The Need for Adoption Policy Adoption provides children with the benefits of solid, two-parent homes while giving birth mothers the opportunity to mature before taking on the adult responsibilities of childrearing. Illegitimacy - Births to unmarried teenagers continue to escalate dramatically. Abortion - Abortion is strongly linked to unwed pregnancy. Breaking the Cycle - For the child of a single parent, the statistical odds of becoming an unwed mother later in life, or fathering a child out of wedlock, are staggering. One study found that 80 percent of the girls who were mothers at 15 were themselves daughters of teenage mothers.
Adoption can help break the cycle.
An estimated one to two million prospective parents are still waiting to adopt a child. Perhaps one of the reasons why so few unwed mothers choose adoption for their babies is that adoption frequently is not presented to women as a viable choice. One study found that nearly 40 percent of pregnancy counselors fail to include adoption as an option in their counseling. Even worse, the counselors had a 40 percent rate of uncertainty and inaccurate knowledge about adoption. Incredibly, some pregnancy counselors who thought adoption would be a good choice still failed to present it as an option, because they thought the girls would not want to hear about it.