Experts worry that young Texans will make life-altering decisions based on an idealized image of adoption.

Since Texas banned virtually all abortions, Texans may have seen a rosy message about adoption pop up on their phone screens or dot the view on their daily commute. It might read something like this:

Adoption helps “empower” women and allows them to be "in control” of their future.

That message or sentiment appears on billboards and digital advertisements that direct people to ModernAdoptionPlans.org** **— the product of a targeted, state-funded marketing campaign aiming to increase adoptions among young women and girls with unplanned pregnancies, according to documents obtained through an open records request. In the documents, organizers explicitly laid out a target audience with “the highest incidence of unplanned pregnancies”: low-income, single women that “skew African-American and Hispanic” between the ages of 12 and 34.

  • talEnglish
    7·
    8 months ago

    The language that permeates the Modern Adoption website, describing mothers who relinquish their child as “brave” and “loving,” reflects how marketing tactics have changed around adoption over the last several decades, from a shame-based approach to one that makes women feel like they’re making the right choice, experts say.

    But women primarily turn to adoption when they lack social support and feel they have no other choice, said Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies adoption and abortion.

    “It’s a constrained choice; it isn’t an empowered choice,” she said. “If you gave people the resources they need to parent their children, they’d be parenting their children.”

    I feel like there are different parties having two totally different debates happening here.

    1. Abort or put up for adoption.

    2. Put up for adoption or get aid to raise oneself.