Posted by
Shogrensus on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 2:53:02 PM
Texas Legislation to give pregnant women $500 to not have an abortion.
Elizabeth takes a pro-life position saying that if this helps a woman make it through her pregnancy, great.
Rosie of course can’t support this reasoning because there are 500,000 children in foster care and fewer than 200,000 licensed foster homes in the country. Her point: people shouldn’t bring unwanted children into this world.
Rosie: Please don’t compare foster children, who have often been abused and exposed to situations most people can not imagine to babies being put up for adoption. Children do not end up in foster care because they were nurtured. Additionally, many children in foster care are members of sibling groups, so the young children who haven’t been harmed to the same degree as their siblings will not escape the system because of the efforts to keep siblings together.
The children in the foster care system who do not get adopted are often older. Many children in foster care have behavioral, educational or health issues that create barriers to adoption. Also, many of these children have been sexually abused which creates a potentially dangerous situation for other children in the home.
I am a foster/adoptive parent and can say her comments are very disingenuous. Few people should take on the responsibilities of caring for children from the foster care system. While all kids are needy, these kids almost always need intensive intervention. Rosie has a great support system to help her with her kids. She has the resources to get her kids anything they need. Additionally, she adopted younger kids out of the system who will generally have fewer issues.
If Rosie really wants to help the kids who end up in foster care, she should start to speak out about removing kids much faster from their abusive, drug addicted parents, terminating parental rights and closing the records to prevent abusive biological families from maintaining contact.
Rosie should also encourage her friends from Hollywood and New York to look into adopting these kids instead of jetting to Africa. Her friends could afford to provide for these children, who again have more intensive needs than the average baby put immediately up for adoption.
To the legislator in Texas: Kudos to you for introducing legislation that calls attention to this issue.