A video showing how Safe Haven Baby Boxes work posted on TikTok has racked up nearly 20 million views. Monica Kelsey, who founded the non-profit, is a firefighter and paramedic who was abandoned as an infant. Through the Safe Haven Baby Boxes TikTok account, Kelsey has been sharing videos to spread awareness of not only the baby boxes themselves, but how they work as well.

Using a doll, Kelsey walked viewers through the process from beginning to end. A mother would approach the baby box, which is typically located at a safe location, like a fire department or hospital. “When a parent walks up to one of our Safe Haven Baby Boxes all they have to do is open the door, place their child inside, take the orange bag, shut the door and walk away,” she explained.

A couple in Florida has welcomed a baby boy in February whom they adopted as an embryo. Baby Noah had been frozen as an embryo for 15 years and was donated to an embryo adoption agency. He was then adopted by Amanda and Jeremy Lewand.

The couple had struggled with fertility issues and decided to adopt an embryo after four years of attempting to conceive. They are hoping to inspire other couples who are dealing with similar fertility struggles.

“It was all worth it,” said Amanda. “After going through infertility, we had longed for a child so bad.”

Unbeknownst to the couple, Noah had been waiting for them for 15 years.

Pam and Gary Willis were already parents to five children and grandparents to six when they chose to step in and help a group of seven siblings who needed them.

In 2019, Pam read a story about seven children who were in need of a new, permanent home. They had been in foster care for more than a year after losing both of their parents in a car accident, according to FaithPot. The children were separated in different foster homes during that time and Pam felt the calling to do something to help.

“I can’t explain it — I just knew I was supposed to be their mom,” she said.

The Virginia Catholic Conference expressed alarm at the bill’s passage, warning that removing the conscience protections could threaten the work of the state’s Catholic adoption and foster care agencies by allowing the state to deny them licenses, grants, or contracts.

For many people, the draw of the Super Bowl isn’t the game itself, but the commercials. Each year, companies pay millions of dollars to have their ads featured during the big game, in the hope of getting attention from the hundreds of millions of people watching. This year, there was one ad in particular that has gotten people talking: the story of Paralympic champion Jessica Long.

Toyota, which sponsors the Paralympic Games, titled the ad “Upstream.” Interspersed between shots of Long swimming through images of her life was audio from an adoption specialist who calls with what she frames as bad news for Long’s mother.

In just over three years, Maxine and Jake Young have gone from having no children to having nine. After suffering two miscarriages and facing a polycystic ovarian syndrome diagnosis, the couple decided to pursue adoption through foster care. From there everything changed — quickly.

“We didn’t plan to have this large of a family,” Maxine told PEOPLE (the TV Show!). “But it just seems like these babies are meant to be.”

Maxine said she had always wanted to foster and adopt, and she and Jake discussed the idea even before they got married and suffered miscarriages. In July of 2017, the couple welcomed three siblings from foster care into their home and family.

The diocese encourages counseling for those distressed or confused by their sexual identity, and it expects that its counselors “hold a correct Christian anthropology of the human person and understand and adhere to Catholic teaching.”

St. Joseph is seen as a powerful intercessor for anyone currently pursuing an adoption.

Prayer to St. Joseph for those seeking an adoption

Brian Zach and his family offer a new life to young girl abused by her carers.

Police officer adopts little girl he cared for while on duty

(Save The Storks) When it comes to unplanned pregnancy, the most common choices for U.S. women are abortion or parenting.    

But there is a third option, one that is often left out of the conversation when discussing reproductive rights – adoption. In fact, less than 4 percent of unplanned pregnancies result in adoption. 

The bottom line?  According to a piece from Olga Khazan in The Atlantic, historically “among American women for whom carrying a child to term would be safe, adoption is a remarkably unpopular course of action.”  

So why is adoption not seen as a viable option? 

Each year, millions of families hope to adopt a baby in the United States. According to the Adoption Network, just 135,000 children are adopted each year, while an estimated one to two million families are waiting to adopt. But there are numerous obstacles in the way when it comes to building a family through adoption. The United States Child Welfare Information Gateway estimates that families will pay between $20,000 and $45,000 for a domestic adoption, with international adoptions costing even more. It can take years to complete the process, including legal requirements like a home study, and matching with a mother considering adoption.

A teenage birth mom’s video message to her newborn son, whom she was placing for adoption, has gone viral years after her story first became public knowledge. Hannah Mongie, 19 at the time, shared her pro-life message to the world in a separate video that detailed why she chose life and how she was conflicted on whether or not to choose adoption.

Since that time, Mongie has been invited to talk shows, including The TODAY Show with Megan Kelly, where she and her son along with his adoptive parents, Brad and Emily Marsh, shared their beautiful story. By filming her message to her son, Mongie shared with the world all of the emotions that birth mothers go through when placing a child for adoption.

Celebrity hairstylist Justin Anderson, alum of the reality TV show “Very Cavallari” with Kristen Cavallari, recently opened up during a podcast about placing his son with an adoptive family in an open adoption when he was in college. Anderson, now 40, and his high school sweetheart Debbie, became pregnant during Anderson’s freshman year of college.

On the December 15th episode of the “Scissoring Isn’t A Thing” podcast, Anderson recalled, “When I went to college, she came to visit me one time… and she got pregnant. I come from one of those families that, obviously, the religious stuff, and her the same thing, so there’s no talk of abortion and all that kind of stuff — we’re going to have the baby.

In a two-part Facebook post for Humans of New York, a woman shared her story of teenage pregnancy and open adoption, and how placing her son with another family brought her both pain and healing.

“I found out I was pregnant the day before my senior year, and my parents took me to an adoption lawyer so that we could learn about the process,” explained Missy. “She showed us a box full of folders and pictures from families hoping to adopt. I spent months looking through family profiles — but nothing felt right. I don’t even know what I was looking for.