November is National Adoption Month and the Trump administration is marking the occasion by reversing an Obama-era policy that will allow faith-based foster care and adoption services to receive federal funding, a move The Heritage Foundation has advocated.

Prior to the Trump administration’s reversal, many states punished faith-based adoption providers because of their religious beliefs about family. Some states cited the Obama-era regulation as justification for their actions.

“The proposal is a good step forward,” says Ryan Anderson, Heritage’s William E. Simon senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy. “The Trump administration is right to fix misguided Obama-era regulations that threatened both children’s welfare and religious freedom. No adoption agency or foster care service should be penalized simply because they believe children deserve both a mom and a dad.”

The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society has highlighted instances in which the rights of faith-based care providers were being trampled which eliminated eligible foster families from the system and caused the displacement of thousands of children.

Emilie Kao, director of the DeVos Center for Religious and Civil Society, says this is “a win both for children in need of a family and for the courageous birth moms who choose those families.”