Bring back baby adoptions

More people could achieve their dreams, more women could get what they want, and more people could get to live - isn't it time to give women more choice?

What if there was a way to solve one person’s problem - by solving someone else’s problem at the same time?

Debates about abortion tend to focus on the gestational age at which abortion is legal. These are important debates. I wrote before about the vote to effectively allow abortion up to birth, which I think is totally wrong.

But if there is a missing dimension to the debate about abortion I think it is this:

• There are people who do not really want to have an abortion, but do not feel they are in a position to bring up a child.

• There are are another group of people who would like children and cannot have them - and specifically there are people who would like to adopt a baby but will not adopt older children.

These people could help each other (and the baby), but it doesn’t happen. Why?

• The adoption of babies has dwindled to almost nothing

• There is a feeling in the system that the priority should be to try and persuade people to adopt hard-to-place older children

• There is no support made available to people to keep their baby and then give it up for adoption.

I will come back to why this might be - but first, let’s have a look at the numbers.

The end of baby adoption

Here’s the number of babies (children under a year old) who were adopted every year, and the number of abortions, both for England and Wales.

Baby adoption has gone massively down as abortion has gone up. It is hard to believe that the one hasn’t played any role in displacing the other. Having been on the increase, baby adoptions fell rapidly after as soon as abortion was legalised, and are now close to zero.

Those are different scales but you can see that in the 1960s about 12,000 babies were being adopted every year, and last year it was just over 100.

There are about a thousand babies a year who go into kinship care with relatives - something which has always been there, but has been formalised over recent decades.

And it’s true also that adoption of older children has also declined - but not to the same extent. Adoption of older children actually went up before it went down, and about 4,000 older children are still adopted each year, even has baby adoption has effectively ended. Compared to 1962 number of older children adopted is down 50%, but the number of babies adopted is down 99%.

And of course, the end of baby adoptions has come despite a population which is about a quarter bigger than in 1968.

Much higher rates of abortions are seen in poorer places. I made a Freedom of Information request to the ONS about this. The proportion of conceptions ending up in abortion is now over a third in the poorest 10% of neighbourhoods, compared to 26% in the richest tenth:

And because all neighbourhoods contain a mix of people, the correlation would likely be stronger, and the curve even steeper, if we looked at the individual circumstances of the mother, not just their neighbourhood. It seems clear that material factors matter in the decision to have an abortion or not.

What we could do

Seeing these numbers it is hard not to think there must be some opportunity to help both those do not want to have an abortion, but do not feel they are in a position to bring up a child and also help those who want to adopt a baby.

Let me start by being super clear. I am not proposing that we force or pressure people into doing anything. In the past there were people who could have been good parents and wanted to keep their baby, but were forced to give it up. That was awful and the last thing I would want.

My focus here is squarely on those who are making a choice. As an aside, it is worth saying that for those children who do sadly have to be taken into care, the evidence is now that this is done too late not too early: a 2014 survey by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) found that social workers thought only 5% children they had dealt with had been taken into care too early, compared to 39% too late.

But as I say, my focus is on those making a choice. There are some women who don’t really want to have an abortion, and don’t feel they have a good alternative to abortion. Given the higher rates in poorer places, it seems likely that material and practical factors play a role in this feeling.

Let me also be clear: I am not dissing people who adopt older children or damning the prospects of those children. Far from it: these people are total heroes. We know so people who adopted older children and were warned they would never develop properly - maybe never speak properly. But despite this, they have actually caught up and bloomed with new parents who love them.

And yet, as Jigsaw adoption note: “Many people come to adoption hoping to welcome a newborn, and it's a natural hope — particularly for people who have been through fertility treatment. But the reality of UK adoption is that babies are uncommon”.

There are a potentially large group of people who would adopt a newborn, but not older children. But they don’t get that chance any more.

The idea

Isn’t it time that we gave women considering abortion another option? More choice? At the moment we have a system that doesn’t really even ask people what they want or present them with any option to get help and support to have a baby.

It is no small thing to be pregnant and then give birth. But it is no small thing to have an abortion either. Shouldn’t we find a way to give another option to women who might not want an abortion, but can’t look after a child? The practical help and emotional support to get through a difficult time?

At the moment the debate seems lopsided. For example, the Commons voted to allow abortion up to birth without sanction. Those babies will need to be delivered anyway if aborted. In light of this, it seems mad that we haven’t haven’t had any discussion about helping women in that position keep their baby to term and then have him or her adopted.

The offer of another choice would need the most sensitive handling. And there would be a cost of course. And lots of people wouldn’t want to do it - but some would.

Shouldn’t we find a way to give them an extra choice?

NB

This is a personal post - it’s my view rather than a Conservative policy.