The Trauma of Forced Adoption for Shamed Single Mothers UPDATED

This Australian article tells several poignant stories about forced adoptions from the 1950s through 1970s. It also mentions the group VANISH. VANISH is funded by the Victorian State Government through the Department of Human Services. They offer services for “People affected by adoption – adopted persons, birth parents, birth relatives, adult children of adopted people and adoptive parents; People affected by donor conception; Forgotten Australians – former wards of state and/or those who were voluntarily placed in institutions or foster care in Victoria.” Services include access to professional counselling, obtaining your Wardship or ‘care’ records, Travel Reunion Funds, Social and Support Groups, health services and the Life Skills’ program and searches for Forgotten Australians.

“The federal government is waiting for the inquiry’s recommendations and for results of an Australian Institute of Family Studies investigation of past practices. The Royal Women’s Hospital has also commissioned research into its own role. Social historian Professor Shurlee Swain, who is completing the report, says interviews with former hospital nurses and social workers suggest there is nothing to contradict claims of harsh treatment and pressure to give up babies.

Part of it seems motivated by efficiency and the extra cost of caring for babies staying in hospital longer. But, she says: ”There was a broader societal malicious intent to punish women for having sex outside of marriage, and the hospitals were an agent of that.”

The inquiry is due to report at the end of June but the deadline is likely to be extended.”

The Trauma of Forced Adoption for Shamed Single Mothers
[The Age 5/7/11 by Carol Nader]

Update: Testimony from one of 300 women who have given testimony to the Senate.

“IN 1969 Robyn Cohen gave birth to a baby girl at the former Gore St public hospital in South Hobart.

She was 18 and, like thousands of other young unmarried mothers, was given no choice but to put her baby up for adoption.

Mrs Cohen is one of more than 300 women so far to give evidence to a Senate committee investigating forced adoption in Australia.

While she had the option of providing her evidence anonymously, Mrs Cohen chose to put her name to her story.

“It’s incredibly difficult to do something like that for public consumption, but I didn’t want to remain anonymous because I’m not ashamed of what happened” she said.

But for most of her life Mrs Cohen was ashamed.

Her memories of a painful and frighteningly unassisted labour are still vivid.

Immediately after the birth, Mrs Cohen’s baby was whisked from the room. She begged to see it, but nurses said “it’s best for you not to”.

She didn’t even know if the baby was a boy or girl.

Once she was allowed to see the child, but only for a very short time and only because of her persistent requests. By then she was too distressed to touch her daughter, and her face is still a blur.

While it might sound incredible, the details of Mrs Cohen’s story are similar to many of the submissions made to the Senate committee.

Mrs Cohen said that in the 1960s, not only were unmarried women deemed unfit to be mothers, a lack of options for infertile couples meant many married couples were in the market for a baby.

“There was no IVF, it wasn’t invented. Unmarried mothers met the need for a supply. It was like a baby supermarket, that’s how I think of [the babies] lined up in their cribs waiting to be collected by adoptive parents,” she said.

“It’s not a choice to adopt out your child when you’re only given one thing to consider.”

Mrs Cohen said after leaving hospital she was expected to resume life as it was before.

She eventually married and had two more children.

But it would be 20 years before she spoke to anyone about her first baby.

Seven years ago she started having counselling and, after decades of believing she was bad for giving away her baby, has begun to heal.

Mrs Cohen said the fact that she was able to submit evidence to the Senate inquiry and to speak to the Sunday Tasmanian showed how far she had come.

“I couldn’t have done this six months ago,” she said.

Mrs Cohen hopes the Senate inquiry will recognise that the legal and human rights of mothers were violated by forced-adoption practices.

“I want the illegal acts that were performed recognised. Only after that would an apology be appropriate,” she said.

“The minute I asked for my baby in the delivery room and they said no, they were breaking the law.”

Mrs Cohen and her daughter  were reunited in 1989 and remain in contact.”

Forced adoptions heartache
[The Mercury 10/9/11 by Blaire Richards]

Update 2: “From the Minister for Community Services

 

Mothers forced to relinquish their babies for adoption will have the right to know identifying information about their adult children under legislation to be introduced in the Victorian Parliament today by the Coalition Government.

 

Minister for Community Services Mary Wooldridge said the Adoption Amendment Bill 2013 will implement a Coalition Government commitment made in October last year as part of the Parliamentary Apology for Past Adoption Practices.

