The mothers of ModernAdoptionPlans.org have a message for women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant: You, too, can turn this difficult time into a rewarding experience by relinquishing your baby for adoption.

In glossy videos, they tell their stories. They found themselves in crisis. Many considered abortions before deciding on adoption. It was a painful choice, but it was the right choice.

“This is one of the greatest things a parent could ever do,” says Adrianne, a Black birth mother, from a sun-filled loft. Sarah, a white birth mother, speaks to us from what looks like a church. “I didn’t choose what was best for me. I chose what was best for him,” she says.

Billboards, radio ads, and TV commercials across Texas urge residents to visit the website. In addition to the videos, Modern Adoption produced a resource guide where readers can find adoption agencies and crisis pregnancy centers, which are known to spread misinformation and push adoption. But nowhere does the site mention that the campaign is part of the multimillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded state program to dissuade women from having abortions.

The goal of Modern Adoption, according to a 2022 state report, is to “raise the profile of adoption and present it as an equally viable and acceptable alternative for unwanted pregnancy, with the intent of reducing the number of abortions in Texas.” Funding comes from the state’s Thriving Texas Families program, formerly known as Alternatives to Abortion. When Texas Pregnancy Care Network, the umbrella organization that distributes the funding, proposed the project just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the organization noted that “adoption is going to be needed more than ever.”

Texas’ campaign is unique in its scale, but not its message: In the two years since the Dobbs decision, politicians and organizers in states with restrictive abortion policies have doubled down on promoting, incentivizing, and expediting adoption. Some states offer payments or tax credits for new adoptive parents. Some focus on shortening the time period before a birth mother can sign away her parental rights or change her mind about placing her child for adoption. More than a dozen states this year have heard legislation to install baby boxes, which can be installed outside places like fire departments and hospitals and which, in theory, give parents a legal and anonymous way to surrender their infants. Many states, like Texas, have increased funding for Alternatives to Abortion programs by millions of dollars.

Conservatives have long embraced adoption as one such alternative, allowing women to avoid the “consequences of parenting and the obligation of motherhood,” as Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested during the Dobbs arguments. Liberals embrace adoption, too—particularly as a way to build families regardless of sexual orientation or race.

But some adoption experts warn that the policies and campaigns gloss over a painful reality: Many women only turn to adoption when they feel they have no other choice. Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at University of California–San Francisco, interviewed more than 100 birth mothers for her recent book, Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. Most of the women wanted to parent their infants but ultimately relinquished their children because of financial constraints. “We’re never actually listening to what people in these situations need,” Sisson says. “What they say they need is a safety net. What they say they need is a crisis response so that they can raise their kids.” (States with abortion bans are less likely to have such safety nets, including Medicaid expansion, paid parental leave policies, and direct cash assistance for poor families.)

Texas, Indiana, and Louisiana are among the states with total abortion bans that have taken taxpayer-funded approaches toward promoting adoption. These initiatives are doing more than simply connecting expecting mothers to adoption resources: By framing adoption as a brave, empowered choice, they’re helping solve a critical messaging problem for the anti-abortion movement, which has faced significant backlash in the wake of Dobbs for taking away agency from pregnant women.

“The anti-abortion movement has really fought to repackage themselves as benevolent actors,” says Ashley Underwood, director of abortion rights group Equity Forward. “They’re looking to promote their answers to a problem they have created by restricting access to reproductive healthcare services.”

Texas: Targeting single women who “skew African American & Hispanic”

It’s no coincidence that the first video on the Modern Adoption site features a Black birth mother. The project, launched in the fall of 2022 with $2 million in state funding, targets women with “the highest incidence of unplanned pregnancies”: specifically, single women who “skew African American & Hispanic” and come from low-income households, according to a project proposal obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

The proposal spells out the hurdles to reaching this audience. “Due to cultural ties, many in the Black community have strong opinions on adoption. They may say that ‘we don’t do that’ with our children,” it reads. It also proposes solutions: The messaging should “inspire, not lecture (which shows to be more effective with low-income minority audience).” The campaign would be hypertargeted, serving ads in places with a higher likelihood of “at-risk behavior,” like particular schools, churches, shelters, bus stops, and malls. “For example, through our mobile ad partner we will serve ads on mobile apps to young women who frequently enter and leave high schools in specific high-risk areas,” the proposal notes. To facilitate this ad targeting, the project contracted the media giant iHeart Media and the adoption promotion nonprofit BraveLove. (Modern Adoption representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

The campaign appears to have been incredibly successful. The radio, TV, and mobile ads campaigns have each left millions of impressions. A survey last year found that, after seeing a Modern Adoption ad, 78 percent of women ages 16 to 20 indicated being more likely to consider adoption. Last year, the Chronicle reports, the state allocated another $4 million to continue the campaign through 2025.

