Athlone woman Jacinta O’Connell has written movingly of her time as a pregnant fifteen-year-old in the Mother and Baby Home in Bessborough in Cork.

‘Girls Like You – The Long Road Back from Bessborough’, published by Red Stripe Press, an imprint of Orpen Press, charts the journey from an Athlone childhood to a seven-month stay in Bessborough House Mother and Baby Home and the ramifications and impact of the time on herself and her immediate family.

Jacinta, who was assigned the name 'Margaret' in Bessborough, gave birth to a baby girl in September 1973. The following year, finding herself pregnant again, she made her way to England where her son was born in Guy’s Hospital, London.

Against all the odds she brought her daughter home from Cork. Her son was given up for adoption in London.

Her story, written in memoir form, shines a light on family and society in twentieth-century Ireland and through the prism of one woman’s experiences focuses on the power wielded by Church and State over the personal lives of women.

My name is Michaela, I would like to tell you my story. To say it right from the start: My story is not an "ideal world" story. I have gone through major crises in my life and was almost always on my own. So I've had to make some decisions that many women won't understand. But: Everything that I have done, I have done because I love my children and wish them a better life.

But let's start at the beginning. It starts in 2015. That year I separated from the father of my two children. He and I always went to work full-time, and after my job I did the children and the house by myself. This went on for years and at some point I got sick from the stress. I could no longer go to work and the relationship finally collapsed.

Since the father was no longer interested in his children after the separation (actually he didn't have that before), I moved 300 kilometers away to another city and wanted to start again. In mid-2016 I met another man who - as I only found out six months later - was in a committed relationship. I'm not a woman who destroys marriages or relationships - so I broke up with this man immediately. And moved back to my former home.

Four weeks later I realized that I was pregnant. I didn't want to have the abortion, but I also knew I couldn't raise this baby. I already had two children, I was always at the limit, financially it was tough and most of all I had no support. I knew that the father of the unborn child would have no interest in the child and it was clear to me that I could not create another child.

I researched how and where you can give birth anonymously to a baby and read a lot about baby hatches on the internet. I wanted to know what would happen to the baby if I put it in there. I wanted to be sure that it would be found and that it would be taken care of.

News reports of children being orphaned by Covid-19 deaths in India raise the spectre of a generation of children without adequate parental care. But international responses that favour solutions like building orphanages and seeking adoption for these children are misguided and can lead to child exploitation. In this post, Kristen Cheney explains why, and how you can better support children orphaned during the pandemic.

A year ago, my colleagues and I were already forewarning of calls to ‘rescue’ ‘Covid orphans’. As care reform advocates, we are familiar with the pattern: after every disaster—natural or manmade, instant (‘Haitian earthquake orphans’) or slow-burn (‘AIDS orphans’)—media coverage laments the situation of children left without parental care. So when Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic last year, we worried—not so much about whether as about when we would start to see calls for assistance to these orphans. It has taken a while, but now, with the horrible escalation of Covid-19 in India, these stories are starting to emerge.

Children’s advocates worry because these calls tend to take the form of ‘orphan rescue’ narratives, which usually spur desires to go to the children and build massive orphanages, as well as demands for international adoption. And yet we have known for decades that these responses, though well-meaning, are at best deeply flawed and counter to children’s overall wellbeing. Over half a century of child development research has documented the deleterious effects of institutionalisation and risks in international adoption, prompting the United Nations to adopt the Alternative Care Guidelines, which call for institutionalisation and international adoption as last resorts, favouring instead family-based care solutions.

Orphans don’t need ‘rescuing’; they need protection

At worst, ‘orphan rescue’ narratives have spurred corruption and exploitation of children, prompting perverse incentives to traffic children into institutions and even international adoptions for profit. In fact, this has profit motive been so prevalent that I have been tracking its development in what I call the global Orphan Industrial Complex.