 

The amendment to the Adoption Act 1984 will allow birth parents who relinquished babies for adoption prior to 1984 to receive identifying information about their adult sons and daughters.

 

Identifying information will include the child’s name after adoption and the name and address of the adoptive parents at the time of the adoption.

 

“The Coalition Government believes it is a basic right for a mother to know the name of her child and we recognise that this change is something that has been sought for decades by the adoption community,” Ms Wooldridge said.

 

As part of the amendment, the Coalition Government is introducing a ‘contact statement’ that will enable an adopted person to regulate or refuse another party to the adoption making contact with them. However, it will not prevent the release of identifying information to birth parents.

 

The statement will need to be renewed every five years and breaching a ‘contact statement’ will attract a penalty.

 

Ms Wooldridge said that the Coalition Government acknowledged the devastating and ongoing impacts of past adoption practices.

 

“The Parliamentary Apology and the associated practical commitments to better respond to the needs of persons affected by adoption have been carefully developed following detailed consultation and input from the adoption community,” Ms Wooldridge said.

 

Subject to their passage through Parliament, the changes will take effect from 1 July 2013.”

 

Forced adoption mothers to finally know their child’s name

[Premier of Victoria offical site 3/6/13]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update 3: “Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic national apology in Parliament to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades.

More than 800 people affected by the policy cried and cheered as they listened to the apology in the Great Hall of Parliament House and responded with a standing ovation when it was finished.

A national apology was recommended a year ago by a Senate committee that investigated the impacts of the now-discredited policies. Unwed mothers were pressured, deceived and threatened into giving up their babies from World War II until the early 1970s so they could be adopted by married couples, which was perceived to be in the children’s best interests, the committee report found.

“Today this Parliament on behalf of the Australian people takes responsibility and apologizes for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering,” Gillard told the audience Thursday.

“We acknowledge the profound effects of these policies and practices on fathers and we recognize the hurt these actions caused to brothers and sisters, grandparents, partners and extended family members,” she said.

“We deplore the shameful practices that denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love and care for your children,” she added.

Gillard committed 5 million Australian dollars ($5 million) to support services for affected families and to help biological families reunite.

The seven-member Senate committee began investigating the federal government’s role in forced adoption in 2010 after the Western Australian state parliament apologized to mothers and children for the flawed practices in that state from the 1940s until the 1980s.

Western Australia was the first of five state and territory governments to apologize for forced adoption. Australia has eight such governments.

Roman Catholic hospitals in Australia apologized in 2011 for forcing unmarried mothers to give up babies for adoption and urged state governments to accept financial responsibility.

Catholic Health Australia, the largest nongovernment hospital operator in Australia and which provides 10 percent of the nation’s hospital beds, said the practice of adopting out such children to married couples was “regrettably common” from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Adoption in Australia is mostly controlled by state laws, but the report found that the federal government had contributed to forced adoption by failing to provide unwed mothers with full welfare benefits to which a widow or deserted wife would have been entitled until 1973.

Australian adoptions peaked at almost 10,000 a year in 1972, before rapidly declining. The report found that decline could reflect the availability of welfare, the use of oral contraceptives and the legalization of abortion.

Among unwed mothers, adoption rates were as high as 60 percent in the late 1960s, the report said.

The committee could not estimate how many adoptions were forced but said they numbered in the thousands.

After Gillard spoke, opposition leader Tony Abbot also spoke in a gesture of bipartisan support for the apology.

He was heckled by some who saw his choice of words as insensitive.

Angela Barra, 45, who was adopted as a newborn said her biological mother Pamela O’Brien had been upset by Abbott’s use of the term “birth mother” instead of plain “mother.” She also said he shouldn’t have mentioned adoptive parents to such an audience or speak of people’s right to put their children up for adoption.

“A lot of upset mothers in there lost their children because of demand for babies,” Barra said outside the hall.

“People were forced to give their babies up; they were drugged, they were shackled to their beds … they didn’t relinquish their babies; their babies were taken,” she added.

Christine Harms, who gave birth at age 15 to a disabled son who died 13 years later in state care, said criticisms of Abbott had been too harsh.

“I think some of the people are a bit hard on that poor man,” the 60-year-old said. “We can’t all say the right, exact words.””

Australian PM apologizes for forced adoptions

[Yahoo News 3/21/13 by Rod McGuirk]