Please

You know Taylor and I very much want children in our lives, and that we have started the adoption process.  We are nearly done with our home study and hope for a placement in the next few months.  It is an exciting and unusual time--expecting a child with no known due date...

But today, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I need to say something.  I'd like to put this case in a slightly different light.  In 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta sent this message to the United States:

Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3000 children from abortion. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents and have grown up so full of love and joy.

Her words mean so much to me.  About a year and a half ago, a woman I knew of through a dear friend was pregnant and briefly considered placing her baby for adoption.  My friend asked Taylor and me if we had thought about adoption--which was interesting, since we were, but hadn't "announced" it yet.  We prayed about it and we both came to the conclusion that we did, indeed, want to start the adoption process.  We told her that if this woman was thinking about abortion, we would--unconditionally and no-questions-asked--accept her child, if only she would maintain the pregnancy.

The day I called my friend to tell her our decision, she told me the woman was on her way down to the abortion clinic.  I was crushed.  It was a blow I wasn't expecting--to feel so acutely that I had lost a child whom I had never seen and only known about for a week.

I think the baby was a girl.  I have named her. Our first Little Saint.

It's easy to see the connection between abortion and adoption.  I don't have any references to back up my conclusions (if you know of any, please let me know), but the numbers are clear.  Fewer babies born means fewer available for adoption.  I'm not assuming that every woman who has had an abortion in the last 30+ years would have placed her child for adoption, but undoubtedly some of them would have.  Perhaps most of them.  If you consider the millions of children killed since Roe v. Wade, that is a tremendous number of empty arms still waiting for a child.

I agree that we need a better support system for women who are expecting and who want to raise their child. I know that adoption needs more support worldwide and women need to be given options--real options--when facing an unplanned pregnancy.  But if we do not value life enough even to allow children to be born, where will the respect for a mother's decision to deliver her child come from?  Where will she find support for the more difficult way?

Please don't kill the children.  I want them.  I would take all of them if I could.

Please...