...the availability of the sort of children that parents are clamoring to adopt and who are not as-available as those parents would wish: Healthy, Caucasian newborns.

I'm old-enough to recall a time when pregnant young women were typically sent away, in disgrace, to "homes for unwed mothers." (Either that, or so-called "shotgun weddings" occurred.) Women almost never kept their illegitimate children, and the "rights" of "unwed fathers" were nil.

I have no idea whether the childhood image that I was given of a "typical" adoption has any basis in fact, but I was TOLD that a couple who could not have "children of their own" went to an orphanage and just picked out a baby to take home. Adopted children were told that they were somehow "even more special" than "regular" children, because their parents had picked them out, rather than just having to settle for whatever Nature had provided, as "natural" parents had to do.

Even if this "story" that I was told in the 1950s has no basis in fact, I'm sure that this "myth" is widespread-enough to have become a part of the mindset of our mainstream culture. How adoptive parents must resent being told that they have to take whatever's offered, and that they're somehow "bad" people and/or "unfit would-be parents" if they're unwilling to take a child who is not of their race, who is not a newborn, who has chronic illnesses, who is permanently physically or emotionally damaged or "defective" in some way! And then there are the horrendous fees that are involved in adopting any child, and the scams that some women run on would-be adoptive parents! I'm sure that frustrated would-be adoptive parents imagine that life would be wonderful if women simply didn't abort, because they didn't have that choice--period! They probably imagine that they could easily (and relatively cheaply) just go down to an orphanage and pick out the smiling, cooing, healthy pink "Gerber Baby" of their dreams, and life would be wonderful!

Of course, they don't think about all of the "sub-prime" babies that would go unadopted forever, growing up in orphanages--just as they did in the "good old days"--babies that are finding homes NOW, if only because parents feel that they have no other choice than to take them...that, or have no babies at all.

And I'd imagine that the "new-fangled" technology that allows sub-fertile couples to have "their own" children (that is, children born with their genetic heritage and/or born from their own wombs) would also cut down on the adoption rates, leaving even more children languishing in orphanages or similar facilities.

Anti-abortion advocates like to emphasize the "emotional scars" that (they assume) "inevitably" follow an abortion, and they attempt to keep women from aborting by offering emotional support and also by scaring them with the promise that women who abort suffer from nightmares of murdered pre-born babies forever. But they NEVER talk about the emotional trauma of going through an unwanted pregnancy, giving birth, and then never seeing the child again...always wondering what happened to him or her. (And I'm sure that those TV talk shows that bring out disgruntled, emotionally-scarred adult adoptees who are searching for their genetic parents and demanding to know why there were given up doesn't help, either!) Furthermore, it's ABSOLUTELY TABOO to even ENTERTAIN thoughts of regret around bearing and then keeping an unplanned child (or even a planned one for that matter--even though a a famous anonymous poll showed that the MAJORITY of parents would not have had children at all if they had an opportunity to live their lives over again).

All that I can say to that debate regarding regretting ones reproductive choices is that it's far, far better to HAVE options in the first place. Taking away "choice" is not the panacea that some would have us believe.

...given that a substantial percentage of the female population seems to feel that their lives would not be fulfilled, AS WOMEN. without having had the opportunity to be a mother (preferably via children that are born of their own wombs, from their own ova), I cannot see that putting a "mother figure" on a country's currency would be widely-perceived as being an insult to women-in-general.

Even feminists don't seem to have a "uniform policy" regarding the status of women AS MOTHERS. Some feminists seem to be pushing for women to strive for achievements on a par with men, acknowledging that this is difficult to do while simultaneously fulfilling the traditionalist "wife and mother" role. Other feminists call for males to participate in parenthood on a level that is equal with women's. Some feminists push for "having it all," while others admit that few women--or men--would not be "spread too thin" in attempting to achieve such a goal, and that it's better to put most of ones energy into EITHER a career OR parenthood. Meanwhile, mothers everywhere--whether they self-identify as feminists or not--want to have their achievements AS MOTHERS and as the nurturers of the next generation of society recognized: Such women would never feel that it's an insult to be praised for the accomplishments of ones offspring.