Plan B Forum

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic [1] national apology in Parliament on Thursday to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades.
More than 800 people affected by the policy [2] cried and cheered as they listened to the apology in the Great Hall of Parliament House. They responded with a standing ovation when it was finished.

A national apology was recommended a year ago [3] by a Senate committee that investigated the impacts of the now-discredited policies. Unwed mothers were pressured, deceived and threatened into giving up their babies from World War II until the early 1970s so they could be adopted by married couples, which was perceived to be in the children's best interests [4], the committee report found.

"Today this Parliament on behalf of the Australian people takes responsibility and apologizes for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering [5]," Gillard told the audience.

"We acknowledge the profound effects of these policies and practices on fathers [6] and we recognize the hurt these actions caused to brothers and sisters, grandparents, partners and extended family members [7]," she said.

COMMENTS:

[1] God bless the journalist who declined to use the ridiculous and incorrect formulation, “…an historic…”

[2] I wonder if the people “affected by the policy” in this crowd included any of the adoptive family members or the kids themselves. I gather not.

[3] It is so refreshing when politicians either take credit for, or apologize for, something they had absolutely nothing to do with.

[4] Is it any wonder why this would be “perceived to be” in the childrens’ best interests? Could it have been because the two alternatives were: a child being raised by a single, impecunious girl, versus a set of adoptive parents – mother and father – who have been pre-qualified through a fairly rigorous screening process? Seems like a slam dunk to me.

[5] Well, again, let’s see. The girls who gave up their babies MIGHT HAVE experienced a lifetime of pain and suffering, although in many cases (probably most cases) the girls just put it behind them and got along with their lives, unburdened by a baby who required full-time care. OTOH, there was presumably a husband and wife who had been desperately seeking a child to adopt, got one, and were more than likely made quite happy by this process. And what about the kids? Did anyone poll them and ask whether they would rather have been raised by a poor, single mother, as compared to the loving family that adopted them? Do their impressions count?

[6] The FATHERS????! Give me a break. If the FATHERS had given a sufficient shit about the welfare of their Baby Mamma’s or their illegitimate offspring, they could have married the bitches and put an immediate stop to the adoption process.

[7] Any thought to the adoptive family members, who presumably were happy with the program?

This is typical empty-headed Liberal nonsense. This was a perfectly logical program, implemented in good faith with the best interests of the children in mind. In every quantitative sense and in the vast majority of cases it benefitted everyone involved. Even the now-aggrieved mothers benefitted significantly IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AS IF THEY HAD BEEN ABLE TO ABORT THEIR UNWANTED CHILDREN. Now we have a group of pandering politicians (is there any other kind?) who lament the fact that Australia did not have a sufficiently robust social safety net in the period from WWII to the 70’s, so that the little bastards could have remained with their impecunious biological mothers, rather than the middle-class households where they actually were raised.

Again, ask the kids (now well into adulthood) whether they would have preferred being raised by single mothers. Where are the interviews with these kids who, in fact, are the best ones to judge the efficacy of this program?

Social mores have changed. We don't operate like this anymore. Deal with it. But don't pretend that the people doing this were evil or did not have the best interests of the children in mind...or that the program didn't have tremendous benefits for the parents who got those children, and the children themselves.

Back in the late ‘60’s, my sister and her husband, married several years by that time, learned that they were infertile (I don’t know the details), and could not have kids. Hearing that the local Catholic Charities served as an adoption agency, they made inquiries and got into their program and on the adoption list, so to speak.

Two things were expected of them. When they got a child they would have to pay a fee equal to some percentage of my brother-in-law’s income (my sister was not employed outside the home), and until they did get a child, they would have to host a number of pregnant girls who had been thrown out of their homes because of becoming pregnant. This was not a rare circumstance at the time, and Catholic Charities had a steady stream of girls in this situation.

They hosted four or five girls over a couple years. The girls would stay with them while pregnant and until they had their babies, then would leave. The babies presumably were put up for adoption. One stipulation was that my sister would NOT get the child of any of the girls they hosted. Catholic Charities wanted all of the adoptions to be anonymous.

The child they got, a girl, is my God-daughter, now married and living in Richmond. She was a blessing to the family and continues to be one to this day. She has NEVER inquired about her birth mother, although she was told she was adopted even before she knew what the word meant.

Without this program, these girls would have been literally living in the street. They had NO WAY of supporting themselves – getting a job while visibly pregnant was simply not an option at the time – and supporting themselves AND a kid was a recipe for a lifetime of want and misery. Despite having the normal feelings about a baby – regret and sadness – this program was the best available option for the mothers. In fact, the program was ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY; there was nothing but their own needs that brought them to the doorstep of Catholic Charities. They could have “toughed it out” on t heir own, as most similarly situated girls did at the time.

Knowing all of the above is pretty much why I think the Ozzie PM’s “apology” the other day was self-serving bullshit, not only on the part of the PM, but the mothers and fathers who claim to have been so egregiously harmed. They did not have to participate in the program, and they could have walked away from it at any time, either by getting married or by simply walking away and fending for themselves. Nobody “stole” their babies. I have no doubt they retroactively feel guilty and abused, but at the time that program benefitted everyone involved, including them.

For a human institution to maintain its legitimacy it must do as a moral individual must do; admit the truth of the past, admit a wrong was done, offer reparations and/or atonement as appropriate. This is why holocaust denial is intolerable by any government and why the evils of Jim Crow must be acknowledged in the U.S.



