Adoptive Partnerships: Throwing Wide Open Adoption

February 14, 2025

Paul C. Anders

Paul Anders, Ph.D., the S. Wilma Lyle Endowed Chair of Philosophy, presented this paper to the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Annual Meeting in January, 2025. The paper represents a work in progress.

The United States has witnessed seismic shifts in the legal landscape regarding abortion. The pre-critical intuition that abortion is morally wrong in situations when adoption is a viable alternative has been the basis for many arguments against abortion, and seems largely assumed in much of the academic literature against abortion.[i] For example, Rosalind Hursthouse, applying virtue ethics in considering the morality of abortion, argues, “It [abortion] may also simply be thoughtless – if the woman does not even get round to considering adoption as a possibility – or cowardly.”[ii] I have called this the anti-abortion adoption (AAA) intuition and arguments in their varied forms based on this intuition anti-abortion adoption (AAA) arguments. 

In what follows, my objective is not to evaluate AAA arguments but to consider an implication of accepting one. If one finds an AAA argument cogent, one should be about the work of promoting adoption. However, for many who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, or who desire to adopt, the possibility of adoption is remote at best. The adoption process is painstaking, expensive and strictly regulated.  

One remedy for this undesirable situation is to create increased access to adoption. In what follows I argue for the establishment of adoptive partnerships – increased access to adoptions and the support of adoptions through varied relationships open to all those seeking to promote adoption. I locate my argument within the context of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) because it is a sustained and principled application of a general morality. The CST principles of human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good all support establishing the kinds of adoptive partnerships I consider.

Unraveling the complexities of the current social, cultural, legal, and political landscape of either abortion or adoption lies beyond the time and space constraints of this essay. Instead, after summarizing CST, I propose the establishment of adoptive partnerships based on the principles of CST and some important moral nuances arising in response to a significant objection to AAA arguments.[iii]

Catholic Social Teaching

Modern CTS traces its origins back to Pope Leo XIII and his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, “On the Condition of Labor.”[iv] Pope Leo was responding to the growing social crisis brought about by the changing economic forces of the industrial revolution and their deepening cultural, social, and political impact. Pope Leo saw the fundamental tension as lying with the subjugation of social order to the demands of industrial economic relations. He argued that workers have certain rights that these economic forces were undermining.  However, the language of rights received from Enlightenment thinkers was radically individualistic expounding an almost complete individual sovereignty over one’s person and private property. The only limitations of individual rights, on the Enlightenment view, arise from one’s duty to uphold the like rights of another. Pope Leo sought to ameliorate this language by reintroducing community considerations as “family rights.”[v]

That right to property…which has been proved to belong naturally to individual persons, must in like wise belong to a man in his capacity of head of a family…that right is all the stronger in proportion as the human person receives a wider extension in the family group.[vi]

The further development of Catholic social thought in large part runs through subsequent papal commentaries of Rerum Novarum. The central principles of modern CST have been variously condensed and reformulated.[vii] Four principles have come to the fore – the principles of human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good. Promoting the common good – those values that can only be fully obtained if every member of a society fully obtains them – is the ultimate goal.

The principles of human dignity and solidarity call for a general obligation to promote the welfare of fellow human beings and the preferential protection of the poor and vulnerable.[viii] Solidarity calls each individual to acknowledge the human connections one has with all other human beings. This is both descriptive and normative. We are a single family of humanity and all human beings are members of that family. Acknowledging human dignity calls for an attitude of openness to our fellow members of the Human family. This goes beyond mere tolerance.[ix] Dignity and tolerance are divergent responses to plurality and diversity. Tolerance suggests an indifferent passivity, while acknowledging a common dignity encourages active engagement in the promotion of the common good.

While solidarity and human dignity argue for a general obligation to promote the common good, the principle of subsidiarity is more particular, limiting unnecessary and unwanted socio-political authority structures. According to subsidiarity, the role of government is to facilitate the formation of socio-political groupings at various social levels and to help coordinate their interactions for the common good. These groupings arise from humanity’s fundamental sociality as expressed in family, neighborhood, community, church, mosque, synagogue, business, corporation, club, guild, union, political party, town, state, nation, etc. Additionally, lower order groupings are to have autonomous control even within larger conglomerations. Pope John Paul II expresses the principle in Centesimus Annus

A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.[x]

Taken together, these principles call for individual action toward supporting, promoting, and even undertaking adoption of needy children. Solidarity and human dignity call for actively identifying with and supporting the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable in one’s society. Children who cannot, or simply will not, be adequately cared for by their birth parents certainly constitute the poorest, weakest, most vulnerable of human beings. Furthermore, adoption is best accomplished at the family level of social organization. A brief survey of the history of government orphanages, group homes and modern juvenal facilities supports this claim. Increasing the availability of adoption can have profound positive effects on these children, families, and societies.

