Dear Luciferase,

May I politely suggest to you that you Google:

forcedadoptionsapology@ag.gov.au.

Or call: 02 6141 3030

And ask for a copy of:

" The impact of past adoption practices -
Summary of key issues from Australian Research."

The Senate Committee Report which began in 2010
investigated the impacts of the now discredited policies.

I'm sorry mhaze for accusing you of using the word ' breeders', when in actual fact it was the delightful Lucerifase who wrote that sentence. ( well the names are similar:)

Lexi is correct in saying that there is plenty of evidence that adoption practices were forced at times up until the 70's here in Australia.

I grew up being educated by nuns for all my school life.
I remember in high school, during lectures on 'family planning', we were told that it was a terrible sin to haves premarital sex or baby.
Two nuns told us it was 'gods will' that these sinful women were never to see their baby's faces, and that the bible apparently said somewhere that baby's of sinners were to be 'given' to better 'god-fearing parents'!

Just google "Australian Magdalene Laundry" to read some truly awful stories re "Brainwashing and depersonalization to comply with the 'rules'..."

This involved the police coming around to a pregnant 17 year old woman's home in the middle of the night and taking her to jail before sending her to work for no pay at a laundry run by nuns until her baby was born....and taken away.

<Higgins (2010) noted that issues relating to consent and coercion (including illegal and/or discriminatory actions) point to some of the reasons why trauma may be evident. These issues include:

- administration of high levels of drugs to the mother in the perinatal period (including pain relief medication, sedatives and a hormone that suppresses lactation) that may have affected their capacity to consent;
- not allowing the mother to see the baby (such as active shielding with a sheet or other physical barrier during birth, or removing the baby or the mother from the ward immediately after birth);
- withholding information about the baby (e.g., gender, health information, or even whether the baby was a live birth);
- lying that the baby had died;
- not allowing the mother to hold or feed the baby;
- discouraging the mother from naming the baby;
- discouraging the mother from naming the father;
- bullying behaviour by consent-takers (seen as the "bastions of morality" who are protecting "good families");
- failing to advise the mother of her right to rescind the decision to relinquish, and the effective procedures to do so;
- failing to correctly obtain consent from the mother (e.g., the mother being too young to give consent; interactions with other issues raised above that prevent informed consent; consent being given while under the influence of drugs; mother not being informed of her rights, etc.);
- treating the mothers differently from married women (e.g., social workers and medical/nursing staff making assumptions that all unwed, pregnant mothers' babies would be adopted);
- being abandoned by their own mothers/families;
- the closed nature of past adoption practices (secrecy, and the "clean break" theory);
- the assumption of a married couple's entitlement to a child (adoption was a mechanism for dealing with infertility), with the joint "problem" of illegitimacy and infertility); and
- conducting experiments on newborn babies with drugs, with the children dying or being adopted without any follow-up of these experiments>

http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/resreport21/rr21c.html

At last facts sneak in to the thread.
The truth will out.
Why is it that side issues always come in to divert a thread.
It maybe we have seen issues some have with some woman come out here.
I have always said of those days , stolen generation was wrong.
And it was not just focused on the crime against the Children of our first Australians.
Sorry, no doubt most Churches played a roll.
But from personal experience, the Catholic Church, [I am not a Catholic] had a hand bigger than most in it.
My family was under threat of being taken away, because the Catholic Matron in our then home town was linked to Child welfare, professionals.
We are better for having inquired in to and said sorry for some dreadful acts from a dreadful era.
As a post script that Matron had to watch as all of her three Children had prison sentences handed down, an interesting result, she saw two other family's Children taken away, after reporting imagined things.

"The Senate Committee Report which began in 2010
investigated the impacts of the now discredited policies."

The discredited policies you refer to, Lexi, were in relation to "closed adoption" where "an adopted child's original birth certificate was sealed forever and an amended birth certificate was issued that established the child's new identity and relationship with their adoptive family. Mothers were not informed about the adoptive families, and the very fact of their adoption was usually kept secret from the children though changes in legislation now allow access to information if no veto from the other party was put in place." (from http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/resreport21/rr21b.html).

Earlier I wrote "adoption, where it now occurs, should be run in an open way so that children should have access to contact with their biological parents. This I do believe was a failing of the past."

The decision as to whether baby's would be put up adoption was made by the mother and her family. Governments had no policies regarding state baby theft or forced adoption.

Suseonline, sorry if you find the term "irresponsible breeding" offensive, but that's what it is, not a woman's right but a woman's, and a man's, folly. What right should anybody have to expect everyone else to pick up the tag for spreading their spawn into the world?

Dear Luciferase,

May I politely again suggest to you to contact
the link I gave you and get a copy of the key
issues. In which you stated that you were interested
and were unable to find.

I can't help you if you won't help yourself.