TJ Raphael on the Liberty Godparent Trap and the Cost of Coercion

Summary

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The Gist – Episode Summary

Podcast: The Gist
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: TJ Raphael
Episode: TJ Raphael on the Liberty Godparent Trap and the Cost of Coercion
Date: December 4, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode of The Gist features an in-depth interview with journalist/podcaster TJ Raphael about her investigative podcast, Liberty Lost. The discussion unpacks the practices of the Liberty Godparent Home—a maternity and adoption facility connected to Liberty University—that, according to Raphael’s reporting, systematically coerced pregnant teens into giving up their babies for adoption. The conversation broadens to interrogate the intersection of conservative religious doctrine, shame, and profit motives in the American private adoption industry, and considers the contemporary implications for adoption law and reproductive rights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Unveiling the Liberty Godparent Home

• Liberty Godparent Home: A maternity facility on the Liberty University campus for pregnant girls 12-21, directly tied to an adoption agency, Family Life Services, under the same board as Liberty University ([12:15], [13:11]).
• The physical and administrative setup creates a pipeline: young, often religious women enter the home and are aggressively encouraged—if not overtly coerced—to place their babies for adoption.

Quote:

"I see a real conflict of interest here where you're purporting to be a maternity home that will help a young woman in crisis determine whether or not to keep and parent her child or place that child for adoption. But literally next door... it seems like the real motivation and purpose of the maternity home was to supply the adoption agency with children to adopt out."
— TJ Raphael [20:10]

2. Mechanics of Coercion: Shame, Guilt & Control

• Atmosphere inside the Home: Residents are cut off from outside contact, even family, for the first month; calls monitored; strict, shame-driven environment ([15:43]).
• Girls were told they needed to 'redeem' themselves via adoption after “sinning” through premarital sex.
• Families, sometimes wittingly sometimes not, are kept unaware of what transpires inside. Parental visits are tightly controlled.

Quote:

"Guilt and shame were tools of the trade. A lot of the purity culture messages that these young girls were getting at home... was carried over into the godparent home."
— TJ Raphael [13:40]

• Threats Against Boys: Families threatened birth fathers with statutory rape charges to force compliance with adoption plans—even when not legally viable ([16:47]).

3. Financial Incentives & Institutional Profiteering

• Adoption Fees: The affiliated agency charges a floor of $30,000-$40,000 per adoption ([19:54]), creating clear financial incentives for separating babies from their mothers.
• Fundraising: Girls paraded at church services and in mailers/TV specials to solicit donations, often directed to Jerry Falwell’s ministries rather than to support the girls ([20:10]).

4. Questioning Adoption as “Alternative to Abortion”

• Statistics: Research shows adoption is an extremely uncommon outcome among women denied abortions—only ~1% of women place infants for adoption ([22:14]).
• Women arriving at the Liberty Godparent Home had, almost universally, already decided against abortion; they wanted to keep their babies but were steered away from that outcome.

"The doctrine motivating the home was that a child belongs in a two parent heterosexual household... So we need to get this pure baby away from this sinful mother."
— TJ Raphael [22:14]

5. Open Adoptions: A Flawed “Solution”

• Rise of Open Adoption: Promised as a kinder, more flexible arrangement to convince girls to consent to adoption, but not reliably binding in most states ([24:22]).
• Reality: Agreements often collapse—by adolescence, two-thirds of open adoptions have closed, usually at the adoptive parents’ discretion. Birth mothers report feeling they must “walk on eggshells” to maintain any relationship ([26:23], [29:17]).
• There is little academic guidance or best practices for open adoption dynamics.

6. Legal Patchwork and Parental Rights

• Varying Revocation Periods: Legal rights to “take back” parental rights after signing adoption papers range from 30 days (NY) to zero (UT)—some states have even shortened these windows further ([34:34]).

Quote:

"In Utah, once your pen hits the paper, you have lost all rights to your child. Even in cases of fraud and duress, it cannot be reversed."
— TJ Raphael [35:44]

• Stat on Regret: 70% of relinquishing mothers wished they knew more about their legal rights before adoption ([34:01]).

