I recently stumbled upon an opinion piece regarding counseling in the Sun Sentinel that brings up the fact that counseling for birth parents doesn’t happen as often as it should “in real life.”

The author begins by talking about the movie Juno, which is the story of a teenager who unexpectedly becomes pregnant and then goes on to place her baby for adoption. Although, it’s never stated in the article and I could be totally off base, by her words and tone I’d be willing to bet that the author of this opinion piece has some kind of personal connection to the adoption world.

She discusses the fact that agency are often advertising “adoption planning” but really offer very little in the way of planning anything other than an adoption. She brings up the point that nowadays adoption is a “for profit” big business. She discusses the fact that unenforceable promises are often made.

In many ways, I found this piece hitting it on the head. She’s right. Many adoption agencies do advertise adoption planning yet when it gets down to it they are only promoting adoption, after all, that is how they make their money. Ethical agencies are becoming few and far between and you really have to do your homework to find them. Women today really need options counseling. They need to be told of their rights and responsibilities as an expectant mother and what they are should they choose to parent or place the baby for adoption.

The only thing that I found wrong with this piece is that I believe she is actually referring to the expectant mothers considering adoption who she feels should be receiving more options counseling, yet she is referring to them as birthmothers and we all know that you don’t actually become a birthmother until after your baby is born and those papers are signed.

Aside from that, I think that this writer was right on.

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