Hundreds of women who were forced to give up babies for adoption in the 1950s, 60s and 70s are demanding a formal government apology.

Many of the women were unmarried teenagers when they became pregnant, and gave birth in church-run “mother and baby homes” in the UK.

An estimated quarter of a million women were coerced into having babies adopted during the period. In recent years, some have said they were made to feel shame and guilt.

Three years ago, Jill Killington told the Observer: “I was never asked whether I wanted to go ahead with the adoption. It was a fait accompli.”

She became pregnant in 1967 at the age of 16. Her baby Liam was taken from her nine days after she gave birth. “I was expected to just go on with my life as though nothing had happened … I’m certain it has had an impact on my life. There’s a cycle of grief and anger. A kind of melancholy is always there in the back of your mind.”

(CNN)I adopted my daughter from foster care. It took a specialized village to help her succeed.

The day our daughter toddled around a corner of her foster mother's house in a peach pantsuit and flashed my husband and me a mischievous grin, we knew we were her parents.

We also knew we had made the right choice in adopting her from our state foster care system. What we didn't know was how much we'd rely on medical professionals, educators and mentors over the next 13 years to raise her.

She'd had a rough start in life. Relinquished at birth to the state, she spent her first 18 months in a foster home with three other children her age. The repercussions of too-little eye contact and too-little cuddling in that critical first year of life didn't surface until she entered first grade, when she suffered from separation anxiety so severe that we finally pulled her out of the classroom and found her a pediatric psychologist and alternative schooling.

Longing for love

The movement for an adoption apology for women forced to give up their babies because they were unmarried is gathering pace.

Whenever a government is asked to apologise for historical injustice, there are sceptics. It was a different era; it was a long time ago; it won’t make any difference…The comments sections of last night’s news stories are full of views like this.

But listen to the words of Judy Baker, forced to give up her baby girl after she fell pregnant at 18: ‘It would be very good if somebody said: I’m sorry. It would be so powerful, to show people that what happened to us was wrong.’

When the Australian government apologised for similar practices in 2013, it was met with a standing ovation. In January this year the Irish Prime Minister apologised for a "…dark, difficult and shameful chapter" of Irish history, in which many babies died in homes for unmarried mothers, and others were forcibly adopted.

In this situation, a government apology is, simply, the right thing to do, for the women and for the children they lost.

ADOPTION - In July 2020, after having thought about the issue of parenthood, I decided to participate in the first information meeting in order to start the process to obtain approval .

Absolutely aware of the difficulties that await me (44 years old, single) I also like to believe that my job (school teacher) can help to counterbalance.

This first meeting is done by video, about fifteen families are present and the person from social services is straightforward: it's complicated, but not impossible.

She tells us about the large number of families with regard to the very small number of children to be adopted , adoption in France vs. adoption abroad (at least 10,000 euros, gulp's).

She tells us that single people or same-sex couples are not discriminated against, that income is not discriminatory either.

By Ashley Albert

Special To The Medium

My name is Ashley Albert and I am a Parent Leader. I want to raise awareness about a federal law that has devastated Black, Indigenous and People of Color’s (BIPOC) children and families. The Adoption Safe Families Act (ASFA), written by Former Senator and current President Joe Biden, was passed in 1997 by the Clinton Administration. Its intent was to improve the safety of children, and to not leave children lingering in foster care. It promoted adoptions and other permanent homes for children.

Under ASFA, states receive millions of dollars for exceeding the average number of adoptions their states complete in specified years. But this provides different outcomes for different families. To further promote adoptions, ASFA stipulates that courts can terminate the rights of birth parents whose children are in foster care within two years. This controversial provision within this law is called the “15-22 rule”. If a child has been in foster care for 15 out of 22 months, states must move to terminate the biological parents’ rights. This mandate hinders birth parents from regaining their parental rights even when they are in positions to provide a safe, permanent home environment for their children.

This law, and how it is carried out, disproportionately moves children from lower-income families of color to middle and upper-income White families, which destroys the former for the benefit of the latter, and harms both the individuals and the communities involved. In 2016, I was told to sign an open adoption agreement in order to maintain a relationship with my kids. I was told that if I didn’t sign the papers that I would never see my kids again. I signed the papers on January 5, 2016 in hopes of maintaining a relationship with my children. I went to court to enforce and modify the open adoption agreement, and successfully won. However, it took one year and eleven months before I would be able to see my children again. At the same time, I found out that my daughter’s name had been changed, which, according to the original agreement, they were not supposed to do. Before signing the papers, I noted two things I wanted written in the Open Adoption Agreement. 1. DO NOT CHANGE THE CHILDREN’S NAMES! 2. To have visitation. I have been having a hard time getting support to have the adoptive mom abide by the order. I would have never signed the agreement if my kid’s names were going to be changed. I felt betrayed because I only relinquished my constitutional rights to parent on the specific condition that my child’s name would not be changed. My rights were violated when the name was changed and visits withheld. There is no accountability or responsibility to the harm my family and I have suffered because of this. King County Superior Court found there to be a breach of contract by the adoptive mom and other parties, and allowed me to file a tort claim with the state of Washington against the Dept. of Children, Youth and Families for violating my constitutional rights as a parent. I filed a claim in January 2021, but to date, I have received little or no support from state agencies that I believed were supposed to help people in my situation.