7. After Dobbs: Adoption Policy in the Post-Roe Era

• Expansion Plans: Liberty Godparent Home and similar maternity homes are expanding, often with support from broad anti-abortion networks like Heartbeat International ([40:45]).
• Policy Incentives: Trump's administration has expanded adoption tax credits and explicitly called for more funding for adoption over abortion. This, despite many birth mothers stating that modest financial support would let them keep their babies ([43:19]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• "[W]hen I first started talking to her [Abby Johnson]... I kind of assumed... this is just a problem with that place... But as I started to do more research... I started to see a lot of the tactics... were actually being used in a lot of the adoption industry across the United States."
  — TJ Raphael [10:59]

• "For the first month that these teenage girls are there, they're not allowed to have contact with anyone on the outside, including their own family members."
  — TJ Raphael [15:43]

• "Abby's parents threatened Nathan, her then boyfriend... [with] statutory rape charges... if you try to stop this adoption, if you intervene..."
  — TJ Raphael [17:13]

• "The people that did wind up pursuing it [adoption] do feel okay and happy about it... Even when it is an act of choice... it's hard. It's life's changing in a lot of ways."
  — TJ Raphael, on birth mothers’ complex, often painful feelings about adoption [39:18]

• "Every single woman that I spoke to... by the time she arrived at the godparent home, she decided against abortion... These girls wanted their children."
  — TJ Raphael [22:14]

• "Research shows that when, you know, the revocation periods are longer, the people that do wind up pursuing it do feel ok and happy about it... Even when it is an act of choice… it’s hard."
  — TJ Raphael [38:27]

• "A lot of the birth mothers I talked to, you know, they said if I would have had $5,000, I would have kept my child."
  — TJ Raphael [43:19]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 10:13 | Start of interview with TJ Raphael | | 12:15 | Breakdown of Liberty Godparent Home structure and its links to Liberty University| | 13:40 | Description of guilt, shame, and religious pressure in the home | | 15:43 | Control and isolation of pregnant teens | | 17:13 | Coercive threats against boyfriends | | 19:54 | Financial incentives and adoption fees | | 22:14 | Adoption vs. abortion decisions; stats from Turn Away Study | | 24:22 | Closed vs. open adoptions and their implications | | 26:23 | Comparing open adoption realities; lack of best practices | | 29:17 | Research showing most open adoptions eventually close | | 34:01 | Mothers’ regret and ignorance of legal rights | | 34:34 | Variation in state laws regarding revocation periods | | 40:45 | Post-Dobbs expansion, policy incentives, and financial supports | | 43:30 | End of interview wrap-up |

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Tone & Style

Pesca and Raphael maintain an inquisitive, skeptical, and balance-seeking tone. The conversation is wide-ranging but always focuses on evidence and the human experience behind the numbers and policies. Pesca often adds dry humor or pointed asides, but the episode is empathetic toward the women affected and rigorously questions doctrinal and economic motives behind supposedly charitable adoption programs.

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Final Thoughts

Liberty Lost exposes the less-visible forces shaping private adoption in religious America: shame, legal ambiguity, coercion, and profit. The episode serves as a cautionary look at how faith-based paternalism and inadequate social supports can conspire to constrict choice for vulnerable young women, with implications for law, policy, and the ethics of adoption itself.

