Competing for Christ

ABC ran a 20/20 segment last spring that featured five couples “competing” for a child the mother was giving up for adoption. The squirm factor is high here, but it does remind us that there’s another child, a child in a manger, who is waiting to be embraced and loved.

“A contest in which another human being is the prize is reprehensible.”

That statement appeared in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post back in April, and if you don’t recall what was happening right then, you might think the article was about slavery or sex trafficking — “another human being is the prize.” But it was neither.

The editorial appeared on April 30, and it was heaping scorn on a program on ABC’s news show 20/20 that was to air that night titled “Be My Baby.” The show, featuring Barbara Walters, documented Jessica, a pregnant 16-year-old girl from Cleveland, Ohio, as she interviewed five couples, each of whom desperately wanted to adopt her baby. While Jessica agreed to the adoption, she also intended to maintain contact with both the child and the couple who received her baby in an increasingly popular arrangement known as open adoption.

The contempt poured on the show came from adoption professionals and many media...