Call me if you find this woman

I never thought our plan for creating a family (adoption) had much to do with anyone's health or taxes except our own. Fast forward 40+ years. Adoptive parents for some years have been able to take a federal tax credit for adopting. Ohio State University also offers many perks for adoptive parents, including time off, stopping the tenure clock, etc. (We missed all that government largess.) It's a pretty screwed up system, in my opinion. 1) Make abortion legal and socially acceptable, 2) reduce the number of babies, especially white infants, available for adoption, 3) increase foreign adoptions due to scarcity at home, 4) then offer tax credits on the exorbitant costs to obtain an ever increasing scarce adoptable child/infant. Does this sound like Congress has a collective IQ above 100?

But it gets better. Low-income families (about 17%) are more likely to adopt through public agencies, which are cheaper (ca. $2500) because they are tax supported, and who may hesitate to adopt their own foster children, for whom they have been receiving a subsidy, plus special medical benefits. Better educated, higher income adoptive parents (about 80%) adopt privately (ca. $40,000 depending on where and whom). So the federal tax credit for adoption is going primarily to people who actually pay taxes, and not to people who don't. Doh! The credit of up to $12,170 for both international and domestic adoption expenses didn't matter much to those who might not earn enough to owe much tax or any tax at all.

In the 2000 page Obamacare bill is a provision to give the low income, non-tax paying adoptive parents the cash difference (don't know the formula and don't know when this goes into effect). If they don't pay enough in taxes to allow for the credit for adoption-related expenses, the federal government will send them the difference in a refund. The credit tops out at $13,170. Although how you "refund" something that wasn't paid, I don't know. The idea is to encourage them to adopt special needs and their own foster children. Cha-Ching. A one time payout/bonus from the feds replaces a monthly subsidy by the state. How clever of the federal Congress to help the state governments with this pittance while slapping them with all the new mandates in Medicaid.

I have a lot of respect for the caring birth-mothers who seek a better life for their child/children while also looking out for their own welfare, and that of their own families who may not be able to absorb another child. I can't think of a single woman who tells the social worker/ government agency/ or lawyer, "Please find a low-income, marginally educated, non-tax paying family for my precious little one."

If she's out there, no one has interviewed her or told her story.