Adoption Agencies Under Pressure 18 Months After Roe v Wade Overturned

By Kate Plummer

On December 24, 2023

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court released a ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected a pregnant woman’s right to choose to have an abortion “without undue restrictive interference from the government.”

Since ruling on the case at the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 14 states have enacted near-total bans on abortion while a further seven have placed gestational limits on terminating pregnancies.

The court flapping its wings in this way has changed the societal weather across the country. Women now cross state lines to access abortion in states where it is legal. A legally dubious online market of abortion pills has expanded. Female students are avoiding going to colleges where abortions are restricted.

And now, 18 months after the decision, a number of adoption agencies have revealed to Newsweek there are rising numbers of birth parents choosing to put their children up for adoption, unable to instead access a legal abortion. It’s a trend that could put pressure on the adoption system, experts have warned.

Keith Davis, the executive director for Oklahoma agency Family for Life, said his agency added about 30 families in the past fiscal year, two of which did so based on Oklahoma banning abortion in March 2023.

“Had it not been for recent changes, they would not have been considering fostering,” he said.

Meanwhile Sherri Statler, president of the Texas based Christian Homes & Family Services, said her agency is assisting about 20 percent more women with unplanned pregnancies who are considering an adoption since the Texas Heartbeat bill took effect in September 2021, a piece of legislation that proceeded the federal overturning of Roe v Wade and banned abortions in pregnancies over six weeks, when a heartbeat can be detected. In August 2022, the state then banned all abortions except in cases to save the mother’s life.

“The most notable increase is the number of women who call from the hospital,” Statler said. “They’ve delivered their baby and now faced with the reality of taking the baby home and being a parent, they aren’t sure they are ready.”

The federal government does not track private adoptions systematically. But Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist and researcher at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health program at the University of California San Francisco, has found that over 91 percent of women who are denied wanted abortions will end up parenting. The 9 percent who don’t could have a big effect on adoption, she told Newsweek.

She said: “Because abortion rates are so high and adoption rates are so low, this remaining 9 percent could represent a dramatic increase in the number of adoptions over time—we just haven’t yet seen that play out.”

It is beginning to play out for Madison Smith, a pregnancy and birth parent counselor at Adoptions of Indiana, a state in which abortion was banned, with some limited exceptions, in August 2023. Often suffering from substance abuse issues, women come to her agency and make adoption plans upon the birth of their babies, she said. In these cases, some women considered abortion.

“Perhaps because of the law change on abortion, women are feeling the weight of ‘no good option’ and are choosing to contact an adoption professional later in her pregnancy, or most commonly, after delivery because of the uncertainty of what her options are,” she said.

However, she noted rising cases of adoption are “complex” and cannot be attributed only to one factor.

Meanwhile, Daniel Nehrbass, president of national agency Nightlight Christian Adoptions, said his agency had seen a 10 percent increase in the number of women seeking to place their newborn infants since the Dobbs decision, including one birth mother from Kentucky, where abortion was banned in July 2022, who said she considered adoption because she found it difficult to get an abortion. Nehrbass also did not attribute every case in the 10 percent increase to Dobbs.

However, if reports from agencies like these prevail, Dr. John DeGarmo, a fostering consultant and founder and director of The Foster Care Institute, said this may put pressure on an already embattled system.

“Currently, there are roughly 120,000 children in foster care who are waiting for a forever family, waiting to be adopted,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we are also facing a severe lack of foster families in our nation, as well. In addition, many foster families are not properly equipped and trained to care for those children who are suffering from a pandemic of mental health issues, mental health issues that are crippling today’s youth in so many ways.

“Our nation’s foster care system is in crisis, with children in care sleeping in hotels, and offices across the nation, due to a shortage of homes. Today’s caseworkers in many states are overworked, overwhelmed, under staffed, under resourced, and under paid. Yet, there are more children coming into a foster care system that is greatly struggling to address it.

“With a possible increase of children available for adoption due to Roe v. Wade, the foster care system may struggle even more. It is critical that our nation’s child welfare programs and legislators address this.”

Two caveats blunt this trend. One is that 18 months is still a relatively short period (the length of two full-term pregnancies, in fact), making it difficult to observe long-term changes.

The other is research conducted in October by WeCount, a national research project led by the Society of Family Planning, showing the number of legal abortions has stayed relatively stable since Dodds, with abortions plummeting in states where there were bans but increasing in locations where it is still legal. This suggests new abortion laws are not yet having as marked an impact on figures as commentators may have previously predicted, and people are still managing to terminate unwanted pregnancies rather than give up their infants.

As Nehrbrass said: “The availability of chemical abortion by mail makes it extremely unlikely that the Dobbs decision will have a major influence on the number of children placed for adoption since women generally make a decision about their pregnancy very early in the process.

“People have gotten abortions for thousands of years in environments where it is legal or not legal.”

Indeed, some of the adoption agencies Newsweek contacted for this article didn’t report an increase in demand over the last couple of years.

Regardless, in the long term, the overturning of Roe v. Wade could create a culture shift, with more people questioning the morality of abortion, resulting in more people placing newborns into care.

“By making abortion more restricted legally, it plants the seed in public discourse (in those states) that there is moral issue with abortion,” Nehrbass said. “Raising the question about aborting being a moral issue may cause some people to question the act. And that may result in a cultural shift.”

When that shift takes place, it may well be adoption agencies that bear the brunt of it.

This piece was republished from News Week.