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Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Thursday, December 4, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca and President Trump has gone on a pardoning spree, you might say in a pardoning fiesta, because special attention has been given to the Latino community. Henry Cuellar, former Texas congressman pardoned Former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez pardoned. Summer Bob Menendez is saying, what about me? What about me? He has kissed the ass of Donald Trump. Maybe not quite enough. Maybe the promise or specter of a bribe. It's a little hard to offer when the gold bars instead of the cryptocurrency are the only mechanisms of bribery. Now I want to go to the trial of Hernandez and Emil Beauvais, who is now an appeals court judge. He was the federal prosecutor who oversaw all those Trials and in 2019, he was giving the closing statement to try and ultimately successfully convict Hernandez's brother, Tony Hernandez. And he said that Tony Hernandez had helped smuggle in almost 200,000 kilos of cocaine. Earlier reports are in this very same account that I'm reading, it noted that Juan Orlando Hernandez had smuggled in totally 400 tons of cocaine. If you're like me, it's very hard to calculate between kilos and tons. So the kilo count was about half as much as the 400 ton count. But the odd thing is at the trial Bove said in the 200000 kilos there are 8000 doses of cocaine in a kilo and that's a pretty high count. I asked Chad GPT, is that true? Because I don't, I'm just not focused enough or have enough connections with the cocaine community. And Chad GPT told me, well, that's, that'll get you very high. At first it didn't want to give me any information because it was worried that I was going to traffic and my starting off point would be a chatgpt chat. But then it said, all right, all right, I'll tell you how much is in a dose. If there are 8,000 doses in a kilo, that means each dose or line, I believe they call them line of cocaine is 125 milligrams. And they were saying, I don't know, 50 milligrams is a pretty big bump. I believe they call it a bump. So it turns out if you do all the math that we're talking something like 400 metric tons using even boves extremely aggressive and get you high as a kite type Measure will deliver 3 billion doses, which is every American got high 10 times. Or of the cocaine using community, let's say it's, I don't know, 10% of Americans, maybe you're calling me naive now, but, but they all got high 100 times on just Honduran cocaine. What I'm saying is when it comes to kilos and doses and Bove, who is as credible as standing by the pardoning of this guy, who is just let go after all his efforts when it comes to estimating the doses, I would not trust federal prosecutors. And I think we know that that is true because one federal prosecutor is now an appeals court judge saying, great job, President Trump undoing everything I worked on for years and years telling the American people in New York juries they're about to get poisoned by this guy who's now free on the show Today I have an excellent full show interview with one of the people who are doing long form, highly produced, highly researched podcasts in a world and atmosphere where such podcasts are very, very hard to commission, fund and execute. TJ Raphael has been on the show before. Her podcast is called Liberty Lost. Now I'll read you the headline, and it's an accurate headline from npr. This is Vermont Public Radio. Liberty Lost podcast alleges program coerced pregnant teens into adoption. That is true. And then before they start with their interview of TJ Raphael, it's It has an editor's note. This interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity and style. Same here. References Remember the headline that the podcast alleges that a program coerced pregnant teens into adoption? So they're warning you that it references teen pregnancy, sexual assault, coercive behavior, and complex emotions surrounding open and closed adoptions. Yes, the headline is coerced. The warning is coercion is involved and you have to watch out for those complex emotions. I say listen to the gist. Experience those complex emotions. Let it wash over you and enjoy and learn from. But please don't be triggered by this conversation with TJ Raphael.

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TJ Raphael is back with me. I think she's been with me for every one of her podcasts and a new series recently out is oh, I don't want to insult the other podcast, but very much could be the best. I had never really considered it, at least not in the modern American context. What goes into adoptions? Adoptions of young religious girls who are told that pretty much they need to give their baby up. The name of the series is Liberty Lost. And like I said, TJ joins us again. Hi, welcome back.

[TJ Raphael]

Hi Mike. Thanks for having me.

[Mike Pesca]

Did you because some of your past work is on material that touches this. So were you aware of some of the controversies within this world before you really dove in?

[TJ Raphael]

Absolutely not. Yeah. I think for me, over the course of my reporting and working on this series, my perception around infant adoption really shifted dramatically. Even when I first came in contact with my main subject, Abby Johnson, and she told me that she had been a pregnant teenager and sent to a maternity home on the campus of Liberty University and felt that she had no option other than to place her infant son for adoption. I kind of assumed when I first started talking to her that, oh, this is just a problem with that place because it's like Liberty because it's run by the Falwells, like it's really contained to here. But as I started to do more research on the broader practices of private infant adoption in the United States, I started to see a lot of the tactics that were used to get girls and young women to separate from their children on campus at Liberty were actually being used in a lot of the adoption industry across the United States.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, before we broaden it out, let's get specific about Liberty because, well, it's a university and like you said, they have their religious is founded by Falwell and now run by his sons, but they have a adoption house and adoption clinic on campus. What goes on there?

