Question: What do the letters "b" and "r" have in common with the letters "d" and "p"?
Hint: These consonants complete two words in the English language. When interchanged, they make the difference between life and death.
A tiny minority of Canadians might twig to this question and get the two words -- adoption and abortion. They are the adopted ones who got to live. The aborted ones will never get the chance to read this question.
Last month, two things happened to bring abortion and adoption into the headlines once again.
The first was the controversial awarding of the Order of Canada to abortion doctor Henry Morgentaler. Laws regarding abortion were struck down in 1988 largely due to the fervent efforts of Dr. Morgentaler, who went to jail to fight for the right of women to choose. Through his many private clinics, he assists women in obtaining abortions.
The second was the making of baby Angelica-Leslie a ward of the Crown in Toronto. The baby was abandoned in a freezing parkade stairwell in February. Her birth parents didn't want her, but did not abort her. She survived and is now a sweet year-old baby girl who 149 families reportedly are seeking to adopt.
Maybe something good can come of these two seemingly unrelated events.
Abortion facts: Every year, Canadian women obtain over 100,000 abortions. In Canada, women can obtain an abortion at any time during pregnancy, and for any reason. Canada has no laws regarding abortion. There is no legislation regarding aborting a viable fetus. A woman can choose abortion if the sex of the fetus is not what she wants.
Under the Canada Health Act, abortions are deemed "medically necessary" and are publicly funded. The ever vigilant Dr. Morgentaler is now suing New Brunswick for denying funding for abortions done in private clinics such as his own.
Adoption facts: There aren't any. We don't keep statistics on adoptions. There is a patchwork quilt of information from private agencies and some provincial governments.
In Alberta, for example, the number of healthy newborns adopted in fiscal year 2004 was eight. That's right, eight. Eight seems to be a magic number when it comes to adoptions. According to one private source, eight is the average number of years prospective parents have to wait to adopt an infant.
A very old report (Adoption in Canada, Kerry J. Daly, PhD, Michael P. Sobol, PhD) states that of about 400,000 babies born in 1990, there were 1,698 infants adopted. This number had dropped dramatically from a decade earlier.
The report also noted a striking change in the role of public agencies. In 1981 they handled 78 per cent of infant adoptions. By 1990, private agencies had taken over this role, handling 59 per cent of infant adoptions.
Private adoption is expensive, with fees up to $12,000 according to one source. Using a publicly-run adoption agency is free, but the problem is that there are no babies. Domestic babies, that is. Birth moms who choose not to abort prefer private agencies for reasons not clearly understood. International babies are available at great cost to the would-be parents. Older Canadian children are available so if hopeful parents don't insist on a healthy baby, their chances of adopting increase.
I think that Canada needs a public policy that would put adoption on a level playing field with abortion. This would give pregnant woman a real choice if they don't want to keep their babies.
I am pro-choice, as are, I suspect, most of my fellow Canadians. The problem with the "pro-choice" movement is that it offers no choice other than abortion. Some pro-choicers are as "anti-choice" as they wish to call the pro-lifers.
"Every child a wanted child" is displayed prominently on the Morgentaler websites. Dr. Morgentaler has spelled it out: Either have an abortion or risk raising an unwanted child to become a violent criminal. He seems oblivious to the thousands of infertile couples in Canada who desperately want a newborn baby to love and nurture.
Who knows? Maybe with government support for an adoption choice, we could reduce the shocking statistic that for every three babies born in Canada today, a pregnancy ends in abortion.
We need an adoption registry to bring children together with prospective parents. If we can blow $1 billion on a national gun registry surely we can make a few bucks available for a national adoption registry. As one adoption website noted, we keep better track of our used cars than we do of our children.
We need some financial support for birth moms and would-be parents. We need adoption education in our public schools and community centres to support pregnant women who have little knowledge of placement procedures, legal rights and open adoptions.
The tax paying public, who generally hate the idea of yet another public expenditure, could take comfort in the idea that at least some of the thousands of fetuses aborted annually might grow up in warm nurturing homes and become taxpayers themselves.
If we can give public funding to private-for-profit abortion clinics such as Dr. Morgentaler's, why can't we support private adoption agencies?
Bottom line? We need a new Henry Morgentaler, who will go to bat with the same zeal and energy for the desperate infertile couples who want a baby, and for the anxious birth moms who might welcome another choice.
Then maybe we wouldn't find babies lying in cold concrete stairwells of parking garages.
Marilyn Baker is a freelance writer living in Richmond, B.C.
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