I've been reading the comments on Mary's Ethiopia blog about "true orphans", and although I have posted one there myself, I, like Erin, feel something blog-length would be appropriate.

Before addressing the issue face-on, I'd like to recount a story, a true story, of an event that took place in Mexico some years back ...

A group of women put together an adventure travel trip through Yucatan that involved a lot of riding in a van and camping in places tourists very rarely visited. They traveled with two guides, both indigenous tribal people from the area.

One night, as they sat around a campfire after a meal talking of the day's wonders, a man came out of the forest, explained to the guides that there was a woman dying in a nearby village and asked for help.

One of the women in the tourist group was a doctor and another was a nurse, so they immediately grabbed their gear and took off with one of the guides and the villager.

When they arrived in the very small village they were led to a hut in which a girl of about eighteen was hemorrhaging after giving birth to what they learned was her fifth child. Her other four children, as well as most of the village, had gathered to watch the slow process of her death.

With the guide translating, the doctor informed the husband of the dying woman that there was little she could do aside from make the woman as comfortable as possible as her life ebbed away. The nearest hospital was days away over rough roads, and there was no way she would make it. She had already lost so much blood that her death was imminent.

The husband began to rant and rave, and both the doctor and the nurse were shocked when his diatribe was interpreted for them. What it basically amounted to was a vicious attack on the dying girl that went something like this:

"Stupid women. I knew something like this would happen. She refused to have sex with me because she didn't want to have any more children, and now God has punished her for that ridiculous behavior and sinful attitude. I had to beat her and rape her, and she fought me and angered God. And now what? Now I'll have to raise these children alone! I don't have time for these children! The baby will die with no milk, but the others will want to be fed." And so on ...

I was inspired to revive this true-life account by a question from one of Mary's readers who asked, "The idea of that -- a mother for whom the best option is giving up her child(ren) for adoption continuing to HAVE many additional children is inconceivable and upsetting to me. Does she not have any support for trying to NOT get pregnant? Do the US adoption agencies encourage it somehow?"

Birth control is ILLEGAL in many Catholic countries, and even where it is allowed by law it is most certainly NOT allowed by the church. Women have ZERO option but to have child after child, and when their lives are a misery of grinding poverty, daily abuse, and a straight path to an early death offering their children the option of a better life may be the only power they have.

It is only from deep in the comfort of a life of vast riches and endless options ... and compared to much of the world that is exactly what America provides ... that questions like those above and judgments levied that suggest parents are wrong to offer their children another life in another world because of something as simple as poverty can spring.

In the tale above, a couple of the women on that trip would have very happily brought that baby home and given her a life, and the father and grandparents would very happily have seen that happen. In fact, they asked that someone take the baby with them that night. That not being legally possible, the baby most certainly died within a very short period of time, if not within minutes of the team leaving and at the father's hands. The survival of the other children is also doubtful, all being under five and not terribly healthy to begin with.

Had these children been adoptable ... which would have required legal involvement not available for hundreds of miles ... they would not have been true orphans.

Any idea how many times something like this scenario plays out around the world? Thousands? Millions? Yet well-fed people in comfortable chairs type out worries about making " ... child-bearing and parenting into something akin to the business of puppy mills", and beat themselves with the guilt stick for the rest of their lives because their child may have a living biological parent somewhere in the world.

Although it is for some reason considered very un-PC in the adoption community, it must be understood that the world is not a nice place filled with sweetness and light, and for millions of children the chance of a family that wants them ... heck! the chance of regular meals and a life that may last more than five years ... would seem a miracle.