Duty to Adopt

Pro-lifers, including myself, often promote adoption as a great alternative to abortion. Mitt Romney, for example, has been making it an issue. It's hard to see a reason where it would be acceptable to choose abortion rather than adoption, except those already listed by the Church as valid reasons for abortion such as the threatened health of the mother. So it's no wonder why pro-lifers promote it so much. A year ago the Church did a presentation in our ward about encouraging unwed mothers to put their babies up for adoption instead of abortion, and even instead of keeping the baby themselves.

While I support these efforts, I also think there is a problem with this strategy.

Currently, my understanding is that many parents need to wait years before being selected to adopt. In the Church system, birth parents can select the couple of their choice from many qualified couples. In other agencies, it might be the system that chooses and not the birth parents, but still I think there are waiting lists. (To be balanced, I've also read about children waiting to be adopted. I'm not sure where the disconnect is here. Why do some parents have to wait to adopt while there are children also waiting? But that's not central to my point.) When there are numerous qualified parents willing to adopt, it makes sense that unwed and unprepared mothers should give their children a better alternative.

However, what if we were successful? What if each of the close to a million abortions a year would instead be adoptions? Would there be enough adopting parents? I was unable to find hard numbers, but my impression is that there is not a million waiting parents. Even if there were, many of them have been waiting years and so that number would not replenish itself next year to keep up with the number of abortions.

Of course the ideal solution would be to eliminate both abortion as well as unwed, unprepared pregnancy. But if we only get rid of the former without the latter, we have a problem.

So the questions I'm considering are these: Are us pro-lifers willing to step up to the plate and adopt to support our strategy of adoptions over abortion? If my hypothetical situation were to come to pass, would the Church give a presentation encouraging married, fertile members to adopt in addition to (or perhaps even instead of) having biological children?