Most pro-lifers think nothing of using the terms “pro-abortion” or “anti-life” when describing our opponents. After all, if you aren’t fighting for life, it’s not hard to figure out what you’re pushing instead.
Wrong, our opponents cry: “We’re about ‘choice.’” Theoretically, it makes no difference to them whether a woman decides to have an abortion or not: So long as it’s left up to the mother—er, pregnant woman—it’s a good decision.
Indeed, we have it on the good authority of Planned Parenthood—“the world’s oldest, largest, and most trusted volunteer, not-for-profit reproductive health care organization,” its website says. What they do, a spokesman says, is “let women know their options and trust they will make the best decision for themselves.”
Naturally, it isn’t true. If you accept the group’s logic at face value, you’d have to assume that, as far as it’s concerned, a voluntary birth is better than a forced abortion—and its unflagging support for China’s brutal “one-child-per-couple” policy alone shows where Planned Parenthood’s sympathies really lie.
But you don’t have to look to a communist stronghold half a world away to know that only one “choice” is worth choosing in the eyes of the pro-aborts. Consider the number of women who, after receiving advice from Planned Parenthood counselors, decide to let an abortionist kill their unborn child, and compare it to the number of women who decide to give their child up for adoption.
I’m sure that few readers will be surprised to learn that the number of abortions outweighs the number of adoptions, but you may not know how bad it is: Planned Parenthood’s own numbers show that in 2000, about 98 percent of its clients rejected life, resulting in more than 197,000 abortions. By contrast, there were only 2,486 adoption referrals that year.
“Stated another way,” a report from the Conservative News Service (CNS) says, “Planned Parenthood abortionists performed almost 80 abortions for every adoption referral.” Worse, the number of adoptions in 2000 represents a drop of more than 73 percent from what they were in 1997, when the group referred 9,200 cases for adoption. (Interesting enough, that was an improvement over the number referred in 1996—6,274. But it’s been declining ever since.)
It’s not hard to guess why abortions far outpace adoptions at Planned Parenthood: Money. CNS estimates that, using an average cost of $350 per abortion (the Washington, D.C., affiliate of Planned Parenthood says the price of an abortion for a woman who is no more than 12 weeks pregnant is $325), Planned Parenthood earned more than $69 million from abortions in 2000.
Hey, pro-abort pregnancy counselors may reply, that’s just the way it works out. We can’t help it if so many decide to abort. Ah, but they can: by making pregnant women under duress feel that abortion is their only real choice.
According to a University of Illinois study (one that I highlighted in a previous issue of HLI Reports), 40 percent of self-identified pregnancy counselors across a wide spectrum of social service agencies do not even mention adoption to the women who come to them. Of the 60 percent who do raise the issue of adoption, 40 percent provide incomplete or inaccurate information.
The University of Illinois study concludes that while counselors may have a positive view of adoption themselves, they think that most adolescents will resist the notion—and so they don’t bring it up. Unfortunately, adoption statistics give them reason to think so. The percentage of unmarried women willing to put their babies up for adoption has fallen steadily over the years, from 40 to 50 percent in the 1950s and ’60s to less than 9 percent in 1973 to 4 percent in 1981—to around 1 percent today.
Why are so few babies put up each year for adoption? There are many factors at work (such as the loss of any social stigma surrounding unwed motherhood). But one reason is that too few pregnant women are given reliable, complete information on adoption—if they’re even made aware that it’s an option in the first place.
Remember that the next time a pro-abort tells you he’s pushing “choice.” Tell him the odds are against it—80 to 1, to be exact.
Paul Gallagher, a father of five, is a public-relations specialist and freelance writer living near Washington, D.C.
(This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International.)