Perhaps the most telling part of the Modern Adoption website is its FAQ section, which describes adoption as a woman making a “strong, brave, loving, selfless and responsible decision when her baby needs it most.” It repeatedly touts the benefits of open adoption, in which birth parents stay in contact with their child and the adoptive parents. A birth mother, it reads, will receive “as much information and contact with the family and child as she feels is right for her.” It’s not until much further down the page that the site acknowledges that open adoption agreements are not legally enforceable in Texas. At any time, adoptive parents can decide to limit or cut off contact altogether with birth mothers.

Indiana: Home of the “ministry that is literally saving babies in boxes”

When an infant is surrendered into a baby box, an alarm sounds, and first responders arrive within minutes. Often, soon after that, Monica Kelsey takes to TikTok.

Kelsey is the founder and CEO of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, the company that provides the vast majority of the nation’s baby boxes. On TikTok, where Kelsey has more than 800,000 followers, she posts videos of herself calling her team on speakerphone from wherever she happens to be—a car, a beach chair, an office—to share the news. “Guess what?” she says, with a knowing grin. “We got another baby!”

@safehavenbabyboxes

We got another baby #Monicakelsey #safehaven #safehavenbabyboxes #babyboxlady #babyboxladyofamerica #bekind #babysaved #babybox #newmexico #ontheroadagain #2024

♬ original sound – Monica Kelsey

Safe Haven Baby Boxes has a righteous goal: to prevent infant abandonment by providing safe, legal places for mothers to anonymously surrender babies, who are typically put in the foster system or placed for adoption. Since the organization installed the first baby box, at a fire department in eastern Indiana in 2016, more than 200 boxes have been installed in at least 15 states, almost all of which have restrictive abortion laws. This year, another 15 states have introduced baby box-related legislation, reports Stateline.

The work is personal for Kelsey, who was adopted after being abandoned as an infant, and describes herself as “the front runner in this ministry that is literally saving babies in boxes.” More than half of the boxes are in Kelsey’s home state of Indiana, where the state’s 125th baby box was installed at a fire department earlier this week. Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch spoke at the event to unveil and bless the box.

These “blessing ceremonies” are often covered by local news outlets with heartwarming optimism. So is the broader baby box movement: A recent glowing Washington Post article detailed the adoption of a surrendered infant, complete with photos of the baby celebrating his first birthday at the fire station where he was left. Such stories are often told from the perspective of first responders or adoptive parents, seldom acknowledging the crisis a birth mother would need to be in to consider surrendering her infant in a box.

For all the publicity, baby boxes aren’t used all that often. Since the first box was installed eight years ago, 47 babies have been surrendered in the boxes, according to the organization’s website. Their rare use may be partly due to the fact that, before baby boxes came along, every state already had a Safe Haven law, which allow birth parents to legally and anonymously surrender infants at places like hospitals. An estimated 4,500 babies have been relinquished under Safe Haven laws since the first law passed in 1999. (Unlike baby boxes, which involve no interaction with other people, a traditional safe haven surrender involves a handoff of a baby to another adult.)

The infrequent use of baby boxes hasn’t stopped states from pouring money into installing more of them, reports Stateline. Each box costs roughly $20,000 to install, along with a $500 annual service charge. Indiana lawmakers authorized $1 million to install and promote baby boxes in 2022. A recently introduced bill in Tennessee would set aside $2 million to install a “newborn safety device” in each of the state’s 95 counties.

“This rescue narrative is what’s driving it,” says Laury Oaks, a professor of feminist studies at University of California-Santa Barbara. Oaks is among the critics who argue that baby boxes amount to pro-life virtue signaling. Baby boxes are doing an important job, even if they’re not often used: turning unplanned pregnancies into feel-good stories. “I see it as a high visibility branding situation,” says Oaks. “A marketing move.”

(Kelsey and Safe Haven Baby Boxes declined to respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Many adoptees are critical of baby boxes, too. The boxes market themselves on anonymity; billboards reading, “Surrendering your newborn at a fire station delivers…No Shame No Blame No Names” lead mothers in crisis to the organization’s hotline. But that anonymity means adoptees won’t have a record of their birth families or medical histories, says Gregory Luce, founder of the Adoptee Rights Law Center. In Indiana, there’s now even less of a paper trail for adoptees: Policymakers passed legislation last year that allows first responders to contact adoption agencies directly, bypassing notifying the state of the surrendered infant altogether. Lawmakers say that the policy removes a layer of bureaucracy, but critics argue that such policies enable even more secrecy in an already opaque industry.

