

The foster care system is still ripe for reform in a number of areas, with a number of children still suffering neglect from impermanent families. One in six children in the system are physically abused, and one in ten are sexually abused, with 70% of abuse cases involving children under the age of 10. Still, it’s improving over time at its goal of getting children into safe, permanent families, while still prioritizing biological parents.

Adoption and foster care exist primarily for the purpose of finding families for children, not the other way around.

For-Profit Adoption Clinics

The elephant in the room for adoption is the price tag: Many families simply can’t afford the costs associated with adoption. Adopting a child in the U.S. typically runs families between $20,000 and $45,000, covering a host of fees from attorneys and courts, adoption clinics, and often medical and living expenses for the birth mom. International adoption comes with a similarly hefty investment, running between $20,000 and $50,000, typically increasing in price due to the multiple trips required to the child’s country of origin. These fees price out many loving families who can’t have their own children due to infertility and want to avoid many of the ethical issues of IVF, surrogacy, and the for-profit fertility industry. 

The for-profit adoption industry can also cause awkward dynamics with families and adoptees alike. “When you grow up with pieces of paper showing how much your parents paid for you, it does make you feel like they should have a return on your investment,” one adoptee said. “I grew up feeling like I had to prove my parents’ money’s worth.” 

Companies can also treat prospective parents like cash cows, sometimes dropping parents whose first adoption falls through because they’re no longer profitable, or accepting $2,000 monthly payments even while knowing they have way more prospective couples than available babies.

Closing Thoughts

It’s important to reiterate that adoption and foster care exist primarily for the purpose of finding families for children, not the other way around. Still, the amount of misinformation around the American adoption industry, both from pro-abortion advocates who attempt to scare pregnant women away from placing children for adoption and from anti-surrogacy advocates who claim it’s easy to “just adopt,” make it harder for would-be parents to navigate an already expensive and difficult system. The American adoption system is expensive, riddled with for-profit middlemen, and, at the end of the day, lacking a lot of babies who might have been born if not for abortion.

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