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, so on campus at Liberty University there is the Liberty Godparent Home, and that is a maternity home for pregnant girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 21. And yeah, this facility claims to provide housing and a safe place for young women to gestate their pregnancies. And physically connected to this maternity home is an adoption agency called Family Life Services. And actually, when I was looking into the financials, they're actually under the same umbrella organization called the Liberty Godparent Foundation. So they kind of file taxes jointly together. And yeah, the board of the Liberty Godparent foundation is the same board that is the board of Liberty University. So I mean, technically they're separate because it's its own foundation, but for all intents and purposes, it's run by the same people behind Liberty University.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, so this is redolent of in Ireland and I'm sure some other countries when young girls were shamed or just out of wedlock, moms were shamed, they were shipped away to the equivalent of convents. Now, Liberty is an evangelical Christian, not a Catholic organization, but it's a lot of the same shame based. The reason we do this is quote unquote, to support the girl, but it also seems like getting her away from her previous circumstances and not embarrassing the family.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one former staffer that I spoke to who worked at the Liberty godparent home told me, you know, quote, guilt and shame were tools of the trade. A lot of the purity culture messages that these young girls were getting at home and in their, you know, home churches was carried over into the godparent home. And I mean, even if you look at Liberty University's code of conduct, they're very strict when it comes to premarital sex and things like that. And so according to the past residents that I spoke with, they were constantly being shamed by the staff at the Maternity home. You know, they told me that they felt that the staff was communicating to them that they needed to redeem their bodies that had been violated by the prisoners sin of premarital sex. You know, they were being told that, you know, no man will ever love you because you've had premarital sex. And maybe if you redeem yourself with adoption, with separating from your child permanently, you can get back in God's good graces. So it was really, you know, a playbook of shame and religious manipulation that was used to pressure these teenage girls.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. And that was in keeping with your main character, Abby. You have the scene where she gets the, the purity ring. It is very, as the kids say to me, cringe because it's her dad beaming, giving her a ring, talking pretty explicitly about her not having sex to be pure for the dad. Like this sounds a little like Sharia law, but it's extremely common. It's not like I hadn't heard of it. And it takes place in like a Chili's or some sort of steakhouse. It's not too good. Yeah. So it's in keeping with the values of many of these families to have a resource. And I'm putting these words in quotes. I hope you could hear of a resource like this. But do even the well intentioned families, and I'm not sure Abby's family was, but do even the well intentioned families have a real idea about what goes on at the Liberty godparent house?

[TJ Raphael]

No, I don't think that they did at all. For the first month that these teenage girls are there, they're not allowed to have contact with anyone on the outside, including their own family members. And I was able to get my hands on a couple different copies of the official Liberty godparent home resident handbook from different years. And the handbook even says that if your parents Want to come visit you. An appointment has to be made. 24 hours notice needs to be given. All of the phones that the girls use to call outside of the godparent home, those conversations are being monitored by the staff. Somebody is standing right there as you're making that phone call. And you're only allowed to call people from an approved list. And usually the parents are the ones approving that list. And so, you know, Abby told me, you know, I was only allowed to talk to my parents because they were the ones that made the list of who I was allowed to talk to. So there's not. There's not a lot of daylight that goes into this program. And so I don't think the parents were really aware of what was happening on the inside.

[Mike Pesca]

And the coercion even goes. And I don't know if this is a liberty godparent in their playbook or just something that Abby's parents came up with, but they threatened the father of Abby's baby. A teenage kid who comes across quite sympathetically will charge you with rape if you don't say, if you don't go along with this. And that was a bluff because the age of consent is 16. But he didn't know that, right?

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah. So Abby's parents threatened Nathan, her then boyfriend, who got her pregnant. He was two years older than her. You know, typical high school romance situation. They both didn't receive any sex education, and so they were not using protection.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, that's also very fundamental to the culture, right?

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, Abby even says, you know, when you go to buy condoms, you feel all this shame because you shouldn't be having sex because you're a purity pledge, et cetera. And so you just don't buy them. You think you won't do it again.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, it's like the difference between premeditated murder and, man, if we give in, we give in, but if we're buying condoms, we're extra guilty in the eyes of the Lord.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, right. Yeah. So, yeah, her parents threatened him with statutory rape charges. Nathan and his family sought the advice of their church. And the church, you know, they weren't lawyers either. The. The people that ran their church. And they said maybe you shouldn't get an attorney because it might push Abby's parents to make good on their threat. You know, unfortunately, if they actually would have contacted a lawyer, they would have been able to learn that they couldn't bring that charge in a million years. But, yeah, I mean, so that, you know, was not part of the godparent home playbook. But one of the other former residents I spoke with, who we feature in the show, Zoe Shaw, we didn't get to cover this part of Zoe's story there. But she later found out after she left the godparent home that her father had done the same thing to her boyfriend, that her father had gone to the boyfriend and said, if you try to stop this adoption, if you intervene while Zoe's at the godparent home, we will bring statutory rape charges against you. Those actually would have held because he was 20 and I think she was 16. So the age gap would have legally been permissible for to bring a charge. But yeah, that's why, you know, she was.