What about the program in Spain where the Catholic church stole tens of thousands of babies and sold them for enormous profits?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... Spain.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20130119-spa ... ars-police
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/world ... d=all&_r=0
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-25/worl ... =PM:EUROPE


yrs,
rubato

I have absolutely no problem with governments apologizing for the actions of previous governments, if that's what they care to do...

As governments are on-going enterprises, I suppose there's some minimal logic to that....

Though it doesn't seem to serve much tangible purpose....but if they want to do that, knock yourselves out...

What I DO object to, (as I've said before) is the idea of a government apologizing on MY behalf, for things I had absolutely nothing to do with....

This is a strong philosophical and moral point for me...

In my view, as a person, one can only "apologize" or feel "ashamed" for things one has personally done...That's what gives "apologizing" and the whole concept of "shame" meaning....

I was very unhappy a few years ago when the Congress decided to "apologize" not for the actions of previous Congresses, not for The Fugitive Slave Act, or the 3/5th clause in the Constitution, or any other legal action it took that sustained and perpetuated the abhorrent institution of slavery...

No, The Congress issued an "apology" (because politically, once it was brought up, it was an easy PC vote, and they dared not do otherwise...Who the hell wants to be known as the guy who refused to vote for apologizing for slavery? It was meaningless, didn't cost a dime, so politically it was a no brainer...it was a "feel good" vote with no down side...) on behalf of "The American People" for slavery...

Look, I'm no fan of slavery...let me stipulate that slavery was an evil, horrendous, cruel and dehumanizing institution, for which there was not and can never be any justification.

That having been said...

I have never owned a slave; I have never suggested anyone be kept in slavery; the Civil War was over almost 100 years before I was born... I have never once in my life treated a single person negatively because of their race...Not once, ever...

I can feel bad about the fact that our country has slavery as a part of its legacy, I can feel sorrow and remorse for those who suffered because of it...

But I cannot "apologize" for it, or feel "ashamed " or "guilty" about it, for one very simple reason....

I had NOTHING to do with it....I cannot assume any "personal ownership" for it...

It all happened long before I was born....I have no association with slavery whatsoever, that I have any need to "apologize" for...

And moreover, it happened long before even the ancestors of a huge percentage of the 300 million plus people dwelling here now arrived...(Including me, on my mother's side; her grand parents immigrated here from Italy in 1903...so maybe I only owe half an a "apology"...)

Why should any of the folks who are descended from people who came to this country long after The Late Unpleasantness be "apologizing" not only for something that they had no part in,(which is more than reason enough not to apologize) but on top of that, their ancestors had nothing to do with?

While I understand the contemporary simplistic political attractiveness of this sort of thing, from both a moral and logical standpoint, it is both ludicrous and insulting...

It is ludicrous to think that people who had absolutely nothing to do with something should "apologize" for that thing they had absolutely nothing to do with, and it is insulting for the government to presume to convey some sort of "collective guilt" on people who are absolutely blameless...

dgs49 wrote:Despite having the normal feelings about a baby – regret and sadness – this program was the best available option for the mothers. In fact, the program was ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY; there was nothing but their own needs that brought them to the doorstep of Catholic Charities.

But that is precisely the point. These adoptions were anything but voluntary. Different arms of government acting in collusion to forcibly remove children from their mothers, keeping girls chained to their beds for the duration of their pregnancy, keeping them hopped up on barbituates right up to the birth and afterwards such that they had no idea that the papers they were signing were adopting away their children. Telling girls that their babies had died during childbirth. NONE of that is even remotely acceptable regardless of whatever policy aim the government had committed itself to.

Scoots, you are reading in all sorts of factors that are not indicated.

There are other stories around the world where the mothers were told their kids had died in childbirth, and that sort of thing, but I didn't see anything in this Aus story other than the girls were strongly encouraged to give their kids up for adoption/

One of the infuriating things about "this generation" is that they have no sense of the changing current of morals, ethics, and public sentiments.

Before the onset of artificial birth control, getting pregnant outside marriage was a DISGRACE to yourself and to your entire family. One of the worst slurs in the English language was to be called a "bastard," which is nothing more than being born outside marriage. And governments did not facilitate bastardy by providing cradle to grave care to the offspring of single girls and women. Giving up your baby to adoption was in most cases the best possible option for everyone involved AT THE TIME. It was not necessary to "force" these girls to give up their babies; it was a satisfactory solution to a significant life problem.

Pretending retroactively, and ignorantly, that these programs were "disgraceful" or whatever, is bullshit.

dgs49 wrote:There are other stories around the world where the mothers were told their kids had died in childbirth, and that sort of thing, but I didn't see anything in this Aus story other than the girls were strongly encouraged to give their kids up for adoption.

Then perhaps you should have learned more about what happened before shooting off your stupid mouth. There's this newfangled contraption called the internet that the came up with. Amazing thing. Try using it and you might learn something. Try here, for a start.

Oh, and you might check out this one as well, where the Catholic Church of Australia issued an apology for its role in forced adoptions almost two years ago. Perhaps you might ask yourself why the Church apologized if there was nothing wrong with the practice, considering that it can't manage to muster an apology to the thousands of children who were raped by its priests.

My cousin "disappeared" for a while when I was young (she was about 10 years older than I was). Only recently did her "daughter" contact her as she had been given up for adoption. Don't know if it was forced, recommended, whatever. But my cousin was gone for 4-5months at the time (late 60's early 70's, don't exactly remember). I am guessing that adoption was the best solution at the time.