I don’t like when people refer to adoption as "the loving option." (Does this mean choosing to parent your child is not a loving act?)

When talking about surrender, I think it’s really important to make sure our words stay away from overly emotional language, such as “Adoption is the loving option,” “Birthmothers are angels performing miracles,” or “You can help make waiting couples’ dreams come true.” While these may be heartfelt and genuine feelings, they are not really appropriate to express during a process as serious as the decision to surrender one’s child. That’s because they tend to slant a woman’s disposition toward a given outcome.

I don’t mean to be hard-hearted, but phrases like "Give a gift to a deserving couple" only serve to obscure the realities of adoption…and they muddy the waters for expectant parents who are considering their options.

Framing the issue in warm and fuzzy terms might make us feel better about the losses that come with adoption, but it certainly doesn’t help the decision-makers to stay rational or look at the facts objectively. And viewing the situation logically is what needs to happen most during the time that expectant parents are weighing the pros and cons of surrendering their parental rights.

In fact, I see far too much sugar and sentimentality surrounding adoption in general, especially in the advertising that seeks to attract pregnant women to the idea of surrendering. If I were in charge of the world, I’d try to ban adoption advertising, in order to help keep surrenders separate from the business side of adoption.

I’m very uncomfortable with the extent to which adoption has been turned into an industry, with consumers (agencies and waiting couples) trying to market themselves to the producers (pregnant women) using the language and tactics of advertising. I suspect that most hopeful adoptive parents are uncomfortable with this state of affairs, too, and would prefer to avoid selling themselves to potential birthmoms. But they feel they have to do it, because the competition for babies is so fierce, and wait times are so long.

In my perfect world, there would be no matching of pregnant women with waiting couples before birth. Women would have their babies and then decide if they were going to keep them or not. Only then would a licensed agency step in to help find adoptive parents. During the pregnancy, the decision-making process would take place in private, with unbiased counseling not attached to any agency, attorney or facilitator. Then, if an adoption needed to happen, it could do so without the taint of sales tools, such as advertising and marketing.