Sitting on the toilet in a dimly-lit bathroom, a young woman hesitates before looking at her pregnancy test results. Her eyes widen and her heart pounds when she realizes it’s positive.
This is how a new ad, widely shared on social media as a Super Bowl ad, begins. The camera follows the young woman as she’s transported into a black-and-white world where two mobs scream at each other from behind the metal fences that separate them. To her right, abortion supporters shout, “My body, my choice!” On her left, pro-lifers yell back, “Choose life!”
A voiceover interrupts the chaos to console the woman: “They’re telling you that you’ve only got two choices. But the truth is, there’s three … You deserve to know: Adoption is an option.”
The ad, named “The Girl in the Middle,” comes from Adoption Is an Option, an initiative by the Opt Institute, an adoption advocacy nonprofit. Since its release, more than 1 million people on social media have scrolled past the video — a video that has sparked debate.
Within the pro-life movement itself, many leaders and influencers applauded the ad for placing a spotlight on adoption. Others challenged it for casting the pro-life movement as an angry one that insists women raise the children they give birth to instead of one that, in reality, champions adoption. Abortion ends the possibility of adoption; choosing life is essential for it to happen.
But beyond the immediate reactions, the ad invites us into a larger conversation about adoption. Even though the majority of Americans admire adoption, women facing unexpected pregnancies rarely consider it, according to Ryan Hanlon, former president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption and adjunct instructor at The Catholic University of America, and Elizabeth R. Kirk, assistant professor of law at CUA’s Columbus School of Law, where she co-directs its Center for Law and the Human Person.
In a piece for the Institute of Family Studies last year, which draws from a larger article and cites research funded by the Opt Institute, Hanlon and Kirk counted more than 2 million unintended pregnancies but only about 25,000 private domestic adoptions in the United States in 2022.
“Women facing an unplanned pregnancy are far more likely to choose to parent or to have an abortion than to place a child for adoption,” they wrote. “In fact, by a ratio of nearly 50:1, women choose to terminate a pregnancy rather than place that child for adoption.”
In a survey of birth mothers, they found only about 22% said they considered all of their options — abortion, adoption and parenting — at once while pregnant. Many more birth mothers (26.5%) considered only adoption and parenting than only abortion and adoption (9.6%). Another 20% considered adoption and parenting only after considering abortion.
Hanlon and Kirk identify three main barriers to adoption: Misinformation and confusion, social pressures for other options and emotional concerns. Among other things, they advocate for informing expectant parents that private domestic adoption is not foster care; that they can choose the adoptive family; that open adoptions are standard; that emotional, legal and financial support is available; and that most adoptees and birth parents see their adoption experiences positively.
They say this education — this information — empowers women to make real choices.
And perhaps, by examining ourselves, we can know something else as sons and daughters of God through adoption. We can see that adoption is a gift and that it comes at a cost. We can see that it spells out pain and sacrifice and promises new life and hope. Most of all, we can see that it means we are radically loved and called to radically love.
Birth mothers embody this radical, self-sacrificial love by wanting what is best for their children even if that means placing them with another family. Adoptive parents participate in it by loving another’s child as their own.
For the young woman in the ad, this is what adoption as an option should look like: A way to love and a way to choose life for her baby.
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