Abortion rates are lower in jurisdictions which allow adoptees to get their original birth records than in those which deny them this information, the Adopted People's Association says.
Commenting on the issues raised at yesterday's conference on abortion, Mr Kevin Cooney of the APA called on the Minister of State for Health, Mr Frank Fahey, to publish a Bill introducing an "open-record" system. Mr Cooney also said the "unsealing" of adoption records in Britain in 1976 slowed down the decline in adoptions. The abortion rate in Britain fell from 1974 to 1976 when parliament was debating the opening of adoption records, he said.
He said the Minister, Mr Frank Fahey, should introduce a post-adoption services Bill to deal with these issues in Ireland. This, he said, would make adoption more acceptable to Irish women.
Mr Cooney said that 1992 figures for two "open-record" American states, Alaska and Kansas, showed an abortion rate of 19.4 abortions per thousand women of child-bearing age in Alaska and 12.7 abortions per thousand women in Kansas, compared to a national rate of 25.8 per thousand. Lower abortion rates were also recorded in the states surrounding Kansas.
In Britain, the annual number of adoptions fell by 67 per cent, from 14,641 to 4,777 from 1968 to 1976, he said. In the eight years following the opening of the records in 1976, the decline was 39 per cent, to 2,910 adoptions in 1984.
"If the unsealing of adoption records had any effect in England and Wales therefore, it was to reduce the decline in adoptions, i.e. to increase adoptions over the numbers that would otherwise have obtained," Mr Cooney said.