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.”

Mumbai: As many as 2,290 children in Maharashtra have lost either one or both parents to COVID-19 infection so far, sources said on Thursday. While 2,183 children have lost one parent, 107 lost both the parents during the pandemic, the sources in the state Women and Child Development Department said.

"The government has got custody of 10 out of the 107 children as there is nobody to look after them," they said. The data about the orphaned children has been compiled based on the inputs given by the district task forces headed by the collectors.

The government had set up a 10-member task force in each of the 36 districts in the state to identify the children, who were orphaned due to the pandemic.

The task force will also oversee the arrangements of their shelter and supervise their adoption to ensure that there is no trafficking and exploitation.

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Danish television presenter and sports reporter Ulla Essendrop is the latest sensation on short-form video sharing application TikTok, given the hilarious and relatable content she puts out on the platform.

Born in Calcutta in 1976, Essendrop was adopted by a Danish family when she was three years old and moved to Denmark.

Starting her own television sports show Essendrop & Eliten in 2012, she has also worked as a sports reporter at TV2 – a government-owned television network based in Denmark.

From trying out filters to her popular dance challenges, the 43-year-old has over a lakh followers with more than a million likes on her profile.

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Story at a glance

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in a case over religious foster care agencies discriminating against same-sex couples.

The case pits religious conservatives and those who don’t believe in same-sex marriage against the LGBTQ+ community.

LGBTQ youth are over-represented in the foster care system compared to cisgender and heterosexual youth.

Since the day after the last presidential election, LGBTQ parents and hopefuls have been on edge, waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether they can have a family of their own.

Kolkata: The detective department has launched a probe into social media posts appealing for adoption of children orphaned

during the pandemic. The probe was ordered by joint CP (crime), Murlidhar Sharma, after a Twitter user lodged a complaint in

this regard and shared a contact number with him.

Activist Sumita Dutta Basu lodged the complaint on May 20 through Twitter. She said that the adoption message had been

circulating on social media for about a month even though it was illegal to adopt children in such a manner. “The message is

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.

Actor Mahhi Vij has said that she, and husband Jay Bhanushali did not legally adopt their foster kids Rajveer and Khushi, but "they are family" and have been living together since their birth. Mahhi and Jay have a biological daughter, Tara and have also been fostering their caretaker's children, Rajveer and Khushi since 2017.

Earlier this year, reports claimed that Jay and Mahhi had "abandoned" their foster kids, because of the birth of their own daughter. However, Mahhi later slammed those reports in a social media post.

Talking about Rajveer and Kushi, Mahhi told Zoom in an interview, "We have not adopted them (Rajveer and Khushi). They have parents. The father is still working with us. They have a mother. It is just that they have stayed with us since the time they were born. They call me mumma and Jay dadda. We were all together. We were like a happy family. There is nothing like legal adoption. I do not know where that came from."

She added that the children have returned to their hometown as their grandfather believed it is safer for them to be at their hometown. In March, Mahhi wrote a long Instagram post in response to rumours that she had abandoned her foster children.

“A lot of you have been questioning, a lot of you have been assuming, a lot of you have been writing anything and everything and it's just FAIR! Yes we are parents, FOSTER Parents! Tara entered our lives as a beautiful blessing but that doesn't change our feelings for Khushi and Rajveer. When Khushi came into our lives, we became parents but a part of us knows that the decisions and the first rights belong to her father and mother. They had always wanted the kids to spend some time in Mumbai but eventually return to their hometown and be with their extended family and grandparents. And we feel that there is no one who can judge what is better for a child, than their parents,” she wrote.

Itunu and Samuel Oremade say video calls with their son Andrew bring pain as well as joy.

That's because the three-year-old keeps asking a question they are also desperate for an answer to: why can't their family be together in Canada?

The Oremades live in Airdrie, Alta., and their adopted son is being cared for by Itunu's 79-year-old mother in Lagos, Nigeria.

The first stage of Andrew's citizenship application was approved Dec. 7, 2018. But the second part, which would grant him Canadian citizenship and the ability to enter Canada, has been in the processing queue for 22 months with no updates to the file.

'It's so painful'

It's believed half a million British women were persuaded to give their babies up for adoption in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Campaigners from the Movement for an Adoption Apology want the government to acknowledge that many women may have been coerced into giving up their babies against their will, and apologise.

Those women have lived with the heartache ever since, and many never saw their children again.

These are their stories.

Jean's story

A few months ago, at the request of the government, the Joustra Committee presented its report on adoption from abroad. In a hard-hitting judgment on the Dutch adoption culture and the role of the government in it, there is talk of 'serious abuses'. The conclusion: the adoption of children from abroad must stop for the time being. Minister Dekker (Legal Protection) then announced that the adoption of foreign children had to be suspended immediately. As a result, 450 current adoption files will not be completed.

WAGENINGEN- A group of adoptive parents opposes the adoption freeze. This decision also provokes a lot of resistance from many adoptees. Here is the reaction of Nangi (38) from Wageningen. She explains: “As a very small girl from Sri Lanka, I was adopted in 1986 by a Wageningen couple, who raised me very lovingly. I am so very happy with that! That feeling is completely mutual! My adoption process went very well. I know who my biological parents are. I met them and I heard why I was adopted. My biological father, an abusive alcoholic, forced my mother to relinquish me because I have physical and mental limitations. My father saw me as a failure. That was very difficult for me to hear, but it also gave me peace and security. Today's knowledge of adoption is very different from what it was thirty or forty years ago. When I heard that Minister Sander Dekker apologized for denying the mistakes, I was happy. I sincerely hope that there will be a DNA bank as a possibility that adopted children and biological parents can find each other. The world of little children is small. It consists of family, relatives and friends. Nice and clear. But once they hit puberty, the shutters open. The children discover that there is more, they want to get to know the world, their world. They want to know what their own history is and where they come from. But for the adopted children, the shutters do not open, adoptive parents cannot open the doors. They feel trapped. The government can open the door by setting up a DNA bank.” Nangi continues: “I think stopping adoption is going too far. What happened in the past should never be the reason to hinder a child's future.” Nangi points to Ranjith Postma, a good friend of hers: “Ranjith is a good author, he has also been adopted. He immerses himself in stories of adopted people and adoptive parents. He interviews and writes about it. Ranjith gives them a stage to share their story. Because his stories are so well liked, he has decided to write a book. It's about five adopted women, all of whom have the same grief, but have found a way to live with it. In this way he also helped and supported me, gave me the strength to dare to speak about it. Ranjith told me a story about a couple, who adopted a child last year. They explained to him that they had adopted a child through an open procedure.” An open procedure is the connection of the triangle: child, biological parents and adoptive parents.

“When I heard that, I was amazed. That's another way to do it. I had thought of that, but didn't know it existed. I heard and read a while ago that there was a petition to keep adoption going. I'm glad to read that I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I regret that adoptees, who have good experiences, and their adoptive parents are not heard, are even ignored. Just because we think differently about adoption doesn't mean we don't want to see that mistakes have been made. We are very well aware of that. I understand that because of the many bad experiences there is not much confidence anymore. But I still ask to be open to the stories and emotions that we have. Trust that we do this with good intentions. Let's not sit with our arms folded, but get up and work on the future. Don't dwell on the past. A lot will have to change. Admitting mistakes is the beginning. By comparing errors and improvements, it is possible to see what can be improved. Make it public so we can track it. In this way we gain more trust in each other, because that is what we lack at the moment”.

“Adoption requires optimal transparency”

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