The Argument

While Catholic social teaching supports a call to adopt within any social context that includes uncared for children, there is no clear connection made between adoption and the reduction of abortion activities. The anti-abortion adoption argument clarifies. The possibility of adoption plays a crucial role in the logic of the argument. For example, in a brief discussion of abortion and adoption in Australia, Kevin McGovern compares the effects of abortion versus adoption on the unborn, the mother, and society over the past 100 years. He cites a comprehensive literature review that concludes, “[T]here is ‘substantial evidence of psychological harm associated with abortion’,”[xi] and while adoption practices in the past have also had negative implications, he concludes that the outcomes of adoptions has been far superior to the outcomes of abortions for all three groups. 

Again, my goal is not to evaluate or support this, or any version of an AAA argument. My goal is to argue for the conditional, “If an AAA argument is cogent to me, I should be involved in supporting, promoting, and possibly undertaking adoptions.” Consider the following.

1)    If an AAA argument is cogent to me, then I should believe that increasing the possibilities of adoption is highly relevant to the morality of abortion.

2)    If I should believe that increasing the possibilities of adoption is highly relevant to the morality of abortion, then I should be working to increase the availability of adoption in every situation in which a woman, or man, is contemplating abortion.

3)    If I should be working to increase the availability of adoption in every situation in which a woman, or man, is contemplating abortion, then I should be actively involved in supporting, promoting, and possibly undertaking adoptions.                                                      

4)    If an AAA argument is cogent to me, I should be actively involved in supporting, promoting, and possibly undertaking adoptions.

The personal nature of this argument is essential. If an AAA argument is cogent to me,then I should promote adoption. Upon accepting the conclusion of an AAA argument, one should realize the straightforward implication that one has a duty to promote a social, cultural, political, and bureaucratic environment most conducive to the adoption of children who will not, or cannot, be adequately cared for by their biological/birth parents.[xii] Therefore, each individual or family group who accepts the conclusion of an AAA argument should be seeking to increase the effectiveness of adoption. Of course, the best or most straightforward way to do this is to adopt. But, adoption must be an imperfect duty. An obligation to adopt seems far too strenuous. Must each individual, or family, adopt a child? How many children should each of us adopt? No general application of human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good can answer these questions.

Parental Responsibility

A way forward lies in a reply to an objection against the AAA intuition, and hence AAA arguments, based on parental responsibility. As Kant argues:

So from a practical point of view it is a quite correct and even necessary idea to regard the act of procreation as one by which we have brought a person into the world without his consent and on our own initiative, for which deed the parents incur an obligation to make the child content with his condition so far as they can.[xiii]

While parental responsibility may support adoption, it has been argued that the AAA intuition is not grounded in fact. Very often a woman can have no reasonable expectation that her child will be adopted if she continues with her pregnancy. In light of the parental responsibility one has to care for and protect one’s offspring, giving a child up for adoption in such circumstances would be morally objectionable. Certainly, if abortion rates are significantly reduced the number of unwanted or uncared for infants will dramatically increase thus reducing the chances of adoption. Furthermore, one’s parental obligations cannot be discharged simply by handing one’s child off to another; therefore, even if one’s child is adopted, one’s parental responsibilities for that child persist. Lindsey Porter offers a scenario in which a birth mother seeking to fulfill her obligation to her infant finds an adoptive family that is desirous to parent her child. However, the adoptive family experiences grave setbacks and their situation, along with the woman’s child’s, becomes dire.[xiv] Porter argues that the birth mother has a clear obligation to care for her child if she can, more so than any other individual. Given such considerations, Porter argues adoption is never a viable alternative to abortion because adoption cannot discharge parental obligation as does abortion. While Porter’s scenario is illuminating, adoption processes could easily remedy such an occurrence. The adoptive family should have childcare in their will, and even if not, the birth mother’s obligation is only to find a suitable new adoptive family. These considerations may run against current adoptive practices, but they are not definitively against adoption itself.

