National Adoption Month: You Can Be a Child’s Hope

Opinion   |   Ryan Bomberger   |   Nov 15, 2011   |   1:29PM   |   Washington, DC

Adoption unleashes purpose. My life and millions of others like me reveal this undeniable truth. One woman’s selfless choice made my life possible. One couple’s sacrifice made my possibilities come to life.

At The Radiance Foundation we have this radical notion that, many times in life, the best things are unplanned. Big Abortion desperately tries to ignore and even vilify the beauty of adoption. But as an adoptee and adoptive father, I am the proof they are wrong.

For Christians, adoption should be second nature. There is no salvation without spiritual adoption. And yet, a small number of orphaned children, right here in the United States of America, await salvation in the form of physical adoption and the love that flows from this form of beautiful sacrifice.

In 2011 we still fight a eugenic mindset that adoption is an inferior form of family. Henry Goddard, famed psychologist and eugenicist (who coined the term ‘moron’) called adoption a “crime against those yet unborn”.  Eugenicists like Goddard, who concocted voluminous false evidence in order to advocate for the elimination of the “unfit”, despised adoption. Illegitimate children, in their pseudoscientific estimation, were the result of promiscuity, a trait they considered “feeble-minded”, and possessed inferior hereditary characteristics that endangered the future happiness of families.

The same warped mindset that brought about the abortion of over 53 million unborn children, since 1973, also campaigned against adoption. Margaret Sanger, herself, in an interview with Mike Wallace in 1957, bemoaned the birth of those “already marked when they’re born.” She called giving birth to such children “the greatest sin in the world.”  This hate against our own posterity is the immutable foundation of the nation’s largest abortion chain.

This explains why Planned Parenthood aborts 340 children for every ONE adoption referral. Their tragic philosophy that “unintended” equals “unwanted” equals “unloved” is disproven every day by the millions who have been adopted since Sanger uttered those words.

November is National Adoption Month. Not only should we celebrate the beauty of adoption, but the urgent necessity of adoption, orphan and foster care.

Recently, I attended a meeting where Jim Daly, CEO/President of Focus on the Family spoke hypothetically about the New York Times running the headline: “Christians Adopt All Children in System.” It was a powerful statement, and one I know he and many other like-minded prolife individuals strive to make reality.

It’s not impossible. In fact, looking at the numbers, it’s seems incredibly achievable. In 2008, out of the 463,00 children in the foster care system, 111,225 are waiting for adoption, according to the most recent statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Pew Research Institute reports that Evangelicals and Catholics make up 26.3% and 23.9%, respectfully, of the US adult population. Census Bureau data indicates this would amount to 117,751,128 adults. (I’m using the two largest religious affiliations to show how only a portion of our nation’s religious make-up can eradicate the orphan crisis here in the United States.) That’s 1058 adults for every single child that’s available for adoption through foster care—sounds like a pretty good ratio.

There are some conditions of our humanity that are solvable. Adoption of the fatherless (and motherless) is one of them.  During this month, if you haven’t yet heard an appeal in your church or workplace about National Adoption Day or National Adoption Month find out more and share it with your Evangelical, Catholic, Mainline, or even unaffiliated friends.

My life was forever changed. Another child’s life, as well as yours, can be too.  Adopt. Be the Hope.