@Adoption The Orphan: THe Pro-Life Missing Link

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish." Mother Teresa

About a year and a half ago, I was very excited to attend my first national pro-life conference. I was about to release my book “TO BE A MOTHER: ADOPTING GOD’S HEART.” It is a book that chronicles my experience into motherhood following the abortion I had when I was a teenager. I had originally intended to write a book solely on adoption until through much prayer and meditation I was sure the abortion story must also be told. I have since been blessed to have given birth to two children and blessed through the adoption of 4 additional children (one from Guatemala and 3 from Ethiopia).  I was very excited to attend my first pro-life conference. I checked in and was given a lanyard to place around my neck with a name badge. I was given a giant plastic bag filled with literature of pro-life organizations.  I couldn’t wait to sit down and browse through them.  I truly soaked up this conference experience. I loved the people and learned so much about the ‘Life’ issues that were outlined during the weekend breakout sessions. They included the following topics:

Stem Cell Legislation

Eugenics

End of Life Care

Starting a Pro-Life Ministry at Your Church

Domestic Open Adoption

Pregnancy Support Clinics

Sidewalk Counseling

Counseling and Caring for the Post Abortive Woman

Medical Procedures for Late Term Abortion

Roe V. Wade decisions

Students for Life

Global Abortion Issues

How to Cope with Infertility

Blogging for Life

Talking to secular people about abortion….

The list went on and on.  I was enjoying this conference but I found myself looking through the bag over and over for something. I emptied the bag and practically turned it inside out. Something was missing.

In between sessions, I walked from booth to booth, table to table and continued filling up my bag. I saw T-shirts. I bought T-shirts. I bought books. I signed my name on lists for newsletters. I enjoyed conversations with many people. I added contacts to my phone.  Still, something was missing…

My book “To Be A Mother” was released a few months later. It became a number best selling Amazon adoption book. I started an organization to instill pride and understanding of issues pertaining to Mothers and children globally called MOTHER THE WORLD.  I spent the year in what felt to me like two separate universes. I would give my abortion testimony at pro-life conferences.  The following week I would talk to adoption conference attendees about adoption. This went back and forth. I kept asking myself “Why does it feel like something is missing? Why does God have me in these two seemingly separate circles?”

Three of my four adopted children are from Ethiopia. They are what some call AIDS orphans (although most of us who have adopted don’t call them orphans anymore).  My children are orphaned because their parents died from AIDS. If they had never been adopted they would have either been on the streets to eventually get a disease and die at a young age or just die much earlier than most Americans due to poor health/environment. In a nutshell, their ‘lives’ would be shortened, meaningless and doomed.

My Guatemalan daughter was born in an area known for murdering girls as young as 5 after they are raped by gangs. The gangs do this to maintain control over the villages. They are terrorists. My daughter just turned 5.

My passion has grown so intensely for the orphan over the past 5 years. More specifically I am brought to tears at the thought of many of the 150million orphans who today are left to die.  Children in many countries who are HIV+ will die due to lack of proper care. In America we rarely hear of AIDS babies anymore because medical advancements have made it so that babies born to HIV+ mothers can be born without the virus. 

Also, children adopted with the virus if brought to America and given proper care will live a long full life. But still they are dying in many countries without anyone to even pray, hold vigil, protest or counsel the mother who has abandoned them at the orphanage steps.  These children in some facilities in Eastern Europe are left to starve alongside children with cerebral palsy, cleft palates and down syndrome. Some abandoned children that have been given to the orphanages healthy will go insane due to lack of stimulation, eye contact or tactile touch. In some countries if children are not adopted or fostered by the time they are 7 they will be left in an orphanage to languish, starve or to be sold into trafficking.

One story that I heard recently was of a 7 year-old child in Eastern Europe who was living at an orphanage and asked a friend of mine if she could bring her books next time she visited the orphanage. The little girl wanted to learn how to read. The orphanage director looked at my friend and said ‘Don’t bother her life is meaningless.”

Some girls in India are murdered when born as second daughters due to an outlawed dowry system that still continue to this day. There is an Indian village called “The Village Where They Kill Their Daughters” because there are no girls. They are either aborted or killed shortly after birth. And we know of the little girls discarded and abandoned in China due to the population controls.

My girlfriend Carolyn from Project Hopeful tells me that children orphaned in Ethiopia with HIV will die faster if they don’t think they are going to be adopted. They lose hope and would rather die than live without a family.

There are still 150 million orphans globally. Very few will be adopted. Many are suffering as they starve, are in pain from their diseases or acutely lonely waiting for someone to say “you matter.” For most of them that means that they will die believing they did not matter to anyone.

