I was reading an interview with an author on Salon.com the other day. The book was “Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women and the World.“ The author being interviewed happened to be Liza Mundy, who also recently wrote a great piece on open adoption for the Washington Times.

Somewhere in the interview, I came across this passage, where Mundy explains why reproductive issues are such hot-button topics:

“I think all issues having to do with children and how we raise them attract hostility and judgment. Anybody who writes about work and family issues -- you know you're going to experience a torrent of opinions about the choices that you've made. People are just very opinionated about how other people form families.”

Amen, sister!

When it comes to an unplanned pregnancy, you better buckle in and get ready to receive a boatload of unsolicited commentary. It doesn’t matter what you decide to do—abort, parent, or place for adoption. Whatever your solution, you will hear strong, vehemently expressed opinions from all sides. In fact, people will literally come out of the woodwork to loudly express their views on your personal choices.

Now, this isn’t necessarily limited to women who abort, single parent, or place….a similar phenomenon is experienced by mothers who adopt, mothers who stay home, mothers who work, and on and on. But special hatred seems to be reserved for those who would “give away” their children.

In the end, I think this is because people have a deep reverence for the mother-child bond, and they fear how easily it can be broken. No one wants to consider how fragile the tie can be. No one wants to face that it might have been them whose mother left and didn’t come back. No one wants to believe that they could be the woman so downtrodden and lacking in help that she could be convinced to part from her child. And hardly anyone understands the subtle fact that sometimes leaving can be done out of love.

I think this is the source of all the double-speak about adoption and surrender. People talk it up beforehand and slam it afterward, because they are scared of what it means, and they don’t know what to do with those feelings.

Isn’t that where most judgement comes from—-fear?