Consider the Abortion Toll Road & What That Means for Alternative Routes

I watched a toll road being added on to the highway near my house. Months and months of construction and lots of promises of quick completion. I run a small non-profit. My time is rarely worth paying the extra 5 to 10 bucks to get somewhere 10 minutes faster. As the toll road went in, I became more and more concerned about the alternate routes that I could afford to take. Drivers who did not or could not use the toll road would be flooding into the two alternative routes that lead to the other major highway south of Denver. I kept wondering: when were they going to widen the alternative routes to compensate? Regardless of your thoughts on the tollway, we could all acknowledge that the two other ways to access major roadways were going to be seeing an increase in traffic.

Increasing the Load

This addition to my neighborhood brings to mind the tollway of abortion and the alternative routes of parenting and adoption. Unintended pregnancies still make up 45% of pregnancies today. In 2014, I read a study by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute why, of those who face unintended pregnancies, only a very small percentage choose adoption. After considering the pregnancies that end in miscarriage, of those remaining, their decisions split pretty evenly between those taking the route of abortion and those taking the route of parenting.

With all the talk about cutting access to abortion, who is looking at building infrastructure around the two other routes: parenting and adoption? -- Founder Rebecca Vahle

If I do the math correctly, with approximately 6 million pregnancies a year, 45% would be 2.7 million unintended pregnancies.  If just less than half have abortions and just less than half parent, that leaves the number who place their child for adoption at the national average of about 18,000 adoptions a year, give or take.

Let’s say that everyone who might have had an abortion would need to move to the alternative routes. 1.32 million more would parent and 1.32 million more would place for adoption. Except we know that not all women facing an unintended pregnancy are going to parent or place because we know limiting abortion access does not eliminate abortion. But, let’s say half the terminations don’t happen. That still brings more than 650,000 onto the parenting/adoption alternative routes.

Right now, we have NO consistent infrastructure in place to support that many children on either of these alternative routes.

• There is no widespread access to parenting resources to support families facing an unintended pregnancy.
• There is no standardized care in healthcare to support moms considering adoption.
• And the foster care system is certainly not poised to be able to take up the slack, as underfunded and overstressed as it already is.

There has been little thought about what happens down the road if fewer people travel the abortion “tollway."

If We Truly Want to Better Serve Babies, We’re Going to Need New Infrastructure

How much more of an issue will we face if we wait to address the congestion on the alternative thoroughfares until after the toll road becomes active?  How much more difficult will it be to create infrastructure within the added congestion?  And how many children will experience trauma in the chaos of traffic and ongoing backups?  Infrastructure must be put in place proactively with the assumption that there WILL be issues...issues we can predict just by doing the simple math.

So how do we do that? We join voices and raise awareness. We acknowledge the need and look to solutions. We consider models in healthcare that have already met the needs of those facing difficulty - Hospice, Bereavement Care and Organ Donation. A healthcare initiative could provide funding for helping families connect to parenting resources and ethical adoption resources. Fund training for healthcare professionals, both physicians and nursing professionals, as well as support for mental health resources and post-placement counseling for birth moms.

Here's Where You Come In

Our hope is to gather voices to join ours in encouraging the building of a consistent infrastructure around the options of adoption and parenting, alternatives to abortion for those facing unplanned pregnancy. Ours is a pro-education mission that encourages discussion and access to resources in the neutral space of healthcare.

Ways to help:

Our hope is to gather voices to join ours in encouraging the building of a consistent infrastructure around the options of adoption and parenting, alternatives to abortion for those facing unplanned pregnancy. Ours is a pro-education mission that encourages discussion and access to resources in the neutral space of healthcare.

• Sign up to be part of our advocacy group - you can also reach this link at the end of this post about infant adoption in comparison to organ donation.
• Donate to our small, pro-education non-profit, Family to Family Support Network, as we advocate for this infrastructure!

Modification of these roadways in women’s healthcare will invite chaos and sadly, financial opportunists. We must begin to undergird the alternate routes now by joining our voices to lessen the future damage for everyone.

Let's ensure that all babies go home in secure arms, no matter the alternative route.