That doesn’t seem to concern Kelsey, who on TikTok often thanks the birth mothers who surrendered their babies, calling them “selfless” and “heroes.” The businesses’ website echoes this sentiment, greeting visitors with “YOU ARE NOT ALONE” and “YOU ARE BRAVE.”

But, as with the Modern Adoption campaign, one is left wondering where the line is between compassionate and calculated. Once in a while, Kelsey’s tone about birth mothers hardens. Responding on TikTok to critics who suggest that the money spent on baby boxes would be better spent supporting birth mothers, Kelsey said, “There are parents out there that should never be parents. They’re crappy parents to the kids that they have.” She adds, “I said it. I own it. It’s the truth.”

Louisiana: “This is only the beginning”

In 2018, Louisiana state representative Rick Edmonds stood in the rotunda of the state capitol, beaming at a crowd of people holding “I <3 adoption” signs. They were celebrating the passage of the Adoption Option Act, which directed the state to create a website connecting pregnant women to adoption agencies and other resources. The website frames adoption as “heroic” and “the best parenting decision for your child.” A separate tab is devoted to stories about women who regretted having abortions.

“This is only the beginning,” said Edmonds, a conservative pastor at the same church where House majority leader Mike Johnson serves as a deacon (the two are reportedly friends from their pro-life work). “We’re going to have multiple opportunities in the days ahead, the years ahead, to make sure that we model legislation that brings honor to the Lord, honor to our state, honor to our families, and honor to children that can have an opportunity to have a great and prosperous life.” He concluded with what has become his tagline of sorts: “Whenever you choose life, it’s always right.”

In the years to follow, Louisiana has become a pro-life, adoption-promoting incubator of sorts, inspiring and being inspired by legislation in like-minded conservative states. (In 2021, Arizona passed its own variation of the Adoption Option legislation; its health department website copies its FAQ section directly from Louisiana’s.) Lawmakers in Louisiana created tax credits for adoptive parents, increased funding for crisis pregnancy centers, and cracked down on alleged adoption fraud.

In June 2022, just days before the Dobbs decision came out, Louisiana passed legislation sponsored by Edmonds requiring health education for high school students to include information about “the benefits of adoption to society” and “the reasons adoption is preferable to abortion.” Critics say that the law amounts to little more than lip service: In Louisiana, sex ed isn’t required to begin with, and state law has long prohibited curricula from including information about termination of pregnancy. “The fact that young people are allowed to receive such an incomplete, inconsistent education, and now they want to throw in the word ‘adoption’…It feels like pandering,” says Brittany McBride, director of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit devoted to bettering sex education. (Edmonds didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Nonetheless, a year later, similar legislation had made its way to Arkansas, where a bill sponsored by the Arkansas Right to Life mandated that public school students grades 6-12 receive an hour of adoption awareness education at the beginning of each school year. Like Louisiana, such awareness must include information about “the benefits of adoption to society” and “the reasons adoption is preferable to abortion.” This year, West Virginia lawmakers introduced a bill with the same language.

Now, Louisiana policymakers are pushing to increase funding for the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program, from $1 million to between $3 and $5 million. Recently introduced legislation proposes that a single, yet-unnamed nonprofit direct the funding toward programs that “promote childbirth instead of abortion.” The Louisiana Illuminator reports that one person interested in leading the program is John McNamara, who for years ran the Texas Pregnancy Care Network, which, among other things, runs the Modern Adoption campaign. In a Louisiana Senate health committee meeting about the bill in March, McNamara noted that Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska had passed similar legislation.

“The program has been exceedingly successful,” McNamara said. He added, “By passing this bill, you will see the number of providers around the state grow exponentially.” For every Louisiana mom, “there is help and support around the corner.”

In South Dakota, organizers have submitted 55,000 signatures in support of the ballot measure granting a limited right to abortion—far more than the 35,000 required. In Missouri, organizers turned in 380,159 signatures, compared to the required 172,000, in support of a measure enshrining the “the right to reproductive freedom.” Missouri’s language is similar to ballot measures that passed in Ohio and Michigan.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, abortion rights advocates have won in seven out of seven abortion-related ballot measures. Groups in nearly a dozen states are have secured abortion amendments on the ballot this fall or are pushing to do so. Democrats are counting on these ballot measures to buoy their chances, especially in competitive states like Florida and Arizona.

In both Missouri and South Dakota, Republican policymakers are trying to stop the measures from succeeding. 

In March, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (who made headlines this week for her forthcoming book with false and sensational claims) signed legislation that allows signers of ballot measures to revoke their signatures. As my colleague Madison Pauly reported, “The bill is transparently targeting the abortion-rights initiative. Its main sponsor, Republican Rep. Jon Hansen—who sits on the board of directors for South Dakota Right to Life—claimed to South Dakota Searchlight that people had been ‘misled, or frankly, fraudulently induced,’ into signing Dakotans for Health’s abortion rights petition.”

