In the UK we permit about 200,000 abortions each year (in the US the figure is six times that number) and any attempt to adjust abortion laws meets with the fiercest resistance. When I teach sexual ethics on our Newfrontiers leadership training course there is always long (and sometimes heated) debate when we get to the subject of contraception – it amazes me how little serious thought many people seem to have given to the subject. As a pastor one of the most painful things I am regularly involved in is talking with couples who are struggling with infertility.
 
All these issues are brought into focus by the subject of adoption.
 
When a couple come to see me to talk about infertility, I invariably counsel them away from considering IVF and towards considering adoption. IVF just has too many ethical complications for me to enthuse about it (‘spare’ embryos; the emotional and physical stress upon a woman of egg harvesting; the health complications – and pressures on the health system – that tend to result from IVF, such as the high likelihood of multiple conceptions, premature births, and so on). By contrast, adoption is a beautiful thing to do as it mirrors what God does for his people in “adopting us as sons through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:5). Adoption speaks of rescue and redemption and grace. Adoption is great!
 
When a couple decide to investigate adoption, however, they soon run into multiple hurdles. Most couples would prefer to adopt a baby, but this is made more challenging by the fact that most ‘unwanted’ children are now aborted rather than made available for adoption. And then there is just the sheer complication of the adoption system.
 
The complexity of adoption hit the news this week when it was revealed that there were only 3,050 looked-after children adopted in the year ending 31 March 2011, down from the previous year’s figure of 3,200 – and an eight per cent decline since 2007.
   
According to a report by the BBC,

Only 60 children had adoptions completed by their first birthday, compared with 70 last year and 150 in 2007… Anne Marie Carrie, of the Barnardo’s charity, said it was a ‘tragedy’ that bureaucracy stops some people adopting and ‘treats them with suspicion’…According to the figures, the average length of time children waited to be adopted was two years and seven months, and the average age at the time of adoption was three years and 10 months.

 
This is one occasion when the use of the word ‘tragedy’ is not misplaced. It is a tragedy, for those potential parents who would like to adopt, and for the children who could be placed in a loving home. 27,310 children were taken into care last year; more of them should be adopted.
 
One of the obstacles to adoption are the current, very strict, rules governing the matching of children with parents. This means, for example, that a white couple cannot adopt a black child. There are good reasons for this, but for many children it would surely be better to be adopted by parents of a different ethnicity than to remain in care. We wouldn’t tolerate similar racial discrimination in any other area of our society.
 
The BBC reports this example,

Anita, a civil servant, is British-born Indian and her husband is white British. They are both Christian.

“We started to consider adoption about two years ago,” she said. “When we telephoned the local authority to make initial inquiries we were turned down straight away.

“We were told they wouldn’t have any children suitable. We could only adopt Indian or part-Indian Christian children – and there aren’t very many of them.”

 
Again, thinking about what adoption means from a Christian perspective, the great joy of adoption is that it happens to those of us who should never have been part of the family. Rather than being ‘matched’ with our Saviour we are adopted by our heavenly Father and it is the very diversity of the family we enter that emphasises just how good our adoption is.
 
As a gentile – as a sinner! – I should never have been counted as part of the people of God. But – hallelujah! – “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God…heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:26-29).
 
As we seek to make the gospel known and see the kingdom of God advance we need to be clear about adoption. There should be less unwanted children in our society (and less abortions); but there should be more adoptions, and adoption should be easier. And those of us who are Christians should celebrate adoption vigorously, because it is our own adoption that defines who we are and gives us all the rights of natural-born sons in the house of God.
 
Adoption is good!