Informed consent

First of all, by allowing a dependent individual to make fully autonomous decisions, you are limiting the freedoms of and impacting the lives of others.

It's all very nice to think that we should just make sure that anyone in need has access to resources to ensure that they can choose whatever option they might feel better about in the future. But resources are limited and they are certainly not "free". If in order to give them those resources-- time, money, support, services-- you are going to take them from others. Everyone has the right to make their own choices coupled with the responsibility to bare the consequences of those choices. If a person can not independently deal with the consequences of their actions than they no longer have full independent action.

With so many couples wanting families, AND having the resources to provide for children, I find it hard to justify taxing everyone to provide even more services to make a handful of women be able to do what they want. Are there some great single mothers who have ended up thriving with happy children? Sure. There are also great adoptive parents with happy children. CPS handles a disproportionate number of cased of people who decided to become parents but were not emotionally or financially ready for the burden. Whether you believe this is only a resource issue or not, it goes to show that with the current state of affairs, children are not necessarily going to be in a happy, safe, loving home just because they stayed with their biological mother.

Secondly, there are resources already available to single mothers. Mountains of resources. In order to get signed up for those resources, it takes time, effort, and a lot of leg work-- those are not things that need to be provided by adoption agencies. If you want adoption agencies to actually exist and provide services, it is ridiculous to think that they should act against their own self interest. It is the responsibility to the mother-to-be to do the leg work to find the resources available to her. Parenting is a whole lot harder than filing out paperwork and making cold calls to charities and government agencies. If a person feels like they are ready to raise a child, the very least they can do is the work to prepare themselves for that reality.

/r/Adoption Thread