Please provide me with good adoption agencies : trying to help a friend choose adoption vs. abortion ??

Independ"ant"

If your really trying to help her and not just persuade her, look up the closest abortion clinic as well. If she decides to give birth, look up agencies that will help assist her so she can keep the baby and raise him/her.

Alissa

Both can be mentally draining for someone. I would have her speak to a counselor about it. I wouldn't go to one of the counselors that try to brain wash you (you can find them in the yellow pages under abortion) Your friend needs to make this decision on her own without someone pressuring her

Felicita1

both can be traumatic and with adoption there is a huge chance that the emotional pain will NEVER end as there is no closure.

why can't she keep her baby?

An adoption agency is the LAST place she should go if she is trying to decide. They stay in business due to money they get from people paying to adopt babies. Of course they're going to tell her that adoption is wonderful because this is how they make money -- if she doesn't surrender her baby they won't make money from it. Yes, it is conflict-of-interest. Even in agencies that do "parenting plans" as well, the pressure is still on to ensure that a certain number of babies will be surrendered for adoption.

Abortion is a decision for early in pregnancy. You choose between abortion and becoming a mother and those are the facts. When your baby is born you will be a mother and only THEN should you decide to keep your baby or not. Until then, it is far too soon to make any sort of informed decision -- until your baby is in your arms you may not realize the importance of the mother-child bond between you and your baby. But adoption agencies want mothers to "make an adoption plan" while still pregnant so she feels she cannot back out. This is a form of coercion, especially if she meets/sees prospective adopters who want her baby and seem so much better than she is.

For more information on the trauma of losing a child to adoption check out

http://home.att.net/~judy.kelly/thesis.htm
http://www.originscanada.org/the_damage_to_mothers.html
and the collection of stories here: http://www.exiledmothers.com/babies_taken_for_adoption/index.html

and no, open adoption is NOT any easier for a mother than closed adoption and in fact can be more painful. Mothers losing a child to adoption "registered significantly stronger symptoms than the bereaved normative group in 8 or the 14 bereavement subscales: social isolation, somaticizing, sleep disturbance, appetitive, vigor, physical symptoms, optimism vs despair, and dependency. ... results shown in Table 3 demonstrate that mothers relinquishing a child for adoption tend towards more grief symptoms than bereaved parents, especially if the method of adoption was open adoption." (Blanton & Deschner, 1990)

Tapestry6

Check for a no-kill clinic, our clinic is named Alpha Crisis Center.. but usually you can find them under Abortion in the yellow pages of your city. They can set up adoption options for your friend.

tera

www.itsaboutlove.org

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