I’m not exactly an avid reader of glossy magazines, but recently I spotted an interesting cover on Macleans and I picked it up.

The picture showed a beautiful young lady holding a small Asian baby. The caption ran, “Bringing Home Baby. Canadians comb the globe to adopt children.”

On the contents page I read the following, “Faced with long waiting lists at home to adopt children, infertile but determined Canadians are increasingly combing the globe. And while international adoption circles are rife with rumours of baby buying and unscrupulous middlemen, most prospective parents are finding their way through the politics and pitfalls to happy endings.”

The article, written by E. Kaye Fulton, then tells the interesting story of two Canadian couples who went to Romania to adopt children. They tossed a coin to decide who would have the first choice. The couple who won the toss adopted an eight-month-old Romanian baby boy named Eric for whom they paid $20,000 to adopt.

This was after what the article called, “a fruitless nine year domestic search” in Canada. They adopted Eric in 1991. By 1995 they had adopted two more children from Guatemala and they expected a fourth, a Romanian girl this fall. The lady in question said, “we have already invested $60,000 in our children, just to bring them home.”

The article meant to explain why Canadians are looking overseas to adopt children. Back in 1970, immigration officials recorded less than ten intercountry adoptions. Since 1991, more than 2,000 children a year have been adopted by Canadians from 42 different countries. This means that in three year 6,000 children have been adopted from outside countries. If each adoption costs on average $20,000, it means that 12 million dollars were spent outside the country on adoptions in three years. In Canada, as in other western countries, the overseas quest for kids has been fuelled by legalized abortion and declining birth rates.

Towards the end the writer gives us a heart-warming story. The Canadian Airlines Flight 902, the Saturday night shuttle from Beijing to Ottawa is awash in tears and cheers for new arrivals. Captains welcome the new arrivals to Canada through the speaker system. On August 5, a picnic is held in Ottawa by the “Children’s Bridge,” an adoption agency group, to welcome the newcomers. Seventy families, who have adopted from China—or are trying to—gather for the occasion.

All this is very nice and hospitable but I have a logical problem. Why do Canadians have to go to Romanian or China or Guatemala or anywhere else to adopt a baby? According to Statistics Canada’s latest figures, in 1993, 104,403 abortions were performed in Canada. This was an increase of 2.3% over 1992 and brings the total number of babies murdered by abortion since 1969 to 1.62 million. Ontario again led the country with 30,518 in 1993.

I understand that there are several thousand Canadian parents who wish to adopt babies. But they have to wait for seven to nine years to get one. Why is this when we are murdering babies every day all over the country? The Maclean’s article says, “current waiting lists stand at seven years or more for healthy infants. Faced with those numbers a mixed bag of baby boomers have helped to create a booming baby search overseas and are willing to pay anywhere between $10,000 and $25,000 to get their child, often in about a year.” Can anyone make sense out of this?

Let me assure the reader that my principal objection to abortion is the fact that it is the taking of innocent human life. But, there can be other aspects of it and economics is one.

Suppose we make the analogy using sheep. You heard that in a certain country thousands of lambs were born every year but they were killed as soon as they arrived because farmers did not want the trouble of feeding them. So, in order to supply the people with mutton, the country had to import sheep at exorbitant prices from New Zealand. Would it make sense to you? It doesn’t to me, but then, I’m no economist.

I challenge the Canadian government to explain to its people why Canadian parents have to go outside the country to find a baby and pay a very high price for adopting it when we are murdering thousands of our own Canadian babies and dumping them in the garbage.