Is adoption of Irish children about to become a thing of the past? Statistics in a report of the Adoption Board to be published later this year would suggest so. The figures will show that last year the number of Irish babies put up for adoption fell below 100 for the first time since 1952 - the year adoption was legalised in this country. The number of adoptions peaked at nearly 1,500 in 1967, and remained high until the mid-1980s. Since that time they have been in decline.
Many young women - including some of those who choose abortion - reject adoption, possibly in part in reaction to the adverse publicity which has surrounded the issue in recent years. A majority of single, pregnant women, of course, give birth and keep their children. That, in itself, is welcome;it is an indication of how the stigma associated with pregnancy outside marriage has all but disappeared.
Adoption has many virtues, acknowledged even by those who support the concept of a woman's right to choose abortion in certain circumstances. Adoption can help in cases, for instance, of children in longterm foster care who will never return to their parents and who could be adopted by their foster parents - if this was practicable under the law. If adoption is to have even a modest future, new legislation will also have to address the needs of those birth mothers and adopted children who want to contact each other but who are prevented by the law from being provided with the information they need.
The few adoptions arranged nowadays tend to be more open, with arrangements made by agreement to have information provided to birth mothers at regular intervals. The fact remains, however, that many people separated by adoption in the past are frustrated in their attempts to contact each other and their stories continue to give adoption a bad name.
Change has been promised in this area, with various Ministers of State professing themselves ready to grapple with the challenge of balancing the rights of birth mothers and adoptees to information with the rights of others to privacy. The latest to take on this task is Mr Frank Fahey and it is widely acknowledged that he is making an attempt to move the legislative position forward.
The issue of making it possible for foster parents to adopt the children of married people where these children are in their long-term foster care, and there is no hope of them returning to their natural parents, might also be examined. Such a move would have to be approached with caution, out of respect [N O]of for the rights of the natural parents and because the dream of many foster children is to return home to their parents even where that home is what most of us would see as unsuitable.
Even if these changes are made, we are probably at the end of the era of Irish adoption in any significant numbers. That leaves foreign adoption as the only feasible option for infertile couples. And that, in turn, makes all the more unacceptable the waiting periods of a year to two years before an assessment of the suitability of would-be parents even begins.