In Missouri, legislators are pushing a ballot measure that would make it harder for future ballot measures to succeed. To prevail, future ballot questions would require not just the support of the majority of voters, but the backing of the majority of voters in five out of eight congressional districts. As the New York Times recently noted, “Abortion rights supporters fear the requirement would allow a minority in rural areas that tend to oppose abortion rights to vote down the amendment.”

The project promises to pay election workers, organizers, and concerned citizens who have witnessed election fraud firsthand to share their stories. “Your voice could be what helps preserve our democracy,” its site reads. “And those willing to speak out will be rewarded with payment from our $5 million dollar fund.”

An ad for the organization released Wednesday suggests that, under the Biden administration, such fraud has flourished. “Across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the system that have eroded or trust, from executive orders opening the door to noncitizens voting, while some cities look to make it commonplace,” says a voiceover, as suspenseful music plays over black and white images of Biden and election-related headlines.

The ad is referring to Biden’s executive order aimed at expanding access to voter registration, and to legislation in some cities to allow legal permanent residents to vote in municipal elections. Unfounded claims of voter fraud and a rigged election system, which Donald Trump famously used in 2020 to falsely claim the election was stolen from him, have fueled legislation in dozens of states to restrict voting access.

According to a press release reported by Fox, cases of voter fraud will be vetted by the group’s election law attorneys and highlighted “through aggressive paid and earned media campaigns, the first of which will begin immediately.”

For now, the group remains something of a mystery: the Fox story didn’t contain details about the leadership of the group or the source of its funding. The fund didn’t immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones, and doesn’t appear on searches of the federal Internal Revenue Service or Federal Election Commission websites. The group doesn’t yet have followers on Facebook, Instagram, or X, on which it is following just one account: Fox News. 

Jaime wasn’t alone. A yearlong Mother Jones investigation found that foster kids have been admitted hundreds of times to North Star, where some spend months or even years. Despite the facility’s troubling track record of assaults, escapes, and improper use of seclusion, state officials have admitted what foster youth have long suspected: Foster children are warehoused at North Star when there’s nowhere else for them to go. 

Now, two bills introduced in the state legislature aim to reform psychiatric treatment for vulnerable youth in Alaska. Though neither bill mentions North Star by name, it looms large as the state’s only private psychiatric hospital for children.

HB 363 would require a court to review a foster child’s placement at a psychiatric hospital within 72 hours to determine if that child meets medical criteria for hospitalization. (There’s no statute on when an initial hearing should take place, though a preliminary injunction requires a hearing within 30 days.) 

Jaime was among those who testified at an emotional hearing on Thursday. “I felt like a zombie for two months,” he said. “I had no control and no voice over the situation.”

Rep. Andrew Gray, the Anchorage Democrat who sponsored the legislation, said he expected that courts and child welfare officials would push back on the proposed 72-hour timeline for scheduling reasons. “Our priority should not be to make this process more convenient for the adults involved,” he said. “Being admitted to a psychiatric facility is a form of incarceration.” Gray told Mother Jones the proposed legislation was inspired by our reporting, as well as his own experience as a foster parent. 

A second bill, HB 366, would require health department employees to conduct unannounced visits to residential psychiatric facilities at least twice a year, and to interview at least half of the patients during such visits. It would also require facility staff to report incidents of seclusion or restraint to the state within a day of the incident, and allow weekly, confidential video visits with parents or guardians. Rep. Maxine Dibert, a Fairbanks Democrat and the legislature’s sole female Alaska Native lawmaker, was reportedly inspired to introduce the bill by the prevalence of Native children in psychiatric residential treatment facilities. (The same legislation was also introduced in the Senate.)

Both bills have relatively slim chances of passing this year, with just two months left of the legislative session.

For years, Alaskan advocates have expressed concern about the unnecessary hospitalization of foster children at psychiatric facilities. In February, after learning about a 14-year-old foster child who was hospitalized for 46 days before a hearing, Alaska’s Supreme Court concluded, “There is no doubt that children in OCS custody are at substantial risk of being hospitalized for longer than they need, or when they do not need to be hospitalized at all.”

Universal Health Services, the Fortune 500 company that owns North Star, has consistently denied wrongdoing, but it didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on the legislation. The Anchorage Daily News recently reported, however, that North Star paid a lobbyist $41,000 to advocate this legislative session on “issues related to mental health, workforce, background checks and State of Alaska budget.”

