An Idea That Goes Where Government Should Not

What I’m saying is that if you are, for example, a teenage mother with no resources, that you ought to be encouraged . . . to think about making the decision to offer your child opportunity and the kind of home that you probably will not be able to offer.

--Gov. Pete Wilson

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He can’t be accused of doing it for votes.

He’s not running for anything.

So when the governor suggested last week that welfare mothers “really have a responsibility to a child and to taxpayers” to consider offering their kids for adoption, the horrified response can be explained thus:

If he’s not sucking up to the right, he must be serious.

Humbly, however, this taxpayer submits a potentially superior idea.

As you know, last year Wilson attempted to cut off $60 million or so in funding for the prenatal care of pregnant illegal immigrant women. Much rhetoric was exchanged in that debate. One might have thought the forces of common sense would triumph by asserting that spending money on pregnant women now saves precious taxpayer money later by averting the births of thousands of sickly babies. (Babies who qualify, by the way, for sundry government services because they are sickly citizen babies.)

Although Wilson’s attempt to kill the prenatal program has been temporarily held up by a judge, it will probably be implemented later this year as part of federal welfare reform measures.

Since the governor is willing to suggest a stark bottom line approach to who should and should not be raising children, how about an even more finely tuned lasering of impoverished California families?

Why not a “voluntary” adoption program targeting illegal immigrant women? Poor people don’t adopt babies, after all. At a minimum of $1,500 in court costs alone, they can’t afford to. Think of it: All those sickly babies upon whom we taxpayers do not wish to lavish prenatal care dollars could be adopted by gainfully employed couples with good medical insurance.

A beautiful private solution to an ugly public problem, yes?

On the other hand, who wants to adopt a sickly baby?

I’ve already thought of that. California can offer free prenatal care to illegal immigrants on the condition that they forfeit their children to better-funded families.

Then we deport the illegals and raise their babies in good American homes of the sort that welfare recipients will probably not be able to offer, as the governor so delicately puts it. (Oh, and don’t forget: Gay couples, unmarried couples and singles need not apply. The governor doesn’t consider you to be good parenting material.)

Too nutty? Perhaps. But “nutty” barely starts to describe a world in which the government gets a hand in deciding--absent any negatives but poverty and youth--who should be able to raise children and who should not. (No one is a teenage mother forever, and while poverty ought to be outlawed, it is still not a crime to be poor.)

Still, youth and poverty are the major factors in a woman’s decision to place a child with adoptive parents.

Last month, a letter arrived from a family friend disclosing the birth of a son a year ago. She was 21, single, a high-school dropout and worked in a mall store. She could keep the child and go on welfare, she knew, or she could find him a family that would offer stability and security. Courageously, she relinquished her son.

“I think a lot of young women are still only in possession of old facts on the adoption option,” she wrote. “Things have changed so much. The birth mother makes all the rules. It’s a good thing.”

Still, I fear there’s heartache ahead. For despite what a young woman may want to believe, even in the most open situation, adoption is not borrowing. The child with whom she hopes to have a reunion “when he’s old enough to ask,” as she put it, may never ask. Or he may not care for the answer.

But my friend speaks firmly when I ask if there is any lingering regret. Absolutely not, she says. She is comfortable with her choice, made freely and responsibly after many factors were weighed on delicate emotional scales.

The thumb of the governor, however, has no place on these scales, tipping impoverished mothers toward adoption in a misguided effort to save the state a buck.

* Robin Abcarian co-hosts a morning talk show on radio station KMPC-AM (710). Her column appears on Wednesdays.