So, in the past few weeks I have had a clarity that I have been praying for. I have had an epiphany of something so simple. I know so clearly what the missing link is. It is the orphan. When I mention this to my pro-life friends they usually nod in understanding that this is something so simple that they can’t even believe we missed it. Yes we talk about adoption at these conferences but we rarely discuss orphans internationally and how so connected it is to the sanctity of life issue. I don’t recall ever seeing a pro-life break out session titled “How to Practice Pure Religion by acknowledging the Vulnerable Orphan.” I haven’t seen any break out sessions even remotely close to that.  Why has this issue been omitted? I believe that because the orphan is so close to God’s heart that somehow this has been so hidden right under the noses of the pro-life movement that we have lost our ability to smell and see what is so clearly evident. The unborn are so important. I know because I grieve the choice to abort my daughter everyday. The sick and elderly in America are also important. All of it is crucial. But that is just the point. It ALL is important. I can no longer attend another pro-life conference that is a broken chain. We can see these children, minister to them and give them life. How can we possibly consider ourselves pro-life when we ignore 150 million human beings whose lives are being disrespected?. How is it that we have avoided this topic in our breakout sessions?

I will say that on the other hand I am not totally comfortable at the avoidance of the abortion issue at adoption conferences either. There are 1.5 million unborn human beings killed in America every year and more globally. I consider them orphans defined in James 1:27 too. 

Adoption doesn’t necessarily mean pro-life and pro-life doesn’t necessarily mean adoption advocacy. This fact really gets to me. I have met many Christian adoption advocates who believe in abortion. I have also met many pro-life individuals who have never ever even given a second thought to the 9 year old left to die in Russia due to the fact that no one has bothered to take him for a walk in 9 years. It is twisted to me!

Choose life! Respect life! Sanctity of Life! Chosen! Are these just cute t-shirts and bumper stickers to us? If we believe that we are created/woven by God, how can we discriminate based on age (whether an 8 week embryo or 80 year old alzheimers patient)? How can we omit the 150 million missing links in between that chain in pro-life conferences?  As pro-lifers we have miraculously and thankfully remembered the unborn, the ones we can’t see. I am so grateful for that. But we are blinded to children that we can reach out and touch if we make a choice to offer life back to them through adoption, orphan advocacy or proper medical care.

I am making this observation and presenting it to the pro-life community because I believe in my heart of hearts that it is going to be received well. I would love to see a 40 days for the Orphan Campaign or a new pro-life fund started to support those who want to adopt HIV+ or down syndrome baby. But let’s remember that a chain with a missing link is not strong and will be broken.

Jesus wanted us to take care of the orphan. Jesus has been and is being stripped away from this world. To be blunt: there is a battle to abort Christ from the hearts of people everywhere. In many countries the orphan crisis is due to a lack of respect for life that has developed due to the fact that the message of loving the least of these is non-existent. Christianity is dead and dying in many countries. Christ is not welcome. Soon discarding children, disrespecting life becomes accepted as the norm. In America now we are killing people that we cannot see (the unborn, those in nursing homes, in hospitals). Today, in other countries children are left to die in plain sight on the side of the streets and in soiled cribs in government orphanages. If we think we are immune to this happening here in America then we are wrong.  If we as a pro-life community don’t step up for the 150 million children that some call in-valid (invalids) then we are just being hypocritical. If we only advocate for the unborn and elderly, then aren’t we as bad as those who tell us that a human being only matters once they are through the birth canal? We cannot become guilty of discriminating against the missing link of living children that have been given life and then abused, discarded, ripped apart, raped and starved. We need to be consistent in respecting life…all life and the orphan is no exception.

My plea to both the pro-life and adoption community is to please fight from being habitual and predictable in your approach to your causes.  For the adoption circles I ask that you stop trying to be careful in avoiding the abortion crisis. I ask that you become bold enough to focus on the truth that we are alive because He has knit us in our mother’s wombs. When mothers decide to abandon them they become orphans.

To the pro-life community I pray that we hold ourselves truly accountable. I pray that we don’t get so caught up in our typical routine of only praying at clinics and fighting against abortion legislation. All of this is important! But it is incomplete because the missing link is ignored….Those we call pro-choicers ignore and disrespect the unborn...if we ignore the orphan then we are choosing to invalidate their lives too..

I know some of you may think…”I can’t do everything. I have to decide on what I am standing for.” It is true we can’t do everything. But we don’t have to do just one thing either. And if we stand for one thing let’s stand for the lives of Human Beings of all ages. We can advocate for the unborn and the orphan. We can pray during 40 Days For Life, write a letter to the senator, and hold a fundraiser for an orphanage. I will stand in front of our clinics and pray and I will also be happy to advocate for a viable human being to be kept on life support. I will do this even though my passion leans heavily to advocating for the lives of the orphan who have remained totally invisible in some circles even though they are massive in number.

The next time I attend a pro-life conference I really hope there are brochures and literature advocating for children like mine and the ones still without families. I hope and pray that I can watch as my passionate pro-life friends take the plunge to “unorphan” one of these discarded children whose lives have been forgotten in places like Africa, China, Russia……I know that if I can get my hands on any of the bags given away at the next conference I will be filling it up with MOTHER THE WORLD brochures to encourage orphan awareness. I am starting to work on them tomorrow in anticipation that the pro-life community will no longer be comfortable holding conferences with a broken chain and missing link…MOTHER THE WORLD!