Dear Senators Davis and Van de Putte, and Representative Farrar,
It was with consternation that I read of Senator Edward Lucio's proposed bill that would mandate pregnant women to undergo adoption counseling before being permitted to get an abortion.
As a Texas woman, as a woman who was impregnated in 1968 via rape, who was then forced to endure an adoption I did not want, I have many concerns about this.
My biggest concern is for the sequelae that a woman who is marketed or coerced into an adoption might experience. From my personal experience, and from the experience of hundreds of women I know who also endured forced adoptions, I know that these may include, but may not be limited to: lifelong, unresolvable grief , a PTSD-like syndrome, and even clinical depression.
I will not speak to the lifelong effects on the person who was adopted as an infant. There are many sites on facebook devoted to that, if one cares to look. And, since I was not adopted as an infant, I am uncomfortable speaking for them.
Might I suggest some sort of amendment to this bill? I suggest that IF a woman must, by law, be subjected to this "course" then I suggest she must also watch, for an equal amount of time, a presentation about how to sign up for Medicare, WIC, and Head Start (if indeed these programs continue to exist in our state), how to sue the child's father for child support, exactly what social safety net programs there are to help her raise her child, and how to best access them.
I would also like to inquire as to the source of the course that Senator Lucio is proposing. Is it similar to the materials developed for CPCs via the Infant Adoption Awareness Training Act? Are there federal or state funds involved with this course, with its presentation, or with the computers on which they will be presented? Who, precisely, developed it? Who funded the research that went into it? Who will fund its implementation?
These all are of concern to me.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of you for all that you are doing for Texas women.
Thank you for your time,
Text of the bill is here