[Mike Pesca]

They have those so called Romeo and Juliet laws in some state, but if the gaps what you described, they wouldn't apply. So.

[TJ Raphael]

Exactly. Yeah. So Zoe didn't know this while she was there and she, you know, was writing letters to her boyfriend Vinny and describing how she, you know, wish she could marry him and run away together. And in his return letters he never expresses that and that really upsets her. But she later comes to learn years later that that's the reason why. So, you know, I think that probably for many of the girls that did go through there, their parents did threaten their boyfriends in some way. I mean the home had, has been open since 1982. So you know, dozens of girls have gone through over the last few decades.

[Mike Pesca]

So beyond an institution that is pursuing its, to be fair, extreme religious faith, but perhaps doing it earnestly and honestly, you uncover a financial motive. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

[TJ Raphael]

Yes. So Family Life Services, the adoption agency connected to the Liberty godparent home, was collecting adoption fees. Those fees started at around 30 to $40,000. So it's like the floor, it could just go up from there.

Zoe, who's one of our subjects, she even said she's like, we all knew that the adoption agency was completely supported by the babies we were bringing into the maternity home. I see a real conflict of interest here where you're purporting to be a maternity home that will help a young woman in crisis determine whether or not to keep and parent her child or place that child for adoption. But literally next door and the staff is all intermingling and also cycling. Some of them are working as adoption caseworkers and then other times they're working as house mothers within the maternity home. It seems like the real motivation and purpose of the maternity home was to supply the adoption agency with children to adopt out and beyond that, you know, the girls at the Liberty godparent home were frequently used as a flight fundraising tool by Jerry Falwell. He would parade them out on stage at his church, Thomas Road Baptist Church, and then ask for financial donations during tithe time to say, help us save. We were helping these young women avoid abortion. Help save their babies. And he would also produce hour long television specials for his program, the Old Time Gospel Hour, touting the Liberty godparent home. And they also, I was able to find in Liberty University archives mailers that they would mail out to, you know, community members on Mother's Day and on Easter saying, we need to help save these babies. Write us a check for $400. But those checks were always supposed to be made payable to Jerry Falwell or to the Old Time Gospel Hour, not payable to the Liberty godparent home.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, this is another point. The anti abortion point is obviously motivating to Christian organizations. But, but this wasn't purely anti abortion. In fact, in Abby's case, she didn't really consider an abortion. All of the women, most of the women in the home, I assume, and all the women that you chronicle desperately wanted to keep the baby. And Christians are not against that. Except these particular Christians were right.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, I mean, every single woman that I spoke to who was a past resident, by the time she arrived at the godparent home, she decided against abortion. You know, Zoe, she briefly considers it. She even goes to a clinic, but then changes her mind. And yeah, by the time she arrives at the maternity home, she's made her decision that she wants to keep her child. You know, it's really interesting because when we think about adoption as a solution or alternative to abortion, it just kind of doesn't bear out in research. There's this one study called the Turn Away Study. It was done by the University of California and actually was cited by Sonia Sotomayor and her dissent in Dobbs. And the Turnaway study followed women who were denied abortions and what their outcomes were. And 95% of those women in that study wound up keeping their children. Only 5% placed them for adoption. It's just not really of interest to the vast majority of women. Nationally, only about 1% of women who become pregnant will wind up placing their infants for adoption. So it's just, it's really not an attractive alternative to most, most people. And yet for the godparent home specifically, these girls wanted their children. But you know, the doctrine I think that was motivating the home was that a child belongs in a two parent heterosexual household. And for the baby to stay with the sinful mother who got pregnant as a teenager out of wedlock, you know, that would be celebrating sinful behavior. So we need to get this pure baby away from this sinful mother.

[Mike Pesca]

So these moms give or are compelled, forced to give their babies up. They don't really have a choice. They're young girls and they're inside this apparatus, all very powerful, well funded apparatus, all directed in that direction and towards that outcome. But the adoption is, and I think all the adoptions are open adoptions. Is there an option not to have that? It's just that none of the people you covered opted out of open adoption.

