The available research on adoption’s relative unpopularity is still limited. But the sociological studies that exist suggest that some women who are deciding between adoption and abortion find adoption to be more emotionally painful than abortion. And the reason complicates the narrative around abortion on both sides.

Read: Three children, two abortions

For the most part, women are not choosing abortion instead of adoption. In fact, both adoption and abortion rates have fallen over time, while births to unmarried women have risen over the past few decades. This suggests to some researchers that women are choosing between abortion and parenting, and more and more, unmarried women are choosing parenting. “Women just generally aren’t interested in adoption as a reproductive choice,” says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group of the University of California at San Francisco. “It’s an extremely rare pregnancy decision.”

The move away from adoption is part of the historical trend toward reduced societal stigma for unwed mothers. Today, women who are inclined to go through with a pregnancy are simply keeping their babies. In a 1992 story about the drop in adoption placements, Debra Kalmuss, a professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health, told The New York Times that in past decades, many unmarried women had been sequestered during their pregnancies. The babies were placed with adoption agencies, and the women returned to their normal life. “Relinquishing a baby for adoption really ceased to be a mainstream choice after abortion became legal,” Kalmuss told the paper.

Meanwhile, many pregnant women who don’t wish to become mothers seem to have a dim view of the adoption process, according to a study that Sisson and her colleagues published in 2017 in the journal Women’s Health Issues. The researchers relied on the Turnaway Study, a five-year, longitudinal look at women who sought abortions at 30 U.S. clinics from 2008 to 2010. The authors interviewed 956 women, 161 of whom went on to give birth, and 15 of whom chose adoption. They also had more in-depth conversations with 31 of those women, 16 of whom received abortions, and the rest who did not.

The authors note that the women seem to consider their options sequentially: They first seek abortion, and if they can’t afford or access one, they might then consider adoption. A week after being denied an abortion, 14 percent of the women said they were considering putting the baby up for adoption instead. But ultimately, only 9 percent of the women who were denied an abortion chose adoption. The majority simply went on to parent.

Meanwhile, none of the 16 women who got abortions were at all interested in adoption at any point. Some of their reasons were practical: “Adoption was often ruled out because they felt it was not right for them, because their partner would not be interested, because they had health reasons for not wanting to carry to term, or because they believed there were already enough children in need of homes,” the authors write.