Political Crossfire Forums

[Gitana]

Quote: according to a recent survey there were 1.7 to 2.7 straight couples looking to adopt for evry child up fo adoption. so for those who say we dont have enough ppl to adopt they are wrong. the proplem is that the parents are dispersed while the children are concentrated in cities

That wouldn't have any effect; children that are legally adoptable can be adopted regardless of location, and any legit agency/agent will happily help adopt them out anywhere appropriate. I've seen these surveys before, but what they don't show are the followups; many people say they'd adopt, or consider adoption when surveyed, but few actually follow through, and some are not eligible to adopt when they apply. Here are the hard facts:

Adoption Stats:

Quote:
In the 1990s, there are approximately 120,000 adoptions of children each year. This number has remained fairly constant in the 1990s, and is still relatively proportionate to population size in the U.S. (Flango and Flango, 1994)

104,000 children were adopted in 1986, 53,000 of whom were related adoptions and 51,000 of whom were unrelated. In addition, approximately 10,000 children were adopted from abroad, bringing the total number of unrelated adoptions to 61,000. (Bachrach, London, Maza, 1991)

The estimated total number of adoptions has ranged from a low of 50,000 in 1944 to a high of 175,000 in 1970. (Maza, 1994) The number of adoptions by unrelated petitioners declined from a high of 89,200 in 1970 to 47,700 in 1975, while the number of adoptions by related petitioners remained constant between 81,000 and 89,000 during this period. (Maza, 1984)

Source: http://statistics.adoption.com/information/adoption-statistics-numbers -trends.html

The National Council For Adoption, which monitors public and private adoptions: Excluding foreign-born children, 104,088 children were adopted in 1986, compared with 141,861 in 1982. The number of children adopted by non-relatives in 1986 was 51,157; compared with 50,720 in 1982.

I did a huge dissertation on this a couple of years ago, there are many other sources for info on this subject, including various US government sources, Center for Disease Control, etc. You can easily see, from the math, that actual stranger adoptions are decreasing, and this is a long-term trend, despite, and alongside of, the 'pro-life' growth. When you also figure in the number of foster children that aren't included in these stats because they are never officially let go for adoption (spend their lives in foster care), the numbers also change. The most recent stats are for 1990, and that was a total of another 49,000 children.

I wish there were millions of people who were willing to adopt, but it just isn't so, and out of those that do - the hundred thousand-ish out of a population of 295,734,134 million people - about half are adopting family members. That means less than 0.0406 percent of the US population is adopting, and less than half of that number is adopting stranger babies: unaborted, non-family babies.


Cross-posted from 'When Rights Collide, Which One Wins:'