Christian Organizations Shame and Coerce Women into Giving up Their Children

[babsbunny]

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/142274/christian_organizations_shame_and_coerce_women_into_giving_up_their_children/

By Kathryn Joyce, The Nation. Posted August 29, 2009.

Many Christian adoption agencies are far more concerned with artificially producing "orphans" for Christian parents to adopt, than helping birth parents care for wanted children.


Carol Jordan, a 32-year-old pharmacy technician, was living in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1999 when she became pregnant. She'd already decided against abortion, but she was struggling financially and her boyfriend was unsupportive. Looking through the Yellow Pages for help, she spotted an ad under "crisis pregnancies" for Bethany Christian Services. Within hours of calling, Jordan (who asked to be identified with a pseudonym) was invited to Bethany's local office to discuss free housing and medical care.

[sakabatou]

1. More...

When Jordan arrived, a counselor began asking whether she'd considered adoption and talking about the poverty rates of single mothers. Over five counseling sessions, she convinced Jordan that adoption was a win-win situation: Jordan wouldn't "have death on her hands," her bills would be paid and the baby would go to a family of her choosing in an open adoption. She suggested Jordan move into one of Bethany's "shepherding family" homes, away from the influence of family and friends.

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), the nonprofit pregnancy-testing facilities set up by antiabortion groups to dissuade women from having abortions, have become fixtures of the antiabortion landscape, buttressed by an estimated $60 million in federal abstinence and marriage-promotion funds. The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to "choose life" but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany's case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.

[AuntPatsy]

2. when are these practices by religion going to be investigated and TAXED

as it is, we are helping them financially with our tax funds????

[stray cat]

3. They certainly promote adoption over abortion and are condemned for that as well

[Duke Newcombe]

5. But they're the eeeVil "Xtian"...

the agenda is to criticize anything they do, whether they are consistent or not. If it were a secular adoption agency doing this, you wouldn't hear a peep.

[BuelahWitch]

6. Read the entire article before you rush to judgement

They treated this woman horribly, took her away from friends and family and then provided no counseling or care after the baby was born.

[Hansel]

7. Why not promote motherhood over abortion?

Why not provide her the support she needs to raise her baby?

Condemning the practice of coercing a woman into carrying her baby to full term in order to take her baby and sell it to someone else deserves condemnation.

[Cerridwen]

4. "The Handmaid's Tale" has come to life.

Updated for the 21st Century.