LONDON, July 15, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Britain should formally apologise to 
unmarried mothers who were forced to give up their babies for adoption, 
according to an official report Friday that gave harrowing detail of the 
anguish suffered by the women.

Some 185,000 children were taken away for adoption between 1949 and 1976 in 
England and Wales, the report by parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights 
estimated.

The committee's chairwoman, Labour MP Harriet Harman, said the bond between 
mothers and babies was "brutally ruptured" over the period.

"The mothers' only 'crime' was to have become pregnant while unmarried. Their 
'sentence' was a lifetime of secrecy and pain," she said.

The committee acknowledged the "grave wrong" done to the mothers and their 
children, Harman said, adding: "It is time for the government to do the same 
and issue the apology they seek.

"For decades they have been vilified. Now they need to be vindicated."

The report noted that Australia's government issued a landmark apology in 
2013 for forced adoptions, and Ireland's did so last year.

Abortion was legalised in England, Scotland and Wales in 1967. But even after 
then, women faced practical barriers such as objections by their doctors.

Before and after, social stigma against unwed women becoming pregnant could 
be overwhelming.

One woman told the committee that she felt unable to tell her parents and 
went instead to stay with a relative. 

"When her mother eventually found out, she was berated as 'damaged goods, no 
one would ever marry me now, I had brought disgrace to the family'," the 
report recounted.

- Forced adoptions persist -

Schools, churches and social services would direct pregnant young women to 
adoption agencies, often instructing their parents without consulting the 
women themselves.

In hospitals during childbirth, painkillers would be denied as "punishment" 
and afterward, babies were sometimes pulled from their sobbing mother's arms 
to be taken away for adoption.

"Have you learnt your lesson now?" one woman recalled a doctor telling her 
while she was in labour. 

Another told the committee: "A doctor told me that I should be sterilised as 
I must be a nymphomaniac."

The report called for more specialised counselling for people affected, and 
for the government to make it easier for those trying to trace their mother 
or child.

Without being drawn on an eventual apology, a government spokeswoman 
responded: "We have the deepest sympathy to all those affected by historic 
forced adoption.

"While we cannot undo the past, we have strengthened our legislation and 
practice to be built on empathy," she said, stressing that better care was 
given today for vulnerable women.

But campaigners against forced adoption warn that the practice is still 
widespread today, with the UK having one of the highest global rates of 
children being removed against the wishes of parents, often at birth.

Under UK law, mothers who are suffering from mental health issues or are 
victims of domestic abuse risk losing their children.

More than 1,000 children have been removed against their mothers' wishes each 
year this century, according to government statistics.

"There will be apologies demanded," independent social worker and writer 
Maggie Mellon told AFP.

"I'm fed up of shouting about things at the time and then having to wait 30 
years 'til it is far too late to have justice," she added.