Adoptive Partnerships

Open adoption has amplified the benefits of adoption.[xv] But, as Porter’s scenario suggests, even further modification of traditional adoption norms could have far greater benefits for the birth parents, the adopted child, the adoptive family, and society as a whole. The benefits for the adopted child are well documented. As Hursthouse argues, child-bearing is, “not just worthwhile and significant but morally worthwhile and significant.”[xvi] Like child rearing, successful child-bearing requires significant virtues including courage, compassion, perseverance, and self-discipline. Developing and expressing these virtues are aspects of parental rights and obligations. The value of adoption for the adoptive parent centers on the choice of impartial moral concern for a child.[xvii] However, many birth and adoptive parents need substantial economic, social, and political assistance in securing adoptions. Greater support and access to more open adoptions would be even more beneficial.

If we think of open adoption as an adoptive partnership between the birth and adoptive parents, then a widening of possible parental roles within adoptive partnerships should be considered. In addition to limited access open adoption, or limited partnerships, the possibility of equal partnerships, silent partnerships and even “S-partnerships” should be made available. Likewise, the birth parents and adoptive parents should be able to mutually arrange their roles within the partnership.

The concept of an acceptable family structure has undergone significant and varied development over the past half century but the norms for an adoptive family have changed very little. Thinking of adoption as creating a kind of partnership could do much to expand the possibilities for adoption. An open adoption, as typically structured, is in effect a limited partnership in which an adoptive parent becomes general partner taking on all parental rights and obligations, and the birth parents accept the role of a severely limited, limited partner thereby relinquishing all the rights and obligations of parenthood. Birth parents become in essence little more than silent partners – having very little contact with their child and no involvement in the child’s upbringing. This typical scenario is not necessary nor necessarily best for all parties concerned. Instead, birth and adoptive parents could choose a general partnership in which both (sets of) parents establish a partnership agreement as to rights and responsibilities with respect to the adopted child. The birth parent may be the general partner and an adoptive parent could take the role of limited partner, even to the extent of silent partner.[xviii] Allowing S-partnerships, or something analogous to an S-corporation with a partnership agreement, would further enhance opportunities for adoption. Within such partnerships multiple (sets of) adoptive parents can come together seeking to support a child in need of adoption. Such partnerships can include birth parents but need not.        

Such partnerships would provide expanded opportunities for increased human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity promoting the common good within a society. More people would be able to participate in adoptive practices. Increased interconnections between families within a society, and across societies, would be promoted. The oversight of adoptive partnerships would be grounded in the agreements established by parents themselves. Making available a broad array of adoptive partnerships within a society would benefit birth parents and children being considered for adoption while also providing varied avenues for those who accept the implications of CST and AAA arguments and so seek to promote, advocate for, and possibly undertake adoption. Furthermore, a more varied array of possible adoptive partnerships will better allow for the necessarily nuanced moral decisions individuals must make based on their own social, economic, and familial context.

Objections and Replies

Establishing adoptive partnerships will not be easy. One could treat the possible difficulties that may arise as objections to the proposal of such partnerships. Consider two types of objection. First, one may argue that creating these varied opportunities for adoptive partnerships would require complex legal agreements. The principle of subsidiarity calls for the lowest level of effective social and political oversite. While it seems the appropriate level would be at the interaction of birth and adoptive parents, in reality such complex legal arrangements will require legal experts and governmental oversite. Even with such oversite, the system could too easily allow manipulation, corruption, oppressive inequalities, and other abuses. The risks make establishing such partnerships unwise. The proposal should be rejected. 

However, analogous partnerships in the business world are no less complex. Our systems associated with corporate law require government oversight and legal experts. Still, these systems do not nullify the role of individual companies in choosing their own partners or stakeholders. There are laws to avoid oppressive inequalities, laws to protect employees, laws to protect our natural environments, laws to promote accurate and transparent accounting, and many others. Within the context of this oversight, business partnerships flourish. There is good reason to think that something analogous like adoption laws that establish adoption courts with adoption judges and adoption lawyers can create a context for flourishing adoptive partnerships.  

Using an analogy to business can give rise to a second kind of objection. Society should never liken child adoption to the conducting of business. To do so is to condone the commodification of children. A family is not a business and to cast families in such a light is detrimental. The principles of human dignity and solidarity do not allow such comparison. Therefore, this proposal should be rejected. 

This objection takes the comparison with business far too literal. Analogy is not identity.

