[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 101 (Friday, July 16, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S8737]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     ADOPTION AWARENESS ACT OF 1999

  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, yesterday, I introduced the Adoption 
Awareness Act of 1999. The objective of this legislation is to provide 
proactive support for adoption as an option for women with unplanned 
pregnancies, and for couples who are unable to conceive a child due to 
problems with infertility. The bill would require certain federally-
funded health centers to provide adoption counseling by trained 
adoption counselors.
  The Adoption Awareness Act makes grants available to national 
adoption organizations to provide staff training in adoption counseling 
to eligible health centers. These health centers include Title X funded 
clinics, community health centers, migrant health centers, centers for 
the homeless, school-based clinics, and crisis pregnancy centers. The 
objective is to ensure that woman and their families are provided 
professional, compassionate, and understanding counseling about 
adoption.
  This legislation also provides that faith-based charities may receive 
grants to provide adoption counseling training services on the same 
basis as any other nongovernmental provider without impairing the 
religious character of such institutions and without diminishing the 
religious freedom of those receiving services.
  Finally, this legislation authorizes the appropriation of $7,000,000 
for fiscal year 2000 for purposes of providing adoption counseling 
training.
  There are no unwanted babies in this country. Across America there 
are countless couples who cannot conceive a baby, and struggle, often 
hopelessly, to adopt a child. All the while, tragically, 1.5 million 
children are aborted every year. There are parents who desperately want 
the opportunity to provide these children with a loving home, and the 
gift of life itself.
  The purpose of this legislation is not to incite a debate about 
abortion. The purpose of this legislation is to stress the value, 
indeed the sanctity of life, and the importance of adoption as an 
alternative to abortion. The purpose of this legislation is to ensure 
that a woman struggling with the tragic choice of abortion is provided 
professional and compassionate counseling on adoption. A mother 
deserves to know that there are millions of couples out there who are 
willing, indeed desperate, to provide her child with a loving home. A 
mother deserves to know that ending her child's life is not the only 
choice she has.
  I speak from personal experience. I am an adoptive father. I am a 
staunch supporter of the choice of adoption. Every mother pondering the 
agony which is abortion deserves the hope this legislation offers. 
Every unborn child deserves the opportunity for life that this 
legislation offers.
  I believe in the sanctity of human life. I have always fought for the 
rights of the unborn child, and the preservation of the intrinsic value 
of all human life. At approximately 1.5 million abortions every year, 
that is some 35 million children killed since the Roe v. Wade decision. 
Mr. President, regardless of your beliefs, pro-abortion, or pro-life, 
that is a staggering and tragic statistic. This legislation offers a 
chance at reducing that number. It is not the answer, but it does 
provide hope to couples struggling desperately to adopt children. As 
important, it provides hope to that mother or couple who is standing on 
the tragic precipice of abortion, ensuring that they know there is 
another choice.
  Every child embodies the hope for our future. It is our children, in 
their purity and their innocence, that hope is born again in an 
increasingly cynical world. Abortion is the great tragedy of our time. 
America is not a country of kings. America is not defined by any single 
geographic characteristic, by any single race or creed. America is an 
idea, a collection of high ideals, eloquently articulated, inscribed in 
our Constitution, and embodied on our institutions.
  Abraham Lincoln, in pondering the profound wisdom and our founding 
fathers, wrote of them: ``This was their majestic interpretation of the 
economy of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble 
understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures . . . In 
their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and 
likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on . . . They grasped 
not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward 
and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide 
their children, and their children, and the countless myriads who would 
inhabit the Earth in other ages.''
  Mr. President, confronting the tragic figures on abortion I have 
previously cited, I cannot help but question whether we can continue on 
this course and maintain hope that the intrinsic value of every human 
life, that principle out of which all the rights of man flow, can 
survive. The Adoption Awareness Act represents one step in the effort 
toward restoring the sanctity of life as the foundation of our system 
of human rights.

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