Not a Super Bowl Ad: Why Adoptees Are Calling Out NCFA

A closer look at
the National Council
for Adoption.

February 11, 2026

Last week the National Council for Adoption told the public it would air a pro-adoption, anti-abortion commercial during the Super Bowl halftime. Instead, the ad appeared just before Turning Point USA’s halftime programming, which was a very different platform with a very different audience. That raises an important question: who is U.S. adoption really aligned with, and why were we misled?

This matters because transparency matters, especially when we are talking about a national organization that is actively working to influence women in crisis situations. The National Council for Adoption (NCFA) represents an industry that has moved billions of dollars through domestic and intercountry adoption over decades, even as serious global concerns about coercion, trafficking risks, and lack of long-term accountability in adoption continue to be raised worldwide. At the same time, adopted people and first parents have long argued that our voices and rights are being silenced and ignored. While countries around the world are opening investigations, the U.S. seems to look the other way.

NCFA was founded decades ago to put a positive spin on adoption while simultaneously opposing the human rights of adopted people to know where they come from. That pattern of seeming to be one thing while doing another has been consistent. They have historically promoted the permanent separation of mother and child through the use of controlled registries rather than restoring original birth record access so that adults who are biologically related can make their own decisions without oversight. Not to mention the serious ethical concerns around its promotion of new international adoptions while some adoptees already brought to the United States still lack citizenship protection. To market adoption as more palatable to prospective birth parents, it promotes the open adoption option, but does not support legal protections for the birth mom that would enforce this openness to remain after rights are given up. Together, these contradictions reflect a pattern of prioritizing the adoption system’s image over the rights and long-term security of the people most affected by it.

The commercial itself framed a woman as a “girl” who discovers she is pregnant and perhaps just did not realize adoption exists, offering it as the best solution to allow her to have a life, an education, a marriage, and a "legitimate" child later on. This messaging reinforces shame and stigma that women who are single and experiencing an unplanned pregnancy may face, as well as the stigma adopted people live with throughout their lives for being “unwanted.” Research on pregnancy decision-making shows adoption and abortion are not interchangeable choices. Those who seek abortion are unable to continue a pregnancy for whatever reason, while those who relinquish typically wanted to parent but were denied the resources to do so. Framing adoption as an alternative to abortion ignores this reality and the role that economic and social support plays in keeping families together.

When an organization frames adoption as a simple solution to an unplanned pregnancy, it ignores complex social and reproductive realities in order to promote a political agenda. The experience of adopted people is also erased. You do not see the infant anywhere in this marketing, or the lifelong trauma and lack of rights many adoptees and birth parents live with after separation. It also ignores the ongoing reports of children being placed into homes where they become abused or how separating children from families can cause harm, and in some cases, endanger lives. This commercial helped reveal NCFA’s priorities, but adoption shouldn’t be viewed through the lens of a public-relations strategy. It should not be used as a substitute for supporting families, or in place of reproductive autonomy or instead of ensuring the rights and safety of women and adopted people. Yet that is exactly what NCFA has consistently advanced.

If nothing else, this moment offers the public as well as adoptees an opportunity to look more closely at who speaks for adoption in the United States and who is intentionally being removed from that conversation. If an organization cannot even be honest about where its advertisement airs, how can anyone trust the policies it shapes around children, or the information it gives to mothers and adoptive families.