James King and his wife Carla have a “deep faith in God.” When they married in 1992, notes James, the plan was to start a family. James, speaking into the microphone he grips, says it was Carla’s desire from a young age to be a wife and mother. They tried to get pregnant, suffered miscarriages and underwent unsuccessful fertility treatments, all of which caused them, understandably, “extreme pain and sorrow,” says James. When they stumbled upon information from Bethany Christian Services, they finally realized their “calling” to adopt. Sarah, the daughter they adopted as a newborn, is a “perfect blessing from God,” they say.

Watching the toddler squirm on her mother’s lap, play with her sippy cup and hop down to play, it’s easy to see the deep love James and Carla have for their daughter.

James also notes that his heart goes out to those couples who experience infertility, and he prays that women who experience unplanned pregnancies “get the help they need.” He says that Sarah’s birth mother made the “loving choice to give her up for adoption.”

I am not pulling this couple’s story from a promotional video for the anti-choice, Christian adoption agency, Bethany Christian Services, as much as you may assume this to be the case. It’s one of only two families adoption experiences highlighted in a webcast coming from the White House, about the recently extended Adoption Tax Credit.

The Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in partnership with the White House Council on Women and Girls, held the webcast last week on the Adoption Tax Credit, recently extended through 2011, and increased via the passage of the Affordable Care Act. White House Council on Women and Girls head, Tina Chen, hosted the discussion.

The Adoption Tax Credit, established in 1996, has provided families in this country with a $10,000 tax credit to use to cover the costs associated with adoption. Health care reform increased the tax credit to $13,170 this year, for families who adopt, domestically or internationally. The White House is clearly interested in promoting this change – and that is understandable.

And while the webcast was produced specifically about the Adoption Tax Credit and its role in making adoption more affordable and accessible for Americans, what the administration is saying about adoption, to Americans across the country through the webcast, came across loud and clear.

Bethany Christian Services was the only adoption agency invited to participate in this webcast. How is it possible that in a country where 114,000 children (according to the President & CEO of the National Council for Adoption) are awaiting adoption; and where so many gay and lesbian parents would love to become adoptive parents but are shut out; in a country where most adoptions are now open adoptions; and where families come in all shapes and sizes the administration chooses to highlight the perspective and services of only this one?

Kyle and Bethany shared their experience, as well. Kyle and Bethany were married and after undergoing in-vitro fertilization treatments for three years, Bethany gave birth to their son, Mason. Soon after she gave birth to her daughter who was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. This, ultimately, led the couple to adopt their second daughter, Nika, from an orphanage in Russia. Nika also has Down Syndrome.

Nika sits in her father’s lap, a smiling little girl who cranes her neck to watch and play with her Dad’s face as her mother talks. 

It’s a beautiful story, to be sure. You’d need to be pretty hard-hearted not to see the love this family has for each other – and the commitment to helping children.

Both families extol the help the Adoption Tax Credit has given them as they struggled to raise money for the adoptions and continue to work hard to cover the costs of raising children. It’s undeniable that the tax credit helps adoptive families that need the help. But, overall, this “story” of adoption that the White House has chosen to tell is overwhelmingly limited and, in honesty, unbelievably offensive to so many adoptive families and children waiting to be adopted by loving parents. It’s also a story within a story – of women who face unintended pregnancies and are being told, by an anti-choice adoption agency, that they should carry the pregnancy to term and place the baby up for adoption (and if you watch this webcast – it appears to be closed adoptions only) rather than make the decision that’s best for them and the families they may already have.

I have written this before – adoption isn’t an alternative to abortion. Choosing to carry one’s pregnancy to term, give birth to one’s baby, and offer one’s baby to a family who wants to adopt can only be, what I imagine, a heart-wrenching experience. It’s a deep exploration of what’s right and best for you and the baby you may have.

The White House missed a tremendous opportunity to present an accurate, realistic portrayal of adoption – for an array of families and children. A brief glimpse at Bethany Christian Services web site confirms that, for the one, single adoption agency invited onto the webcast by the White House, adoption seems to be overwhelmingly the purview of white, heterosexual, Christian couples.

We have so many tens of thousands of chidren – in this country alone – left to grow up in foster care, waiting for an adoptive family; we have tens of thousands of gay and lesbian couples who have created a loving home and wish to adopt. Most children are, in fact, adopted out of the foster care system. And, yet, the only representative for the adoption world is Bethany Christian Services?

The White House had a chance to put a real face on adoption in this country – the faces of not only the diversity of families who go through the adoption experience but of the actual women whose decisions first set these wheels in motion – the birth mothers.

The one line repeated over and over again in this web cast was the idea that this tax credit would help encourage families to “reach into the system” and adopt babies and children who are waiting to be adopted. But if the only example of an adoption agency the White House offers is one where “embryo donation” and “alternatives to abortion” for the birth mother are the preferred roads to travel, over what might best for the pregnant woman and her family, there will continue to be far too many already-existing babies and children living in the foster care system waiting to be adopted.

In a webcast meant to inform and educate about the merits of the Adoption Tax Credit, the families experiences and organizations highlighted were ones which presented an extremely limiting picture of adoption in this country. In fact, James King did get it right – for many adoptive families, the decision to adopt may just be a “calling” and to attempt to sway one segment of Americans to “reach into the system” by offering a financial incentive to adopt, but effectively ignore everyone else who may actually feel called to adopt by presenting them with no representation or resources, while ignoring the birth mothers in the discussion, is not just a missed opportunity but an insult.

To watch the webcast, visit the Department of Health and Human Services web site.