Each of these pro-life lawmakers says adoption is the best option when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy.
In college, Tim and Angela would counsel women facing an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. And they always suggested adoption as an option. Some took their advice. Many didn’t.
Tim praises those that did, the mothers who gave up their children and “made one of the toughest and most loving choices there is.” When Tim and Angela started their own family, they opted to adopt–first one little girl, then three more children.
It’s not an unusual story, though. Thousands of American families adopt each year.
But it’s unique because today Tim Huelskamp splits his time between Kansas and Washington, D.C. And it’s remarkable because Huelskamp is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Life is incredibly precious,” Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., says. “The only time I’ve cried in my adult life,” he tells The Daily Signal, is when he first held his adopted baby girl, Olivia.
At 53 years old, Schweikert became a father.
“It’s a little backwards,” he admits, but after six years on a waiting list to become foster parents, he and his wife, Joyce, jumped at the opportunity to adopt a child.
That was last month. Since then, Schweikert has learned to juggle public policy while changing diapers, building cribs, and assembling strollers. But though he’s a new dad, he’s not new to adoption.
‘Many Options’
Abortion was still illegal in America when Schweikert’s biological mother, only miles away from the Mexican border, decided not to abort. The teenager turned her car around, choosing to skip the appointment she had in Tijuana.
Months later, in 1962, Schweikert was born in Los Angeles in a home for unwed mothers. Looking back, he says he’s “incredibly blessed.” And he thanks his birth mother for choosing not to end the pregnancy and instead giving him up for adoption.
As an adopted son who became an adoptive father, Schweikert doesn’t downplay the difficulty of an unplanned pregnancy. None of the lawmakers who spoke with The Daily Signal did. But Schweikert also notes that adoption has become easier “in the modern world.”
He explains:
There are so many options out there and so many families looking for babies. If a young woman finds herself in that very difficult situation, she’s gotta understand that there are so many options available.
And now Schweikert is that dad, the one “with the photos” who’s always showing off his new kid, He also is telling everyone that “adoption’s not something to be scared of.”
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