Mitt Romney Promotes Adoption in South Carolina Campaign Stop 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 6, 2007
Greenville, SC (LifeNews.com) — Mitt Romney made an appearance at a Christian adoption agency in South Carolina on Tuesday and said promoting adoption was a component of his pro-life position on abortion. The GOP presidential hopeful talked about several key policy provisions he wants to see enacted if he becomes president.
His three-point plan includes making the adoption tax credit permanent, requiring so-called family planning groups like Planned Parenthood to provide adoption information, and reforming the foster care system.
President Bush doubled the adoption tax credit as part of his 2001 tax cut plan. Last year, parents were able to take a tax credit of up to $10,960 to help offset the costs of adoption.
Unless Congress acts to make these tax cuts permanent, the adoption credit will revert back to its previous amounts ($6,000 for children with special needs and $5,000 for all other children) in 2010.
The credit has allowed more children to become adoptive as the number of adoptions has increased 80 percent from 2001 to 2005.
"Lives have been touched," Romney said at the Carolina Hope Adoption Agency, according to an AP report. "These people are doing God’s work, there’s no question in my mind."
The Romney campaign sent LifeNews.com a statement about his plan and said the former Massachusetts governor "will require all family planning clinics that accept Title X funds to provide detailed information on adoption alternatives to anyone seeking family planning services."
His campaign bemoaned the fact that groups like Planned Parenthood do little to provide women in unplanned pregnancy situations with adoption information.
In fact, as LifeNews.com previously reported, the abortion businesses’ annual report shows it made hundreds of millions of dollars from abortions, but no adoption referrals.
Planned Parenthood generated $902.8 million in incoming in fiscal year 2005-2006 an increase of 2.4 percent over the previous reporting period.
According to the records, Planned Parenthood did 264,943 abortions in 2005 alone, up 3.9 percent from 2004. Estimates show that about $112.6 million, or 32.5 percent of the income its facilities nationwide generate, comes from doing abortions.
The abortion business referred only 1,414 pregnant women to adoption agencies in 2004, down more than 20 percent from 2003. But, in the 2005-2006 fiscal year, Planned Parenthood reported no referrals to adoption agencies.
"Although adoption is a viable alternative for mothers facing unplanned pregnancies, they often are not provided adequate information about adoption when visiting Title X funded clinics," the Romney campaign told LifeNews.com.
"Governor Romney believes that birthmothers deserve to be treated with respect and should receive the benefit of complete and accurate information about adoption," it added.
Meanwhile, there are over 500,000 children in foster care in the United States, with 114,000 of them awaiting adoption. Romney says he believes that every child in foster care deserves a permanent home.
He wants foster care to be a truly temporary, short-term arrangement for these children until they can find permanent families.
He said he will eliminate federal mandates to give states the flexibility to use federal foster care funding on programs that help keep families together, move foster youth into permanent families more quickly, or help foster youth transition to adulthood safely.