Of course, children are not commodities. However, childcare is a commodified service. There are nannies, daycares, private preschools, etc. The point of the objection is that families are not merely organized service providers. A family is a unique unit of social organization ideally held together by bonds of love and mutual concern. But, such bonds do not require a particular family organization or size. Traditional adoption practices require dissolving one family unit in order to create another. Open adoption is less destructive but still severely limits the realization of some family bonds in the promotion of others. The principles of human dignity and solidarity support the complex familial relations that can be produced through adoptive partnerships far more than they do the privileging of one kind of family unit over another.  

Conclusion

I have located my discussion within the framework of Catholic social teaching in order to present the proposal in a more concrete context. Catholic social teaching gives clear guidance regarding our obligations to other members of the human community, especially to the poorest, and neediest of us. There are no members of the human community as poor as or in more need than children who cannot, or will not, be cared for by their birth parents. I have not argued for the cogency of an anti-abortion adoption (AAA) argument. I have sought only to uncover a possible moral obligation arising from one’s accepting it. I have argued that an obligation does in fact follow and that through the establishment of adoptive partnerships this obligation could be better met. Those who accept the AAA argument must decide for themselves how they can best meet this moral obligation. Adoptive partnerships would expand the opportunities for doing so.

 


[i] For noted exceptions that will be discussed in what follows see, Paul Kurtz, ‘Abortion or adoption? The moral case examined’, Free Inquiry, 9, 3 (1989): 49, and Lindsey Porter, ‘Adoption is not abortion-lite’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 29, 1 (2012): 63-78. For a critical response to Porter, see Víctor Durà-Vilà, ‘Parental obligation, adoption and abortion: Critique of Porter and Nozickian alternative’, Journal of Value Inquiry, 47(2013): 29-47.

[ii] Rosalind Hursthouse, Beginning Lives (Blackwell: Oxford, 1987), p. 212.

[iii] For extensive discussion of social scientific data on abortion and adoption as a response see, for example Miller op. cit.

[iv] Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, retrieved from the site, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html, September 9, 2016.

[v] The idea of a family right is suggested by John F. Donovan, ‘Pope Leo XIII, The heart of Catholic social teaching’, in David Matzko McCarthy (ed) The Heart of Catholic Social Teaching (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009), pp. 55-69.

[vi] Rerum Novarum reproduced in Donovan op. cit., p. 62.

[vii] See for example, William J. Byron, ‘Ten building blocks of Catholic social teaching’, (America Press, 1998). Retrieved from the site,  http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/100/ten-building-blocks-catholic-social-teaching, September 9, 2016, or ‘The Challenge of Framing Consciences for Faithful Citizenship’ (Washington DC: USCCB Publishing, 2007).

[viii] Byron, op. cit.

[ix] My distinction between dignity and tolerance stems from the essay by Trudy Conway, ‘Compassion and hospitality’, in David Matzko McCarthy (ed.) The Heart of Catholic Social Teaching (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009), pp. 169-181.

[x] Ibid. 121.

[xi] Kevin McGovern, ‘Adoption is better than abortion’, Chisholm Health Ethics Bulletin, Spring (2010): 4-9, p. 6.

[xii] The proper reference to parents in the context of procreation and adoption has become increasingly difficult because of technological advances and societal changes. Many adoptive parents are biologically related to the adopted child, but not a biological parent. Likewise biological parents may not be the birth parents of the child. In what follows I will use the convention of birth parent simply to distinguish adoptive from non-adoptive parents.

[xiii] Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor editor and translator, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

[xiv] Porter op. cit., p. 72.

[xv] In McGovern’s argument he includes outcomes related to open adoption in his argument for adoption over abortion. Indeed, given the particular history of adoption in Australia, without open adoption outcomes included in his data, it is hard to see his argument succeeding. McGovern op. cit., 9

[xvi] Hursthouse, Beginning Lives, op. cit., p. 214.

[xvii] In arguing for the value of adoption to adoptive parents, Tina Rulli concludes, “[Adoption] can help an existing child in need of a family, whereas procreation creates a child with needs. It is a paradigm expression of human regard for the sanctity of life and the value of family. Adoption’s unique value is in sharing an intimate special relationship with a stranger, in the process making her one’s own. The impartial moral concern for another can be integrated into one’s own personal perspective and reasons for action. Adoption has transformative powers over our relation to others and our own conception of self.” Tina Rulli, ‘The unique value of adoption’, in Francoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod (eds.) Family Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 109-131.

[xviii] Such a partnership would be much like the “adopt a family” program administered by the United Way; however, an adoptive partnership would reflect a much more formal and binding agreement.

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