Last week, Husband and I finally decided on a boy name. This was a big relief, because our inability to settle on a name for a boy was somehow preventing me from anticipating a boy as joyfully as I would a girl. With the name in place I was suddenly excited about the possibility of a second son.

We decided to name him after my father-in-law, who died in August. His name fit our criteria of being old-fashioned, but not common. When we looked it up on the Social Security baby name site, we discovered just how uncommon it is: in 20 years, it hasn’t cracked the top 1000. (In the 1880s, it ranked 291, and has been dropping steadily in popularity ever since. Now with that little bit of data, see if any Encyclopedia Browns out there can find the name.)

Because the name is unusual, we expect to get a little flack for it (my mother: “You’re calling him what?”). Any raised eyebrows, though, at the mention of the name will be swiftly met with the appositive, “After my dear departed father-in-law.”

So the point of this, as you may have been able to anticipate, is to announce that we received the referral of our little boy this week, and happily we had his name all ready for him. On Thursday we drove to the adoption agency to review the referral paperwork. It is so good to have a face to match to the name! As with Aitch’s referral, there is one adorable chubby baby picture and one scrawny-chicken looking baby picture. As with Aitch, I am displaying the cute picture prominently.

For the Korea program, at least with our agency, the referral paperwork comes with a short history of the birth mother — her age, where she lives, other people in her family, how she met the birthfather, and their current relationship. Both times, our social workers have warned us against revealing any of this information to family or acquaintances, saying that it is not right to tell a child’s personal history without his or her consent. It make sense that you might not want to blab this information all over town, but not for that reason. There are lots of facts about your child’s life that you might share with other adults before he or she is old enough to understand them; you might as well say that you should hide the fact that he’s adopted until he’s old enough to decide he wants to tell. With that said, there is something important I want to tell, so I’m going to try to say it without revealing any more details than necessary.

Both Aitch’s and Little Brother’s birth mothers were underage and unwed. When we read Aitch’s birthmother’s story, we felt very sad that a young girl had to go through the pain of an unplanned pregnancy, and we hoped that she could move on and rebuild her life. The new baby’s birth mother, though, had a slightly different history: She had no life to go back to. She had been deserted by every family member at a very young age, and now by her baby’s father. The papers gave no clue as to how she would survive after release from the unwed mothers’ home.

We couldn’t get past it. The social worker asked us if we had any questions about the baby; all our questions were for the mother. What would happen to her? Would she receive any support? What kind of social services are available in Korea? Could we do anything? There were no answers.

It’s unthinkable. We were adopting one child, while his birth mother herself was in desperate need of a home. It didn’t seem right. Adoption is always bittersweet — your gain is someone else’s terrible, terrible loss — but this girl had lost everything.

I have been asked how someone whose motherhood depends on another woman’s continuation of her unplanned pregnancy could possibly support abortion. Phantom Scribbler even suggested — jokingly? I hope? — that the South Dakota abortion ban was a conspiracy to produce more white children for adoption. (I hope she was kidding; adoptive parents are demonized enough without adding that to our list of sins.) I will always be grateful to these two girls for giving birth to their babies, but I would hate to think that they were forced by law to do so. Who could read a history like the one we just saw, and want to compel that girl to bear a child, just so we could adopt him?

She did bear that child, though. What a gift to the world, and to us. I hope she’s okay.