A UK-based adoption agency, Literacy Integration and Formal Education (LIFE) Foundation has reacted to the statement made by the UK Department for Education that banned child adoptions from Nigeria and other countries.

By virtue of the order, adoptions from Nigeria to the UK were suspended with effect from March 12, 2021.

President, Literacy Integration & Formal Education (LIFE) foundation, Elvira Salleras, in a statement insisted that the law is a gross abuse of adoption law.

Salleras currently operates an adoption agency with expertise and extensive experience in inter-country adoptions from Nigeria since 2006, working in partnership with Lagos and Anambra States.

“We feel constrained to address the issues raised in the said circular, using Lagos state, which has similar processes to those of Anambra State, as a reference point, to provide clarity and set the records straight,” Salleras said.

Fiom has been assisting women who have unwanted pregnancy for a long time and are considering choosing distance for adoption. During this guidance, women regularly ask about the experiences of other women in this situation. They have a specific need for recent experiences of peers. That is why we will have a closed online environment for experience stories from May 1, 2021.

Unwanted pregnant women who are considering distance for adoption regularly encounter misunderstanding and disbelief. For example, they are told: 'Did you really not realize you were pregnant?' or 'you're not giving up your child, are you?'. These comments can hurt and can influence a woman's choice.

That is why we have consciously opted for a closed online environment. The women only share their experience story with women who go through the same thing and who understand each other.

For the online environment, we asked women who recently considered choosing distance for adoption if we could interview them. These interviews have been elaborated into extensive stories, which can be read in the online environment. In the area you can read stories of women who chose distance for adoption, but also of women who considered renunciation for adoption but ultimately chose foster placement or raising their child themselves.

The women indicated that telling their story again led to further processing of the choice made. They also gave tips for women who have to make the choice now.

The husband of the Florentine couple, who was stranded for days in India, is serious for Covid. Another couple faced an odyssey to return. While LIAN's appeal to vaccinate the few hundred adoptive couples already matched with a child remained unheard

For a few days, the news of the couple of adoptive parents blocked in India with their daughter, who fell ill with Covid, had filled the pages of all the newspapers. Then, as always happens, other priorities have made the issue a little forgotten, also thanks to the fact that we finally managed to return to Italy.

The husband of the adoptive couple blocked for days in India is serious for Covid

But the question is far from closed, indeed: it is news these days that the couple's husband is hospitalized in serious conditions at the Careggi Hospital. If in India, in fact, it was the wife who caused the greatest concern, once they returned to Italy it was the husband who worsened. “My daughter tested positive for Meyer - said her adoptive mother Simonetta Filippi to la Repubblica - but she has always been asymptomatic. She's fine, the Meyer's staff have been wonderful with her ”. The husband, on the other hand, causes concern. Al Careggi arrived in respiratory block and is now undergoing various therapies to try to improve the situation. “Fortunately - continues Simonetta - we returned to Italy just in time".

Waits, bans and special permits to go home as a new family

KALYAN: A former social worker has been arrested in connection with an

illegal adoption racket along with the parents of a seven-month-old child.

The Thane police, with help from the child protection officer of Thane

district, arrested 28-year-old Manshi Jadhav, who worked with a child care

centre in Dombivli, where she would conduct surveys of parents wanting

For the greater part of the 20th century, Ireland was marked by a culture of shame that separated thousands of women from their children, many of whom were forcibly given up for adoption. The trauma inflicted by these separations was compounded by legal barriers that prevented adopted people from accessing information about themselves.

However, on 12 May, the Irish government published a draft bill that would give those adopted the right to access their birth information. This comes in the wake of decades of activism by adopted people and their supporters and has the potential to significantly reform an adoption system historically marked by secrecy, shame and the trauma arising from institutionalisation.

In modern Ireland, institutions such as mother and baby homes and the Magdalene Laundries were tasked by the state to deal with “fallen” women who had transgressed ideals of Irish femininity, especially by becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Their children were either boarded out to foster parents, institutionalised, or adopted by families of the same faith, some as far away as America, and – as survivors, advocates and researchers have long maintained – often under questionable circumstances.

Many searches by birth parents and children have been thwarted (as poignantly captured in the Oscar-nominated film Philomena), and adopted people in Ireland have been denied information about themselves – if it still exists – that is readily available in other jurisdictions. Although there have been media investigations and the government commissioned a 2019 review into a small sample of illegal adoptions, and published its mother and baby homes investigation in March, there has never been a fully fledged investigation into adoption practices in Ireland.

The information we do have, including testimony from adopted people and their birth parents, calls into question the legality and morality of such practices. A recent RTÉ Prime Time investigation showed how familial relationships were deliberately and systematically severed, with children taken and given away – all to enforce a particular moral code.