Friday, January 24, 2014

Adoption versus abortion

From the NZ Initiative's weekly newsletter comes this graph:



The NZ Initiative doesn't offer any narrative and I haven't got any suffice to say it's an interesting fact that both opposition to adoption and access to abortion are feminist driven issues. Would you consider the story this graph tells a successful outcome of feminism?

(The blue line includes adoptions of overseas children).


5 comments:

Brendan McNeill said...

Interesting graph!

One of the encouraging things to note is the gradual reduction in the abortion rate over recent years. I wonder if this might in part be due to the technological improvement of scanning technology that makes viewing the baby in the womb at just a few weeks possible. Fully formed it may not be, but a human being it definately is.

I wonder what the corresponding graph for foster care looks like over the same period. It seems to me that foster care has become the preferential choice by 'officialdom' over adoption. I'm not sure why that is, except that the tax payer picks up the tab for foster care, whereas the new parents pick up the tab for an adopted child.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if this might in part be due to the technological improvement of scanning technology that makes viewing the baby in the womb at just a few weeks possible./

Nope. "improved" update of contraception (aka pre-implantaion abortion). Look at the data for sexual activity by the unmarried, keeps on going up and up.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

"Look at the data for sexual activity by the unmarried, keeps on going up and up."

Can you provide a link to that?

Anonymous said...

http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/Files/Chapter9/$file/Chapter9.pdf

Let's put it this way - rates of marriage for everyone (except gays & lesbians) are going down, rates of churchgoing are tanking, and school enrolments are up.

AnotherFan said...

Adoption rates are dropping largely because of
a) vastly improved fertility treatments
b) Use of surrogate mothers
c) Infertile couples accepting infertility and going on to live their lives anyway *gasp*
d)Unwillingness to take take on such a huge financial burden.

Moreover, along with the reduction of unwanted babies, there has been a massive drop in crime rates- world wide. There is a school of thought that claims this is a direct effect of abortion. You don't hear much about the drop in crime, I wonder why.

Finally, it is a bit of an assumption to claim that unwanted babies were given up for adoption, before abortions were legal. Sure, many were. Others were made to 'pay' for the 'crime' of being born.