CoE signed by 13 States: the tragic situation of Romania

Despite the tragic situation of over 80 thousand minors without a family, international adoptions in Romania are at a standstill. The conclusion was drawn in the Conference “Challenges in Adoption Procedures in Europe. Ensuring the Best Interests of the Child” that closed in Strasbourg December 1st on the joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Commission. In the introductory address at the Palais de l’Europe, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe declared: “Parents don’t enjoy the right to adoption while the child has the right to have a family. This is why the major objective of adoption plans should be that of giving the child a family, giving priority to best interest of the child”.The “case” of Romania. During the conference Bucharest’s government confirmed its band on international adoptions despite the request of the Romanian Office for adoptions (ORA) representative Bogdan Panait, to lift the ban “in order to promote the adoption of children “with special needs”, notably minors over seven, “Roma children with more than one sibling or with health problems”. In the entire world only two States banned international adoption, these are Burma and Romania. Nonetheless these are Countries with high abandonment rates and poorly developed national adoption systems that are scarcely supported by local institutions. Melita Cavallo, President of the Juvenile Court of Rome and former President of the Commission for International Adoptions (CAI), denounced the condition of Romanian orphans on the Italian territory, who, she said, are as many as “4300, some of whom very young, forced to live on the street”. “Romania open your eyes. Now you’re in Europe!”, was the appeal of former MEP Claire Gibault, who in the past legislature conducted a cultural battle against the international adoption ban with the support of a European lobbying network. “Romania now is in Europe. It ought to integrate its child welfare policies with those of the EU”, said Gibault. Hence, it is necessary “to look ahead in order to guarantee a future to young Romanians, the new European citizens”.The Convention. On December 1st also Spain and the Netherlands ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Adoption, thus bringing to 13 the number of signatory States along with Armenia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Island, Montenegro, Norway, the United Kingdom, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. In 2008 the Convention was revised, acknowledging the changes occurred across societies. The Revised Convention provides for the father’s consent in all cases, even when the child was born out of wedlock and for the child’s consent if the child has sufficient understanding to give it. It strikes a better balance between adopted children’s right to know their identity and the right of the biological parents to remain anonymous. Moreover, the Convention extends to heterosexual unmarried couples who have entered into a registered partnership in States which recognise that institution. It also leaves States free to extend adoptions to homosexual couples and same sex-couples “living together in a stable relationship”. A hot debate was centred on this last point of the Convention. “No” to adoption by gay couples. Marco Griffini, President of the Italian Association “AIBI – Friends of the Children” claimed, “A minor without a family was given no choice. He was given no choice to be born and to be abandoned. However, this child has the right to be adopted by parents who will be his life models and points of reference. While it’s true that each person can freely choose the companion he/she wants to share his/her live with”, it’s “also true that this choice cannot reverberate on a traumatised abandoned minor”. “Saying no” to adoption by same-sex couples, Griffini said, “does not infer that a homosexual parent is less capable or that he/she is less sensitive to the child’s needs. Indeed, concerns refer to the best development of the child’s personality especially as pertains to the question of identity. Who am I the child of? This is the child’s first major question requiring an answer. In order to become a serene and responsible adult the child needs role emotional models that reflect clear and codified roles. The child ought to have a mother and a father”. “If the purpose of the Convention is to reaffirm the priority of the best interest of the child – concluded Joan Ahnsink from The Netherlands, representative of United Adoptes Internationals (Adopted children association) – I wonder how a regulation could possibly envisage adoption by homosexual couples”.

.

Two cases, two mothers: the Waldeck-Frankenberg youth welfare office threatened to take away the newborn child.

Korbach - Does the Waldeck-Frankenberg youth welfare office tend to separate mothers and their children without sufficient reasons? The full-time supervisor Uwe Lutz-Scholten from Korbach and Carola Wilcke from the child and youth welfare law association in Dresden are in any case criticizing the decisions of the authority.

The allegations: general resolutions instead of individual help, a lack of transparency in decisions, violations of values ??protected by fundamental rights and prevailing legal opinions.

Violent criticism of the youth welfare office: babies and mothers separated without sufficient reason?

Case 1: The Waldeck-Frankenberg youth welfare office wanted to take the newborn child away from a young woman suffering from a mental illness, although the family court in Fritzlar had previously granted her custody.

There are many takers for this in the West. But it’s a trend fraught with danger, not least for the babies

We’ve heard of banks for breast milk, meant for mothers who for some medical reason or emergency, are unable to breastfeed their babies. But a new, dangerous trend is setting in, particularly in developed countries such as the US and UK, where online sale of breast milk is getting more and more takers.

