Well, we’ll make it easy. Let’s say two constitutional amendments are mooted in your state - one forever ensuring that gay couples cannot adopt, and one forever assuring they can. You have to vote for one.
Which?
Neither of these things have been satisfactorily proven. If they were my opinion would change.
It’s not been proven that there is a shortage of adoptive parents? :dubious:
This sounds like more of an argument for UHC and maternity leave laws than adoption. I’m not sure knowing gay people can adopt would convince anyone not to have an abortion, but being able to afford to be pregnant, give birth, have follow-up care and know you’ll keep your job might.
When you exclude non-infants in foster care and third world children, no.
But why would you exclude them, when they constitute the vast majority of children available for adoption?
Come to think of it I don’t think there is a shortage of adoptive parents. Otherwise it wouldn’t cost $20K plus to adopt and/or people wouldn’t go outside the US to adopt so often.
But just because there is no shortage of adoptive parents (in fact, a shortage of adoptees such that parents have to pay people to facilitate the process and/or go outside the US which increases the costs even more) doesn’t mean that increasing the potential pool even more wouldn’t be better for the children because all else being equal it would lead to children being placed with better parents.
Why would you presume this? Do you have some evidence to support that theory? The presumption that adding gay couples to the mix increases the average quality of placement implies that gay couples are equal to or better than the current pool getting babies.
As it stands adoption placement services screen out most of the bad adopters leaving the pool pretty strong and there’s generally a long wait and shortage of babies. Treating gay couples as equal to straight couples would lead to quality straight couples being shut out or forced to wait longer. If it were proven that gay couple are indeed equal, that’s fine, but this debate seems to take that for granted and I simply don’t see that as reasonable.
Someone better acquainted with the process can probably tell you more about this, but IME North American couples don’t always go abroad because there aren’t enough children to adopt – they do it because it can be faster, cheaper, there may be more lenient guidelines as to who can adopt (including older couples, single people and gay couples, if they’ve got the money), they may want a child of a certain racial background or level of health, and there is much less chance that the child’s mother or father – whoever might have been convinced or even tricked into giving up custody – will become a headache later on. Friends of the family raised their daughter for almost four years before she was taken away by her birth mother. That was almost a decade ago, but they never adopted or even fostered another child, after adopting three and fostering dozens.
For healthy white babies, maybe. You haven’t answered my question as to why you’re omitting older and generally less-adoptable children.
And that’s disregarding that I don’t really care if quality straight couples are made to wait longer, since I don’t presume that they’re inherently better.
Like I said in my original post the black and white choices in the poll aren’t nuanced enough to capture my feelings. I’m not opposed to all gay adoption, it’s not a moral issue for me but a practical one. I have no trouble believing that gay adoption is superior to foster care, orphanages and various third-world living conditions. I would not oppose them adopting children who otherwise have no alternative. However it’s a fallacy that all adoptions are created equal.
Why does it make more sense to presume that they are inherently equal? You have to pick one, and considering that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby, if I had to take one side of the presumption I’d side with the straight couple being better equipped. Gay couples raising children is a break from the norm, the burden is on them to prove equality, not on straights to prove superiority.
“Norm” maybe doesn’t mean what you think it means. It certainly, for instance, doesn’t mean “ideal”, or even “best”. The thing it most doesn’t mean is “forever”.
Ummm, I said “all else being equal”. If there is such a thing as objective criteria for fitness I would assume unless told otherwise that a bigger applicant pool would result in fitter adopters, but I make no positive claims either way.
And on what basis are you assuming “all else being equal”? That presumption is pretty much them entire point of this thread. If you don’t want to debate the merits of that presumption what’s the purpose of your participation, just to point out a statistical fundamental that isn’t in question here?
I suspect we’ve moved into serious hijack territory about specifically the pros and cons of gay adoption - maybe we should take this to a different thread than derail this one further.
Can I get clarification on the points of difference between these two scenarios so that I can better understand the pro-life movement?
Is the relevant part in story A that the girl would die if she didn’t have an abortion? Or that she was 10? Or that she was raped? Or do all three need to be present?
If the 28 yr old girl on her 4th abortion did so for “life of the mother” medical reasons, would that be acceptable?
I’m having a hard time figuring out where exactly the line between allowing and disallowing abortion is for the pro-life folks.
As to the OP, I voted pro-choice and pro-gay adoption. Despite having a fairly strong gay influence in my life, I couldn’t tell you if life would be the same had I two gay or lesbian parents vs. a mother and father. But since I also can’t tell you if my life would’ve been the same if I had Jewish parents or Catholic parents or left-handed parents, or a mom who wasn’t a worry-wart, etc… I’m pretty convinced that, in a loving environment, children won’t know what they’re missing and will adapt to whatever structure they’re raised with.
Abortion is one issue you can tell what side a person is on by the terminology they choose. People frame the issue in the way that is important to them. The problem is such framing doesn’t reflect why the other side holds the position they do, and makes finding common ground much more difficult.
I’m, in most cases, what would be considered anti-choice or anti-abortion. However, despite what Der Trihs might believe, I don’t have some innate hatred of women. I just find something else to be more important. Thus, I think it is more accurate to consider me pro-life or perhaps pro potential of life, because it better shows what is important to me. Being anti-abortion is merely a result of that belief.
On the same count I could consider others as pro-death or perhaps anti-potential of life. But of course people who are okay with abortions aren’t against (potential) life in principal. They just find something else to be more important. They are more accurately labeled as pro-choice.
I think most of the standards and tests are here, somewhere.
I’ll do my best but remember that for me it’s kind of a grey thing, not black and white.
In the first example, that she was ten and was raped doesn’t really matter because without an abortion, she would most likely die.
With the second example, if the woman’s life was in danger, then yes, I support an abortion for her.
Just wanted to add that for me it has nothing to do with religion. I identify as Agnostic.
Pro-life is more loaded and disingenuous a term than pro-choice. You’ve painted yourself as of the opinion that the potential of the fetus is more important than the life or choice of the woman. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that logic, but “pro-life” as a term does little to illustrate that opinion and inherently implies the opposite is anti-life. Pro-choice more accurately describes what is at issue, the choice of the woman and implied opposite anti-choice is more apt for the opposition.