Adoption promoted as the loving option

Otago Daily Times 24 January 2018
Family First Comment: Very good question. Why do we not promote adoption? Much better option than abortion. #chooselife

Why are there not more child adoptions, asks Ken Orr, the Right to Life spokesman.

There are in New Zealand about 100 adoptions each year, down from a peak of 3967 adoptions in 1971, and only 20 of these adoptions are to strangers.

There are 600 families registered with the Ministry of Children wanting to adopt. These families long to adopt a child and to provide a loving home. It is sad that for most of these families their desire to adopt will be met with frustration, tears and rejection. Adoption is the loving option beneficial for the happiness and welfare of the adoptee and rewarding and fulfilling for the adopting parents and for the birth mother.

Since 1985, with the passing of the Adult Adoption Information Act, we have had open adoption with the birth mother being allowed to choose the adoptive parents. She now has the opportunity to have an ongoing caring and loving relationship with her child and the adoptive parents. Today most adoptions are open, a far cry from the trauma and the terrible grief experienced by unmarried mothers who had their children taken from them by the State at birth.

There are fewer babies available today for adoption because of the availability of contraception, society’s acceptance of single parenthood and the availability of the domestic purposes benefit and access to abortion.

Before 1977, when the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act was passed, it was the expectation that pregnant unmarried mothers would choose life for their child and allow their child to be adopted into a loving home. Since then, many vulnerable pregnant unmarried women have been encouraged by Family Planning, many in the medical profession, family and friends to terminate the life of their precious child. Many women are also coerced by the father of the child to destroy the child to avoid having to pay maintenance for the child.

There were 12,823 abortions in New Zealand in 2016 and only an estimated 20 stranger adoptions. It is tragic that for every 1000 abortions there is just over one stranger adoption.
READ MORE: https://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/adoption-promoted-loving-option