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Adoption, the broad cultural consensus holds, is a beautiful win-win-win. People who desperately want to have children become parents. A baby gets a loving home. A woman gives a family its greatest gift—and then, of course, recedes appropriately into the background.

But as efforts to foist adoption on pregnant women expand thanks to the proliferation of anti-abortion laws, those of us who care about women and children need to look at the reality of adoption and take a stronger stance for women’s and children’s rights. Adoption can be a beautiful thing. But it is always a complex thing. Adoption essentially always begins with a tragedy: a mother who cannot pare

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