The Hospital Adoption Education Act of 2025 is one of several new laws on adoption proposed this year. The text of the bill explains that its goal is “to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop and nationally disseminate accurate, relevant, and accessible resources to promote understanding about sensitivities regarding adoption in the health care industry.” So what does that mean?
Hospital Adoption Education Act
The bill begins with a set of statistics:
- 80 percent of women who consider adoption do so after their sixth month of pregnancy.
- 81 percent of birth parents report that easy access to objective information is important to them when making the decision to choose adoption.
- 93 percent of Americans consider hospitals and health care facilities to be trustworthy sources of information about adoption.
- 98.2 percent of nurses have no professional development in the sensitivities around adoption.
- Fewer than 1 percent of women with unintended pregnancies place their children through adoption.
We were not able to confirm these specific statistics, but even if the numbers are inflated, they do suggest a need for additional information.
In short, expectant moms need honest information about adoption and health care professionals should be a reliable source — but they may not be. The bill calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to form a committee of experts ranging from health experts to social workers to adoption attorneys. The committee should develop materials, including digital materials, to help inform and education expectant birth parents and would-be adoptive parents. They will also develop materials to help medical professionals learn the best ways to interact with and support both birth parents and adoptive parents.
Sensitivities regarding adoption
While the bill does not define the phrase “sensitivities regarding adoption,’ we figure they mean that they would like healthcare professionals to present unbiased, supportive, nonjudgmental information for people considering adoption or making decisions about unplanned pregnancies.
The National Council for Adoption has online training of the kind that the bill seems to call for. Their program, called “Online Adoption-Sensitive Clinical Care Training for Healthcare Professionals,” is intended to help healthcare professionals feel confident about providing compassionate, unbiased education to expectant moms.
The Hospital Adoption Education Act of 2025 intends to produce a national curriculum for this purpose. It is just one of thousands of bills introduced in this Congress and has only three cosponsors, so it may not become law. We will watch it with interest and keep you up to date on any developments.
In the meantime, you can count on Heimer Law to provide honest, compassionate answers to your questions about adoption.
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