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"The number of infants available for private adoption in the United States has been decreasing. The factors which have contributed to this change are, increased access to contraception, changed social attitudes about unmarried parenting, and the legalization of abortion. Between 1989 and 1995, 1.7 percent of children born to never-married white women were placed for adoption, compared to 19.3 percent before 1973. In 1970 there were 89,200 new adoptive parents. In 1975, the last year for which such data is available, that number was cut almost in half to 47,700. The reason for the decline was not due to fewer parents wanting to adopt, but rather to the fact that fewer U.S.-born infants were available for adoption. Babies which would have been adopted prior to 1973 were being aborted after 1973." The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
"Adoption is a choice which benefits both baby and mother far more than does single parenting. It may be painful for a woman to imagine placing her child up for adoption, but it may be a source of less pain over the years than the poverty, frustration, and blighted dreams of premature child-rearing, or the guilt of abortion. The two women in listening groups who had experienced both abortion and adoption said the latter was much easier to live with."
Frederica Mathewes-Green, Real Choices