Loving mothers along with babies

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 20th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: answering pro-life critics.

WORLD’s Caleb Bailey has been reporting on a series of common pro-choice claims, addressing them with pro-life answers from experts like Randy Alcorn. Today, he covers an often-dismissed alternative to abortion.

ELICIA: There are kids that don't get opportunities and wish they are dead every day. Because their parents didn't want them. Or there can be in my case, I grew up in an abusive household where my mother didn't want me.

CALEB BAILEY, REPORTER: On June 25, 2022, Elicia joins a crowd of protesters on a street corner in downtown Asheville. It’s one day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning a half century of Roe v. Wade.

Elicia only gives her first name. She brings up a hotly debated argument for abortion.

ELICIA: I think that you know, instead of bringing a kid into this world that's going to be mistreated. If you want to, you can have an abortion.

Randy Alcorn is the author of Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments.

RANDY ALCORN: Planned Parenthood really popularized the arguments against unwanted children. And it had a very popular phrase, “every child, a wanted child.”

Alcorn says that’s a pretty neutral phrase—hard to disagree with. But he pushes further.

ALCORN: I agree with you 100%. With that phrase, every child, a wanted child. Now, my question is, how would you finish that sentence? You say, every child, a wanted child so let's find children who are unwanted and kill them before they're born. Now, you wouldn't say it that way. It doesn't make a nice bumper sticker.

Alcorn presents his own end to that sentence.

ALCORN: Every child a wanted child. So let's learn to want children more. And let's do everything we can to get them into the homes of people who want them. And there are people lined up millions of people awaiting adoptions, particularly adoptions of infants, and who wait and wait and wait.

Heather Featherston is the vice president of Lifetime Adoption in New Port Richey, Florida. Lifetime is an American Christian adoption agency whose goal is to create families through open adoption. Part of that process is destigmatizing adoption.

HEATHER FEATHERSTON: Women today believe adoption is still like it was in the 50s and 60s, they believe that they are going to have the baby and the baby's going to be whisked out of the room. In their minds, it may be that, you know, bad mothers do adoption, because that's what they may know.

Open adoption gives varying degrees of contact between the mother and adoptive family. The birth mom can choose the parents after a careful selection process. She can see and hold her baby. They often negotiate ongoing contact.

FEATHERSTON: We see very open adoptions where they do get together for visits once or twice a year as an extended family.

Working at Lifetime, Featherston has witnessed first hand that there is no shortage of families to adopt these babies. And the process appears more daunting than it actually is.

FEATHERSTON: Most women who call us, they don't call us to say, "Hey, I'm ready to do adoption," they call to say, "I've been thinking about adoption, what is the process look like?"

Featherston says there are no requirements for birth moms. No conditions that disqualify the child.

FEATHERSTON: We have families open to special needs to drug exposure, alcohol, exposure, cigarettes, marijuana, it doesn't matter.

Last year, 29 year old Rachel Matzuka was diagnosed with CPTSD, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A past filled with parental neglect and drug abuse almost cost Matzuka her life.

RACHEL MATZUKA: And due to that, my addiction led to overdosing on Klonopin, and Adderall and cocaine over the course of years, of course. But ultimately, the last overdose of cocaine was back in like November 2017. And I almost had a heart attack at 23.

But that wasn’t the biggest shock.

MATZUKA: And then, a few months later, on December 23, of 2017, that is, the day that I found out, I was pregnant.

As unexpected as the news was, it was a turning point for her.

MATZUKA: He saved my life. My child saved my life. Because that day that I found out, I was pregnant, I never touched cocaine again. And I've been sober now for almost six years from cocaine.

Matzuka had plenty of external pressures. Even her own mom advised her to get an abortion.

MATZUKA: I only had a few options. There was abortion, adoption, or raising the baby. And abortion just was never an option in my mind.

Recovering from addiction and in a tight financial spot, Matzuka felt the choice was clear.

MATZUKA: I ultimately determined that if I want my children to have the life that I would hope for them to have, it's not going to be with me. And as much as that hurts, and it still stings like crazy today to even say it to myself. It's the truth. And you know, if I have to protect them, even from myself, then I will, because they're everything to me. They're all I have.

Thanks to open adoption, Matzuka was able to place her son Elijah for adoption with a couple who were close family friends.

It wasn’t goodbye. Matzuka stays in touch with the family, gathering for holidays and going by the name Mama Rachel.

Three years after Elijah was born, Matzuka became pregnant again. Still sorting out finances and her own life, she looked once again to open adoption.

Hoping to keep her sons together, she first went to Elijah’s adoptive parents. And to her surprise:

MATZUKA: They had been praying for a while now for a second child and I'm like, you've got to stop praying for kids. So they adopted Judah as well. So Elijah is a big brother and to see them together as the most beautiful thing in the world.

It’s beyond what Matzuka ever imagined when she first became pregnant.

Randy Alcorn points out that adoption doesn’t just preserve the life of the baby. It also values the life and interests of the mother.

ALCORN: This isn't about loving babies instead of women. It's loving babies along with loving women

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Caleb Bailey in Asheville, North Carolina.

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