Easier access to abortion means fewer children are abandoned
1991, when China passed its first stand-alone adoption law, state-run orphanages routinely gave foundlings the surnames “Dang” or “Guo” . These unusual names marked children for life and were meant to. That way foundlings would not forget what they owed the Communist Party. Such names were banned in all orphanages only in 2012.
To be sure, the Civil Code is rooted in a conservative vision of family life. The new rule-book has sparked controversy by imposing a 30-day cooling-off period on many couples seeking to end marriages, to prevent “rash” divorces. The code’s approach to adoption is no exception. Fang Yan, a lawyer and member of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, backed the clause allowing older teenagers to be adopted.
Social changes explain why the government is more willing to promote domestic adoption, says a doctor who has spent years bringing ill and disabled orphans to Beijing for treatment. On the one hand, as China becomes more prosperous and educated, urban couples are marrying and trying to start families later, only to find that they cannot. As a result, when healthy babies reach orphanages, perhaps abandoned by young unwed mothers, they are adopted “right away”.
Official statistics bear the doctor out. They show that there were 343,000 children in orphanages in 2018, down from 570,000 in 2012. Registered adoptions peaked 20 years ago, with over 52,000 in 2000. That number fell to just over 15,000 in 2018. Today, just one-eighth of adoptions are by foreigners, who may take only disabled or older children.
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