[TJ Raphael]

No. So actually Zoe Shaw, she gave birth in 1991 and she had a closed adoption. And back in the 1990s, I mean really up until the late 90s, early 2000s, closed adoptions were the standard across the adoption industry. It's really only in the early 2000s do we see a shift towards open adoptions. And you know, for people who don't know what that is, that means that the birth parents would be allowed to have contact with the child as the child grows up. You know, that's usually negotiated with the adoptive parents. You know, that could. Openness can look anything from we're going to send you two pictures of a year and do a phone call to we're going to do two in or three in person visits a year and multiple phone calls. But yeah, I think that especially as in the early 2000s, you know, around when Abby was there in 2008, open adoption was becoming the standard. And honestly it was a way to lighten the blow, to help convince women in the godparent home to do this. Because you know, you're saying to them, well, you won't raise the child, but you'll be able to see them and you'll still be able to go to college and you'll still be able to do everything that you want to do, but you just won't be raising the child and we'll all be like one big happy family. But as we explore later in the series, that's a lot easier said than done.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, in one of your earlier series, Biohacked, you also talk about open adoption. This is a series about sperm donors and then people finding out that they have siblings or half siblings and the process doesn't seem to have been worked out. Then there were a lot of questions. And in this series you even say that there is no playbook for open adoption. Is this. Let's just first of all, fill us in, fill the audience in. Was there a difference between what the biohacked kids were experiencing with open adoption and what these birth mothers were experiencing?

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, I think the main difference, when I was looking at, yeah. The children of anonymous sperm donors, the biggest difference there is the that a lot of those people didn't even know that they were a result of sperm donation. They accidentally discovered this information as adults. Whereas in an open adoption situation, for the most part, people tell their children, you're adopted, you have a birth mother, you know, somebody helped us to get you. And so the adoptee has time to build that into their identity where the openness for the birth mother kind of breaks down. And I found this throughout reporting for this series and also actually just last month, I went to Atlanta, Georgia to cover a conference of birth mothers. I'm doing a story on that for npr. It'll come out in a few weeks. But I talked to birth mothers there who had not gone to maternity homes. They ranged in age from 31 to in their 70s. And those women, many of them were also offered open adoptions. But there was a feeling that they needed to tread lightly, that if they said or did anything that might upset, you know, the couple or parent who adopted their child, that they could be cut off. And yeah, in most of the United States, open adoption agreements are not legally binding. They can be closed for any reason at any time. And the only way to, you know, even in states, the very few states that do have enforceability, you know, you're going to have to hire an attorney and spend thousands of dollars in court to try to mandate contact. And so a lot of birth mothers, yeah, feel like they're walking on eggshells and feel like they need to tread lightly.

[Mike Pesca]

So when you say there is no playbook, okay, that's, to me, I wouldn't expect there literally to be a playbook. But best practices hasn't evolved just via your reporting. And I haven't really consider it. I don't, I haven't had too many in depth conversations with people who are adopted or who adopted kids and they're older. I just, it's a little striking to me. Not that anything would be perfect, but there hasn't been a robust way of dealing with that. Sociologists haven't looked at it. The academy seems a big need for something like best practices guidelines.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah. So there hasn't been a ton of study on the impact of open adoption and how openness has evolved from an academic standpoint. I Do know the National Council for Adoption, which is the biggest organization in this space that advocates in favor of adoption. They did have one piece of research that showed by the time a child reaches 14.

Among the people they surveyed, about two thirds have had that open adoption close. And I think that relates to complicated dynamics, right, where you have this child and this child has its parents who are raising them, the people they call mom and dad. And then they have this other person over here who has given birth to them and wants a relationship and might have differing ideas about what the kids are learning, whatever, or how much contact they want to have. And I think especially as children grow older, from what I've heard from birth mothers and also in reading the book the Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by the sociologist Gretchen Sishin, it's really easy in the beginning to have this open adoption. When the kids are small, they don't talk a lot. They're not asking these difficult and challenging questions. When they start to hit adolescence, you know, they start to ask that question, why was I adopted? They start to have really difficult feelings. You know, there's been a lot of research on adoptees that show, you know, adoptees often suffer from feelings of abandonment, can feel depression related to this idea that they weren't wanted. And so it can become complicated with an open adoption because every time that child sees their birth parent, those feelings.

