Adoption vs abortion

[doc_bean]

A while ago it said in the paper that in belgium 1 in 8 pregnancies end in abortion (and I've read we actually have a rather low abortion rate) and it got me wondering, why don't more people consider giving up their child for adoption ?

I mean, consider the situation where you are in your early twenties and you knock your girlfriend up. A pretty common thing to happen in the world. Now for most people they'd just think about whether or not they'd keep the baby. giving it up for adoption doesn't cross 99% of the people's mind.
Why is this ? Why is there such a bias against giving away a child for adoption whilst it is considered perfectly acceptable (for a lot of people) to have an abortion ?

Now in Belgium you can only get abortions during the first trimester, but we're an exception in doing this, I'm led to believe. If people consider late 2nd trimester or even 3rd trimester abortions, why don't they just sit it out for a few months and then give the kid away ? Certainly partial birth abortion seem crazy if you consider adoption as a possible alternative.

Of course, it isn't just the people involved themselves that are the issue. Society as a whole really seems to look down on giving up your kid for adoption. Do you know anyone that did it ? Chances are you know somebody who's had an abortion. Perhaps this is what makes (early) abortions so appealing, your community doesn't need to know you got knocked up in the first place. Perhaps if we, as a society were just a little more accepting of people getting pregnant unexpectedly and giving up their child we'd have a whole lot less abortions ?

[Fragony]

Most abortions are made to avoid difficult situations, it's just wrong. Especially when you consider that there are waiting lists of years for people that want to take care of these kids. I will just call it murder.

[Hepcat]

But imagine if every unwanted child were put up for adoption. There would be a LOT of children and not enough parents.

[Fragony]

But imagine if every unwanted child were put up for adoption. There would be a LOT of children and not enough parents.

Enough parents to make the african human trafficing a flourishing market.

[doc_bean]

Even if there aren't enough parents willing to raise those kids. Having more kids could be beneficial enough for a Western European to warrant decent investment by the state in orphanages. We're going extinct here !

I believe the average amount of children per woman is about 1.6 here, so the increase in births could increase this to 1.8, which still isn't enough to stay even, but might makes things a lot easier in the future...

[Hepcat]

New Zealand is the same, our population gets bolstered more from immigration than birth rates. We just reached our landmark population of 4 million this year (or last year, I forget) and don't we feel special.