The investigation proved to be unfounded. No children were removed, no court case filed. But soon, the investigators were back for another search, and then another. Over the next two years, the Goulds were subject to at least a dozen investigations by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), all of which proved to be baseless, according to a recent lawsuit. Though the caseworkers didn’t have warrants for the home searches, they allegedly told Gould the inspections were mandatory, threatening to remove her children if Gould didn’t allow them in. Once inside, investigators searched every room and even went so far as to strip-search the children, who showed no signs of physical abuse. 

Gould is among a group of parents who brought a class-action lawsuit against the city Tuesday, alleging that the agency uses unconstitutional, coercive, and traumatizing tactics to enter and search the homes of families they’re investigating, more than 80 percent of whom are Black or Hispanic. The tactics included threatening to remove children or bring in law enforcement, telling parents they have no choice but to allow the searches, failing to inform parents of their rights, and banging on doors and otherwise making a scene outside. Investigators conduct untrammeled searches in tens of thousands of homes each year, the suit alleges, rifling through medicine cabinets, drawers, fridges, and closets, regardless of whether these private spaces have a connection to the allegations made about the family.

There are three ways investigators can legally justify a home search: a court order, an emergency situation, or voluntary consent. But the vast majority of searches fell outside these legal justifications, the suit alleges, violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Court orders were sought in just 222 of the nearly 53,000 searches ACS conducted last year. Emergency situations served as the basis to remove children in less than 2 percent of investigations.

Parents are left humiliated and “unable to protect their children in their own homes,” says David Shalleck-Klein, executive director of the Family Justice Law Center, the organization representing the plaintiffs. He noted that ACS should be able to search families’ homes—but only when they follow legal procedures. 

ACS spokesperson Marisa Kaufman said the agency is “committed to keeping children safe and respecting parents’ rights,” adding that they are working to “reduce the number of families experiencing an unnecessary child protective investigation.” ACS is expanding a pilot program that informs parents of their rights during such investigations.

Of the thousands of investigations ACS opens each year, less than 7 percent result in a case in family court, and a fraction of those are for cases of physical or sexual abuse. Critics say the system casts too wide of a net, resulting in a family surveillance system that harms those it’s tasked with protecting. “Coerced home searches, invasion of families’ privacy, and threatening parents with child removal are integral aspects of a system designed to disrupt the most marginalized communities in America,” Dorothy Roberts, a legal scholar who has spent decades studying child protective services, told Mother Jones.

In New York City, as in other parts of the country, half of Black children are subjected to a child protective services investigation by the time they turn 18. The indicators of poverty overlap with the indicators of neglect, putting poor families at greater risk. The system also allows abusive ex-partners to weaponize the hotline by making false reports. (This was what happened to Gould, according to the suit.)

The intrusive practices laid out in the lawsuit have been well documented for years. According to a 2020 audit commissioned by ACS, staff said that they are incentivized to “be invasive and not tell parents their rights.” The investigations, which routinely last 60 days and involve multiple visits, are akin to “being stopped and frisked for sixty days,” said one ACS staffer. And New York City isn’t alone: A 2022 investigation by ProPublica and NBC News found that CPS agencies across the country said they only sought court orders for home searches when denied entry by parents. 

The plaintiffs are asking a judge to declare ACS’s practices unconstitutional. If successful, the suit could transform the way one of the nation’s largest child welfare systems conducts investigations—and serve as a model for those pushing back against warrantless searches elsewhere. “Curbing CPS investigations is a critical step,” Roberts says, “toward the radical change needed in this nation’s approach to child welfare from policing families to supporting them.”

When she went to an adoption agency, Cassie couldn’t stop weeping. But the staffers were warm, praising her for making the best decision for her child. They gave her a worksheet with two columns: things she could provide for her baby, and things adoptive parents could provide. They noted that adoptive parents could provide a home, a marriage, and financial stability. The agency sent her home with a stack of profiles of prospective adoptive parents, and one couple stood out to Cassie: a journalist and a fashion designer with a cute dog and a beautiful home. They agreed to an open adoption, in which Cassie would stay in touch with the family. Soon after giving birth, Cassie rolled her son in a bassinet down a hospital hallway to his adoptive parents. 

It seemed like a successful adoption: a win-win for a baby who needed a home and parents who wanted a baby. But take a closer look at Cassie’s story, as sociologist Gretchen Sisson does in her forthcoming book, Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, and you see fissures in the narrative. Looking back on her pregnancy eight years later, Cassie sees that her support system—the adoption agency, her family—presented adoption, and not parenting, as the only viable option. She suspects that a little financial support would have significantly changed her decision. At the hospital, Cassie had second thoughts about adoption, but she felt she didn’t have time to consider those feelings. In a hormonal haze soon after delivering, she signed the paperwork terminating her parental rights. “If I could go back, I just wish I would’ve waited a couple days, because I wouldn’t have made the same choice,” Cassie told Sisson.

