Up for Grabs?

More than Kindness: A Compassionate Approach to Crisis Childbearing, by Susan Olasky and Marvin Olasky (Crossway Books, 219 pp.; $9.95, paper). Reviewed by Barbara McClatchey, an adoptive mother and a free-lance writer.

What are the unwed mother’s alternatives in an unwanted pregnancy? (a) abortion; (b) giving birth and raising the child alone for 18 (or more) years; (c) marriage; (d) adoption placement.

For prochoice counselors, the choice is either a or b. But if you thought that b, c, and d should all be considered, you would be unusual among prolife counselors. In practice, the prolife counseling that unwed mothers get is almost always geared toward solo birth and childrearing. But is this the best response, or is it an unthinking acceptance of the two alternatives presented by the prochoice movement?

All too often, as with problems of the environment or the needs of abused women, evangelicals and their churches respond only as and when the surrounding culture responds. The response to abortion, however, has been at odds with the culture, and Christians are still feeling their way, trying to come up with a specifically Christian response to the problem. In More than Kindness, Susan and Marvin Olasky try to provide a biblical and historical basis for a response that is family-centered rather than emotional or legal. “Abortion,” they declare, is “the central battle in an arc of conflict concerning definitions of the family and the basic structure of modern society.”

In spite of family planning, more babies are being born to unwed mothers now than in the 1950s, and they are being raised by their single mothers. The biblical standard is sex within marriage and a two-parent family. But Christians, in their zeal to stop abortion, have accepted the modern viewpoint that single-parenting is a reasonable means of dealing with the problem of unwed motherhood.

Prolife counselors expend a great deal of effort to convince girls that they can manage to keep and raise their babies, while mentioning marriage or adoption only as vague possibilities. In fact, historically as well as biblically, single parenting is not the best solution. Various studies have shown that children do better educationally, financially, and socially when raised in a two-parent family. And those women who place their babies for adoption are better off in the same ways. Indeed, even the fathers are more likely to work and to stay out of trouble with the law when they are living with and responsible for a child.

The Olaskys make the following recommendations: Prolife counselors should give more attention to the possibility that even a teenager may be better off getting married than being a single parent. If marriage is not a possibility, then putting the baby up for adoption should be given serious consideration. Finally, Christians in general should change their own actions and attitudes, understanding adoption as at least one biblical solution to the problem (God has adopted us, after all), and working for legislation that makes adoption easier.

When a woman is faced with the choice between abortion and a lifelong commitment to the financial and emotional responsibility of single parenting, she may well decide on abortion as the easier way out. But if she is shown that there are other reasonable alternatives, she may be more readily able to “choose life.”

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