<p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Adoption.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6015 aligncenter" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Adoption-199x300.jpg" alt="Adoption" width="199" height="300" /></a></p>
We sat on damp sofa cushions in the mud and straw shack, a one-room dwelling that Teddy was clearly proud of. I’m not sure how many children and babies she’s helped since becoming local chairperson of her district, which is a slum in Kampala, Uganda — but our son was one of them. I removed my shoes before entering.

We had just visited another shack after navigating the twisting maze of the slum — the place where our son had spent the first six months of his life.

Teddy began telling Benjamin’s mother’s story in her soft-spoken, lilting Luganda. Our driver and friend interpreted. His mother had been just 19 years old. “These women, they do not have money to go to the clinic, so they go to a neighborhood place to deliver, or some of them stay home,” Teddy said. “But if something goes wrong, they cannot be saved.”

I blinked and swallowed, looking up at the dark ceiling as I held her son, now my son, in my lap. He was starting to get hungry.

It was my first deeply personal taste of injustice, and it hasn’t left me since. Any adoption involves such staggering, fundamental loss.

And because I’m Benjamin's mother now, that loss is part of me, too.

I wish it didn’t have to happen to him or his mother. If I could prevent him from ever having to shoulder this burden of loss, I would. In a heartbeat.

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<h2><strong>Half of the story</strong></h2>
Looking at adoption from the outside — and particularly Christian adoption, with its themes of redemption and ties to gospel and savior messages — it’s tempting to focus solely on the healing and wholeness that can occur after a child is home.

The predominant idea is that they once were lost, and now they’re found. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you,” says the scripture in John 14 (NIV), and we imagine our story as the real-life parallel. This child had no one, and now he has a home and a family and a future.

But once we dove into adoption for real, the fantasy-rescue storyline of adoption started to look thin. By the time we were face-to-face with our son, it had completely disappeared.

Adoption can be redemptive, but it’s the second half of the child’s story. And I believe that if we truly want to make a difference for “orphans… in their distress” (James 1:27, NIV), the first half of the story is where our focus should be.
<h2><strong>Preventing adoption</strong></h2>
For my son’s sake, and for his mother’s, my focus is now on preventing adoption from ever having to be considered.

I’m involved in an organization (<a href="http://www.mercyformamas.com">Mercy for Mamas</a>) that purchases sterile birthing kits for pregnant women in Uganda, a $7 set of supplies that saves women’s lives by preventing infection and allowing them to give birth in a better-equipped medical center.

I’m exploring how educating girls may be the single most powerful way to prevent unplanned pregnancies.

I’m reading about efforts to train and retain mid-level birthing experts like midwives and nurse practitioners in some of the poorer regions of Africa.

I’m supporting sustainable clean water efforts, as well as initiatives to provide free mosquito nets, both to stop the spread of diseases that are especially hard on pregnant women.

Because even if it means an American family has to wait longer for their African baby to come home, I want to prevent adoption from being necessary for that baby in the first place.

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<strong><em>How could we do better in supporting maternal survival and family preservation? If you care about adoption and orphans, do you think these are important issues?</em></strong>