Cassie spiraled into a deep depression after the birth, her body aching for her son. The promise of an open adoption was fruitless; with the exception of one visit when her son was a toddler, she never saw him again. “It’s always depicted as a choice, right? It’s a choice you make,” Cassie told Sisson. “Yeah, it was my choice to go to the agency; it was my choice to choose adoption—but, like, it really wasn’t. It felt like my only option.”

Sisson, who researches abortion and adoption at the University of California-San Francisco, interviewed more than 100 American birth mothers who relinquished their infants for adoption. (The mothers’ names, including Cassie’s, were changed.) Sisson’s interest in adoption started in graduate school, when she was interning at a center for pregnant and parenting teens and volunteering on a hotline for people who wanted an abortion. Her experiences didn’t square with the cultural zeitgeist glorifying adoption—think The Blind Side, or Sex and the City, or, perhaps most notably, Juno, in which the titular character bikes off singing after handing her baby to her adoptive mother.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have long praised adoption, too, as a rare common ground that has taken on particular salience in the post-Dobbs era. But, as Relinquished notes, the adoption industry has a long history of targeting vulnerable mothers—particularly women in poverty and women of color. Such mothers are rarely heard from in narratives about adoption, and their stories challenge assumptions many Americans have about how the industry works.

For example: Research shows that mothers are not typically weighing abortion and adoption as competing decisions. Most of the birth mothers who Sisson interviewed wanted to parent, but relinquished their children largely because of financial constraints. “When I asked the women who wanted to parent what they would have needed to do so, it was simple: money,” writes Sisson. Like Cassie, Sisson questions whether adoption is truly a choice. “[A]s people’s options are constrained, as abortion is unavailable and parenting is untenable, adoption becomes the only path forward,” she writes.

I spoke with Sisson about the myths and realities of infant adoption in America today. Her answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

The language you use to describe adoption—starting with the title of the book—feels very intentional. Why do you refer to mothers “relinquishing” their children rather than, say, “placing” them for adoption?

I wanted to make space for language that wasn’t as shaped by the adoption industry. “Placing” a child for adoption, “choosing” adoption—they convey a greater sense of agency and control over their lives than a lot of the women that I interviewed had at the time. “Relinquishing” represents this position of having less power, of having fewer resources, of being in a place where decisions are not entirely within your own control.

You make a point of underscoring that the decision for moms is often not between abortion and adoption. Can you talk more about that?

Most of the mothers I interviewed didn’t want to have an abortion. They wanted to parent. They continued their pregnancies because they intended to parent and they were in a crisis, and couldn’t find safe housing or affordable child care or the support of their partner or their own parents. Whatever was going to help them get through that crisis didn’t materialize, and that’s when they turned to adoption. There were some women in my sample who were interested in having an abortion but it was inaccessible to them, but they were the minority. And even they weren’t choosing between abortion and adoption. They wanted to get an abortion, they couldn’t get an abortion, then they turned to adoption. They weren’t choosing between the two; it was when they didn’t have access to one choice that the other became the possibility.

Adoption is one of the rare issues that has bipartisan support. What about adoption appeals to both parties?

There are the reasons that people state for being supportive of adoption, and then there are the reasons that people don’t talk about. Conservatives like to promote adoption as an alternative to abortion. We know that that is not how women make choices about their pregnancies; we know that women are not choosing between abortion and adoption at single points in their pregnancy. But it’s a useful talking point for conservatives who don’t want to act as if they’re imposing motherhood on someone. I also think that, from a “small c” conservative perspective, it’s a way of not having to invest in poor and vulnerable families, because so much of relinquishment is driven by poverty. And because adoption is largely the transfer of children and babies from poor families to at least middle-class families, then you are averting that need. Also, the majority of adoption in this country is facilitated by Christian adoption agencies. It’s about upholding a really heteronormative idea of family: a two-parent, married, heterosexual couple that are adhering to this fairly conservative idea of what families look like.

On the other side of the political spectrum, you see a lot of gay and queer parents are adoptive parents. My work intentionally doesn’t answer the question of what those parents should do if they find the way we practice adoption today to be unethical. Adoption as a system is supposed to be about finding homes for children who need them, not about finding babies for parents who want them. I also think that as more and more of our adoption in the United States is transracial adoption, the promise of white parents adopting children of color becomes this post-racial bona fide. I don’t think that’s why most of them do it, but I do think that there’s this idea that we can form families: biology doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter, communities of origin don’t matter. Love is what makes a family. That’s this progressive liberal idea, and it’s not actually born out in the impacts that we see for adopted people and their families. 

