“Beyond the Binary Choice: Let’s Start Talking About Adoption”

FORMAT: Speech

CLIENT: Terri Marcroft, executive director and founder, Unplanned Good Inc.

INDUSTRY: Political advocacy and legislative policy

OPPORTUNITY: To bring adoption out of the darkness and into the light, no longer “the forgotten option” for women facing unplanned pregnancies

EVENT: Idaho Chooses Life Christmas Dinner and Auction on Dec. 1, 2023

CHALLENGE: To move a largely pro-life audience beyond passively accepting the prevailing “binary choice” of abortion or single parenting so they would actively educate themselves and start speaking up for modern, open adoption as a loving, long-term healthy third option to offer women facing unplanned pregnancies.

SERVICES: Speech strategy, planning, interviewing, research, message and framework development, speechwriting, line editing, executive speech coaching

APPROACH: Build the speech around a clear throughline — “look beyond the binary choice” — and use storytelling (Emma’s story, the speaker’s own adoption story) to make the issue real, not abstract.

Layer contrast throughout (closed vs. open adoption, past stigma vs. present empowerment, abortion/single parenting vs. adoption).

Keep returning to a simple, repeated idea: adoption as “the healthiest long-term choice” and birth mothers as heroes.

Techniques that stand out include vivid repetition (“desperate, panicked, terrified, paralyzed with fear”), rhetorical questions, direct second-person address (“What if Emma were your niece?”) and a tight close with three pointed questions that function as the call to action.

IMPACT: This speech set the stage for follow-up conversations in the Idaho Capitol, which eventually led to new legislation in Idaho.

Because of this speech, Terri Marcroft was invited to speak on a national stage in 2024.

SAMPLE: Read the speech, which won the 2024 Cicero Speechwriting Award in the Nonprofit category