August 02, 2011

Adoption: It Should Be A Choice

Recently it’s come out that between 1950 and 1970 (with a few cases still occurring in the 1980s), that at least 150,000 Australian woman were forced to give their babies up for adoption in Catholic hospitals. Although Catholic Health Australia has issued a nation-wide apology for such an unthinkable, and heinous grievance, some individuals are still maintaining that it was per the choice of the women. In many cases, women were shackled or bound to their beds so they couldn’t resist when their children were taken from them, straight from birth. Many women were gassed, and others were given milk-suppressing drugs that have been now linked to cancer. In an article about this issue in the Daily Telegraph, Lily Arthur, who was 17 when she was forced to give her baby up for adoption in 1967, describes how she wasn’t even able to watch herself giving birth: “‘When we were going to deliver the child we were put in a position where we couldn’t see the delivery of the child,’ she said, describing how she was positioned on her side, with her face ‘pushed into the mattress … After my son was born I was nearly knocked unconscious and transported to a ward without my child.'”

All in all, the details of the situation are enough to give anyone nightmares, with the ultimate question being: how could this have possibly happened on such a wide scale, and gone unnoticed for so long? In many of the situations, the mothers were they were shameful, that they were an embarrassment — that an unwed pregnancy was disgusting. So while these women knew what was happening was wrong, what were they supposed to do? How can one institution persecute tens of thousands of women and make them believe that that their pregnancy, or experience as a mother, is more disgraceful than someone else’s?

A stolen life is always a tragedy, so what Australia, and Catholic Health Australia, need to do now is step up and provide for these women in whichever ways they need. They have issued an apology — “We acknowledge the pain of separation and loss felt then and felt now by the mothers, fathers, children, families and others involved in the practices of the time,” the apology states — is a good first step, but support, reunion assistance: these things should be provided to the women, however they wish.

Image via: abc.net.au