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade while you were working this book. How will (or won’t) Dobbs change the adoption industry?

We saw from the Turnaway Study that when you deny people access to abortion, the vast majority of them are parenting. So you’re not going to have a huge surge in adoption. [The number of adoptions] is going to be vastly outnumbered by the number of people who are parenting children that they did not intend to parent at that time in their lives. And so this raises the question: How are we actually going to support these families? 

A relatively small amount of money goes really far in keeping families together. And a lot of mothers I talked to, if they were saying, the reason why I had to relinquish my child is I didn’t have enough money, I’d say, well, how much would you have needed? The highest number I ever heard was $5,000. They don’t need enough to buy a house, or pay for schooling until the kid’s 18. What they need is enough to get through that crisis—of figuring out how to get from where they are at the end of their pregnancy to a safe and stable home. Sometimes, it’s a security deposit. Sometimes it’s a car. Sometimes it’s a voucher for child care. It’s not usually this massive, massive investment.

You’ve studied marketing tactics that adoption agencies use to reach expecting mothers, some of which are quite predatory. What are some common strategies?

The number one expense of most adoption agencies is in marketing, and a lot of that is Google ads. They spend more on marketing than they do on legal fees, than they do on support for birth mothers. There’s this idea that adoption is so expensive because that money has to go towards supporting the birth mother during her pregnancy, and that actually very rarely happens at any meaningful level. The most expensive thing about adoption is ads that are going into recruiting pregnant people into giving up their children. A lot of times, agencies buy keywords like “help for single moms in California.” They’ll buy that search string, so if you are pregnant and looking for information about how to get into affordable housing, or how to find child care, you’re going to get recurring ads for adoption agencies. It’s really heavily tailored to target not just people who are Googling things about adoption, but anything that suggests that you are pregnant and intending to parent, and need help doing that. We also saw agencies that are geofencing, so if you’re using your phone and you’re at a Planned Parenthood or you’re at another abortion clinic, you might start getting ads for adoption agencies. 

A lot of these ads can be really compelling to mothers that are not sure what they’re going to do, and aren’t quite sure where they’re going live when the baby gets here. Are they still going to be living in their car? Are they going to be able to find housing? All of a sudden, you’re getting these ads from adoption agencies with profiles for prospective adoptive parents with these gorgeous suburban homes with big backyards and pools. They talk about their public school system and their lucrative careers. It becomes this way of showcasing class privilege and stability—not just financial stability, but marital stability, family support. Exactly the things that a lot of relinquishing mothers feel they’re lacking. That really speaks directly to a lot of the insecurities that these pregnant people feel.

What are some common misconceptions about adoption? What do you wish that more people knew?

We have this idea that there are so many babies in need of homes. In fact, the demand for babies dwarfs the number of babies that are actually available for adoption. Estimates put it at between 10 and 45 waiting families for every baby that’s relinquished through private adoption. Bethany Christian Services, which is one of the biggest adoption agencies in the country, stopped accepting applications from prospective adoptive parents—there just weren’t enough babies. People don’t actually want to give away their children if they don’t have to. I think the biggest myth is that engaging in the private adoption system is an altruistic thing to do. We don’t need more prospective adoptive parents in private adoptions. 

For people who can’t have their own kids, do you think that adoption is an ethical practice to turn to given how adoption works in America today?

[Long pause] I don’t think so. It’s hard for me to say that. There are a lot of ethical people who participate in adoption and are really committed to the well-being of their children and to preserving relationships with their child’s birth parents. I believe that the system is unethical, given the extent to which it is premised on inequity and the extent to which it’s often predatory. I believe that you can have ethical players that participate in it and do the best they can, but I don’t think that that makes the way that we practice this morally correct.

Do you have experience in or with the adoption industry? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re interested in hearing from those who have worked in or with the adoption industry, including birth parents, adoptive parents, employees at adoption agencies, adoption lawyers—and, of course, adoptees. This is a deeply personal topic, and we take your privacy seriously. We won’t share your name or story without your permission. We’re also happy to talk on background, meaning that we won’t name or quote you without having a conversation about it first.

We may not be able to respond to everyone who replies, but your responses help give us context for our reporting.

 Note: The language in this post has been updated for clarification. 

But many workers at Allegiant Stadium, in Las Vegas, make barely more than minimum wage. A San Francisco Chronicle article tells the story of one such employee, Chayasura Walker, who makes $14.25 an hour, without benefits, as she pours $18 beers:

“I work three jobs and I still qualify for Medicaid,” Walker told the Chronicle in an interview this week after getting off work at the Las Vegas Raiders home stadium in Paradise, Nev., just southwest of the Las Vegas Strip. “That should tell you something.”