[Mike Pesca]

Get triggered, and it's the adoptive parents want to protect the kids. They don't want kids to feel sad. They come back confused. You could argue maybe a bit of confusion is just the human condition. On the other hand, who wouldn't want to protect their kids from this?

[TJ Raphael]

Right? Exactly.

[Mike Pesca]

And we'll be back in a minute with more of TJ Raphael talking about her podcast, Lost Liberty.

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[Mike Pesca]

We'Re back with TJ Raphael. And my question, TJ is do you have any idea what percentage of how many adoptions are not in the category, the nice category where the parents tell the kids we love you, we especially chose you. And that is more or less true. I'm talking about adoptions where the birth mother, even years later perhaps does not stand by her decision. There's tension with the family. So how much regret is out there and knowable with the parties in the adoption process?

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, I mean I can. One stat that you know, sadly sticks out in my mind is also from Gretchen's book. You know, she again, she's a sociologist. She's the one who, she did a 10 year long sort of research study to write that book and she found that 70% of relinquishing mothers wished they knew more about their legal rights before signing the papers. And so that's a huge.

[Mike Pesca]

And you get into this, I had no idea what the quote unquote rights were and how this is changing. So maybe you could talk about that a little bit.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, so it varies state to state and I think this is one of the Reasons why research is so difficult because in a state like where I live in New York, birth mothers have up to 30 days to change their mind and take back their parental rights. During that period, the child usually is staying in a neutral environment. So they're not staying with the prospective adoptive parents. They're also not staying with the birth parents. They will have a temporary foster family, have that infant for that period of the month. That 30 days is generally enough time for a birthday parent to say, like, you know, well, number one, feel the after effects of giving birth. You know, you know, I've never given birth before, but, you know, I hear the hormones are crazy and you have this maternal instinct where you want to nurse your child and be with them. I mean, that's, you know, how we have evolved, you know, as a species to want to protect our young. So at the end of 30 days, you know, you should have be unable to come to a decision. But in some states, the revocation period is three days.

In Utah, once your pen hits the paper, you have lost all rights to your child. Even in cases of fraud and duress, it cannot be reversed. You have to wait.

[Mike Pesca]

You have much more rigorous rights to back out of a car lease.

[TJ Raphael]

Right, exactly.

[Mike Pesca]

An adoption. And in Tennessee, which you mentioned, it's three now because they changed the law, they thought 10 days was too much.

[TJ Raphael]

Right.

[Mike Pesca]

And they went in and affirmatively changed the law down to three. Correcting what problem? I don't know.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, I mean, to make it speedier for prospective adoptive parents really is. Is the reason. And, you know, we play a clip of one Tennessee lawmaker in the show saying, you know, the parent, the birth parent has nine months to make this decision. And that's true, you know, but again.

[Mike Pesca]

Usually not fully nine, right?

[TJ Raphael]

Not fully nine. Sometimes it's less maybe. Sometimes it's a. It's right on the nose. But yeah, I mean, a lot of, you know, my friends who have given birth, they're like, I didn't understand what it would be like after I had the baby. Like, that's when really, like, you know, obviously they were connected to their child during their pregnancy. But it's like once that baby is there and you're doing skin to skin, and that's when things really start to come online and like the primal way. And so, yes, you have nine months to make that decision, but there's a big difference between, like, oh, I'm gestating a pregnancy and I can feel it, but it's like kind of conceptually it's a baby but it's not there. And then having that baby and then having to. While you're still maybe on pain medication, while you're still recovering potentially from the C section section surgery and dealing with all these wild hormones, you have to make this permanent decision that is really challenging. Challenging to reverse.

[Mike Pesca]

I could see it both ways. Insofar as.

Making the decision while having an onslaught of hormones and wanting to nurse, that might not be the best decision for the baby. Right. That might be overly informed by physical changes in your body that a couple of years from now you will wind up regretting. However, I have to say this is the. Mike gives his opinion part of the interview. It also doesn't seem to me that the correction for that is, let's take it from 30 days or 10 days to 3 or 30 days to nothing. To allow the mother less of a choice does not seem to be the best solution. Maybe something like, you know, this is going to happen and talk to the mother about this beforehand. And I don't know, maybe something like the New York law of 30 days. If. If that is still something that the mothers stick to, that, yes, we want to give the baby up to adoption. Maybe that will lead to happier outcomes for everyone.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah. And I think research shows that when, you know, the revocation periods are longer, the people that do wind up pursuing it do feel okay and happy about it. And I should say, you know, one woman that we did interview in Liberty Lost, Sarah P. She went on to work at the Liberty godparent home, but she was also a resident there, and she voluntarily entered into the godparent home. She got pregnant as a result of a sexual assault at a party. She did not know who the father was. And yeah, she finds out she's pregnant as a freshman in college. She goes home for winter break, decides to go to the godparent home because of the scholarship incentive that Liberty University offers to mothers who place their children.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I don't know if we said that if you go to the home, it's not a bribe, but you get a scholarship to the university. If you don't, no scholarship.