Last week the British Medical Journal ( BMJ) came out with an editorial in which the doctors leading an ongoing research study at the University of London warned mothers buying breast milk online of a high probability of such milk being contaminated.

Not only do their babies face serious health risks due to multiple infections, they said, their very lives could be in danger.

This is because unlike milk banks where the expressed breast milk is pasteurised and stored scientifically, and the donors screened for infections such as HIV, herpes and so on, the online market is totally unregulated.

Two-Way Street

| 11/1/2010

[Map: Jeff Papa]

The flow of children adopted internationally goes both into and out of the U.S. Each year, families overseas adopt several dozen American children, with Florida the No. 1 source of children. Thirty-three out of the 51 American children — 65% — adopted by parents overseas in 2008-09 came from Florida, not counting adoptions of special-needs children.

Families in the Netherlands adopt the vast majority of the children. Hans van Hooff, a legal adviser for the International Social Service Netherlands, says the number of Dutch children available for adoption has decreased dramatically over the past several decades because there’s greater access to contraception, fewer single mothers are giving up their children for adoption, and abortion has become legal and more available. For many women in the Netherlands, international adoption is often the only option. With fewer children available for adoption from China, many Dutch couples have chosen to adopt American-born babies.

It could have been a regular day for a group of labourers who were returning to work after lunch. They were taken by

surprise after noticing a toddler left abandoned on a vacant plot. If it was not for the labourers, the infant would have been

in grave danger with rodents, bandicoots or even dogs that could have attacked him.

The labourers stay in sheds near the vacant plot behind Banaswadi fire station in HRBR Layout. Immediately after

noticing the toddler, they informed fire officials. The officials alerted Banaswadi police and a Hoysala team led by Head

Madurai: Madurai city police on Saturday rescued three daughters of a woman, given away in illegal adoption to three separate couples in the last three years. Five people including two couples have been arrested while two others are absconding.

The incident came to light after an unidentified person alerted the district child welfare committee (CWC) about the illegal adoption of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl by a couple in Thiruvalluvar Nagar in Palanganatham.

When a CWC team and police visited the couple, Balachandran and Kalanidhi, they produced a birth certificate and Aadhaar card for the child identified as Varnika Pandi. For a moment the police thought that the girl was the couple’s own child and the alert could have been a hoax. However, a check with the Madurai corporation found that the certificate was taken using fake documents. One Saravanan had helped the couple secure the certificate to show as if the child was born in a private hospital though it was born in Government Rajaji Hospital. Inquiries revealed that the childless couple adopted the baby when it was just three days old and that they had paid Rs 20,000 to get the certificate.

Further inquiries revealed that the actual mother of the child was M Chithra, 38, a homeless woman living in Avaniyapuram. She told the police that she had given birth to five children including a boy which however died during delivery. Her husband Murugan died three years ago. The first baby was stolen by someone soon after her birth and a complaint in this connection was lodged with the city police. The boy was born next, but he died during delivery. Thereafter, she gave birth to twin girls four years ago and christened them Harisri and Sanjanasri while a fifth girl child was named Varnika Pandi.

Chithra’s relative G Suganya gave away Harisri and Varnika Pandi and kept Sanjanasri for herself. Police said there is no information yet on whether Suganya has received any money from the couples for the illegal adoption. Suganya told the police that she gave away the child since the mother was not in a position to raise them.

Tamil Nadu: Illegal Adoption Row in Madurai; NGO comes under scanner after faking burial of 1-yr-oldAutoplay Next Video01 JULY 2021 10:24 IST | ENGLISH | CRIME | GENERAL AUDIENCEA shocking incident has now come to light from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, wherein an NGO staged a fake burial of a 1-year-old in order to illegally sell the baby. The NGO has now come under scanner after it informed the parents of the one-year-old boy that their baby passed away due to COVID-19. The NGO used fake documents to fool the parents. Times Now's Shilpa Nair reports that the NGO has come under the scanner and the investigation in this connection have begun. Further, it was also discovered from the sources at the cremation ground that a 75-year-old man was also falsely buried earlier

r