Walker’s plight is not unique. About 2,300 workers will be serving hot dogs, mixing cocktails and scrubbing toilets on Sunday, from stadium janitors to ushers to cashiers hired by companies contracted to manage the new stadium as well as a couple dozen independent restaurants.

Some make as little as $13 an hour for part-time, seasonal jobs that leave many needing other employment to support themselves.

In 2016, Nevada lawmakers voted to spend a record-breaking $750 million in taxpayer funding to help build the new arena and relocate the Raiders from Oakland. Advocates estimated the stadium would bring 14,000 permanent jobs and $39,000 annual salaries. 

While Allegiant is now the world’s fourth highest-grossing stadium and the Raiders rank third in NFL ticket revenues (the 49ers are first), that money has not trickled down to stadium workers, and the stadium’s employment projections have fallen short. Whereas the Oakland Coliseum had an all-union workforce, 1,500 of Allegiant’s 2,200 employees are nonunion and working part-time and low-wage jobs, the Chronicle reports.

Many of those workers are now organizing to join the culinary union, which held a press conference last week. One worker, Vickey Powell, explained that she has been a cashier at the stadium for four years as a contractor for food and beverage company Levy, and making just $13 an hour. “I know how hard it is to work more than one job to just to make ends meet, to take care of your family,” Powell said.

Through tears, she explained that after her son died in 2021, she kept coming to work. “When I should have been at home grieving and setting up my son’s funeral, I dedicated myself to the Raiders stadium and Levy to come in and be that worker that they asked me to be. And all I’m asking is that y’all help us get the pay and the fairness we deserve due to everything we do.”

In a letter to Raiders president Sandra Douglass Morgan, D. Taylor, the president of Unite Here, which oversees the culinary union, noted that the employees at Allegiant who are unionized are able to qualify by adding the seasonal hours they work at Allegiant to hours they work at other union jobs. As a result, they have access to health insurance, pensions, job security, and more. 

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has long criticized defense spending by NATO allies, falsely claiming they owe unpaid debt to the alliance. But Saturday’s remarks, at a campaign event in Conway, SC, suggested that he would encourage attacks against “delinquent” nations.

Trump recalled another country’s leader asking him while he was president, “If we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?” He allegedly responded, “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.” Trump claimed last year that “hundreds of billions of dollars came flowing in” to NATO after his threats. (Fact-checkers have deemed similar past claims from Trump “an exaggeration.”) 

While there has been a debate about NATO spending, it isn’t about unpaid debt, but rather whether NATO allies are spending enough of their economic output on their own defense. In 2014, member countries pledged to move toward spending 2 percent of their GDPs on military preparedness; so far, just 11 of 31 member countries have reached that goal. (The United States is an outlier, spending vastly more than most nations on military activities—an estimated 3.5 percent of GDP.) 

Trump’s remarks come as congressional Republicans have stalled on sending more aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia—aid that, at his campaign event, Trump said the United States should “give it to ‘em as a loan.”

The White House quickly condemned his comments. “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Rather than calling for wars and promoting deranged chaos, President Biden will continue to bolster American leadership and stand up for our national security interests—not against them.”

In a statement Sunday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also rebuked Trump’s comments. “NATO remains ready and able to defend all allies,” Stoltenberg said. “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”

The U.S. was the lone veto in the 13-to-1 vote; Britain abstained.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood said that a ceasefire is “not only unrealistic but dangerous: it would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7.” In response to Hamas’ attack, which killed 1,200 people, “Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism, consistent with international law.”

The war in Gaza, now entering its third month, has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians and displaced millions. The United Nations and other aid groups are warning that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is escalating further as civilians struggle to access basics, like food and medicine. “By continuing to provide diplomatic cover for the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, the US is signaling that international humanitarian law can be applied selectively—and that the lives of some people matter less than the lives of others,” said Doctors Without Borders USA’s Executive Director Avril Benoit.

After the veto, foreign ministers representing several Arab countries met with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and “expressed deep dissatisfaction with the inability of the Security Council to carry out its responsibilities,” the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement. Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, called the veto “a mark of shame that will follow the United States for many years,” according to the New York Times. 

Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan, meanwhile, thanked the United States for its support on social media, saying, “A ceasefire will be possible only with the return of all the hostages and the destruction of Hamas.”

While American officials have urged Israel to do more to limit civilian deaths and displacement, the U.S. continues to support Israel’s war efforts. On Saturday, the Department of Defense announced approval of the sale of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition to Israel, bypassing the congressional review typically required for arms sales to other countries. According to the announcement, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken determined that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel.”