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, she. She from day one was adamant that she wanted to place her child for adoption. She was raised in a very, you know, religious evangelical household, so she thought abortion was murder. And even when she became pregnant as a result of a rape, she decided, I don't want to be a murderer. So she was going to place her child for adoption. And, you know, I actually just recently saw her at that conference of birth mothers and she still stands by that decision. Decision. She says that her son's parents are wonderful people, they still have a relationship and she is happy with her choice. That to place though it is still a painful choice. And I think that's where you know the butterflies and rainbows and this is great. You know, conversation around adoption is not 100% truthful. Even when it is an act of choice, you know, giving birth to a baby and then permanently separating from that baby. Even if the that you think it's the best decision, it's hard. It's, it's. Life's changing in a lot of ways.

[Mike Pesca]

Does the Dobbs decision or the state of our abortion laws change this that much? The center is in Virginia. Virginia has some restrictions. I think it's a 24 week up until viability abortion legalized state. There was of course you can't not think of this without thinking of abortion. But what's your analysis of how that might affect things?

[TJ Raphael]

Yeah, I think that. Well, as it relates specifically to the Liberty God parent home, they announced plans to expand following the end of Roe versus Wade. Jonathan Falwell, the current chancellor of Liberty University and son of Jerry Falwell, you know, he presented the godparent home with a $20,000 check on stage earlier this year. I follow them on Instagram. Still they're undergoing a renovation right now, so they have no plans to slow down. And the former director of the Liberty godparent home actually went on to become part of the leadership council and a founding member of the National Maternity Housing Coalition. And so this is a group that seeks to extend expand maternity homes nationwide. They're affiliated with a group called Heartbeat International which is the largest anti abortion organization in the world. And so maternity homes are growing across the country. And yeah, this former director of the godparent home had a hand in helping that. But as it relates to the increasing number of adoptions.

Anytime you take away people's right to choose to end a pregnancy, that can help increase the number of adoptions you might see. But I also think it has a lot to do with the availability of social services that.

A pregnant woman in crisis can access. Things like safe housing, things like SNAP benefits, things like access to Medicaid that can make it feel like single parenting could be an option for her or that she must place her child because of poverty. So yeah, I mean I think that. And Also the Project 2025 agenda explicitly states that alternatives to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state funding. And they made good on that. And the newly expanded adoption tax credit that was in the quote unquote, big beautiful bill. It increases the adoption tax credit to up to $17,000 and change into including a $5,000 tax credit for people making up to $260,000 a year. Which is really unfortunate because, you know, a lot of the birth mothers I talked to, you know, they said if I would have had $5,000, I would have kept my child. Like, obviously that $5,000 is not enough to raise a kid to 18, but it's enough to maybe get a safe place to live to put a down payment on or a security deposit for an apartment to feel like you a.

[Mike Pesca]

Few months of child care while you get a job.

[TJ Raphael]

Exactly. So, you know, I think the policies that we're seeing from the Trump administration can will probably wind up increasing adoptions in some way.

[Mike Pesca]

TJ Raphael is the reporter executive producer behind the new or the established and award winning wonder series Liberty Lost. It has great tape, great characters, an issue I'd never really heard of before. Whistleblowers. Really just a wonderful series. And we should mention TJ is a free agent if you are in the mood to hire one of the best podcast reporters out there. Thank you tj.

[TJ Raphael]

Thanks Mike. Thanks for having me.

[Mike Pesca]

The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. We had help today from Leah Yan. Kathleen Sykes helps me with the Gist list. Jeff Craig does so much with the video and the socials and the visual. He's a master of the visual in this a primarily audio form. Michelle Pesca also works with the visuals but is mostly the visionary improve. And thanks for listening.

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