I'm not pushing towards either option. My personal beliefs/opinions are completely unrelated to my post here, but wanted to address a particular attitude I have often come across regarding adoption.

In response to a "there are tons of couples who can't have kids. Yours would be a blessing to them" comment I read earlier, I just wanted to shed a bit of light on the subject of adoption.

There's this stigma that adoption is insanely complicated, expensive, and time consuming. This is unfair as those things are all relative. Meanwhile, other people see adoption as this easy "wipe off the responsibility and consequences without the moral guilt of abortion kind of thing" But here are the facts for people on either side of the spectrum.

(I will be addressing domestic adoption, the cheaper option, here)

Adoption costs between $15K and $50K on average.

(In 2009) Out of the 423K kids in foster-care, only 115K were available for adoption. And of those kids, only 57K were actually adopted.

And as far as time, adoption can take 2-5 years.

Many factors discourage people from adopting and many many kids will spend their life in and out of foster homes until they're 18. (22K foster kids "aged-out" of their foster homes in 2014)

Please think about the consequences your choices right now have. The potential childhood you could be imposing on the new life you bring into the world.

I'm not sitting here saying "go get abortions!!" at all. But that adoption should not be viewed as such an easy guilt free alternative either.

Normal?

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