#forcedadoptions — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #forcedadoptions, aggregated by home.social.
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UK Forced Adoption Was Not Just a Past Crime — It Is an Ongoing, Living, National Shame
Britain has finally apologised for historic forced adoption, but apology is not accountability. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, delivered the apology in Parliament as campaigners watched on, ahead of a reception for them in Westminster. He reflected on the harm caused to an estimated 185,000 mothers, adopted people and their wider families by practices that took place primarily between 1949 and 1976.The shame was never the mothers’ or the children’s; it was the state’s, and it still is whenever records go missing, files are delayed, fathers are erased, and adoptees are left to fight for the facts of their own lives.1
The historical record is no longer in serious dispute. Government materials now acknowledge that many women were coerced or misled into surrendering children for adoption, particularly between 1949 and 1976, and that the harm extended to mothers, adoptees, fathers and wider families. The prime minister’s apology and the £4 million support package are welcome, but they are also an admission that the country is still trying to repair a wound it helped create and then bury.²
But the story did not end in 1976, and that is one of the central lacunae in too many official summaries. The law changed, yes, and adoption today in England and Wales is not the same as the private, coercive system of the mid-twentieth century. Yet the afterlife of forced adoption continues through record suppression, slow access, missing files, bureaucratic obstruction, and the routine treatment of adoptees and birth families as paperwork rather than people.³
This is where fathers must be put back into the frame. The government itself now says fathers and wider families were harmed too, which matters because historic forced adoption often amounted not only to the separation of mother and child, but to a broader act of defathering: the wiping out of paternal ties, paternal knowledge, and paternal responsibility, often through stigma, exclusion, or legal silence. If the state is serious about equality and justice, it must stop pretending this was only a women-and-babies issue. It was a family-life crime.4
That means the legal language needs discipline. It is right to say that many people were robbed of family life, identity and knowledge of origin. It is not legally careful to imply an absolute right in every case to be raised by the birth family. But it is absolutely right to say that coercive removals, hidden maternity homes, procedural pressure, and institutional concealment were grave interferences with Article 8 family life and with the basic dignity of mothers, fathers and children alike.⁵
A serious response must therefore be bigger than apology and support services. It should include mandatory preservation of adoption records, a survivor-led national tracing service, properly funded intermediary support, trauma-informed NHS pathways, and a clear accountability framework for churches, maternity homes, hospitals, adoption agencies and public bodies involved in the abuses. It should also include a specific remedy for fathers and other excluded relatives whose relationship to the child was erased, obscured or blocked by stigma and administrative practice. Truth recovery without power, evidence, and compulsion is just a managed confession.6
The political truth is just as blunt. Forced adoption was not merely an administrative failure; it was a moral regime built on shame, class power, sexual control, and the denial of women’s autonomy and fathers’ standing. That regime did not end overnight, and its aftershocks are still felt whenever a council loses records, a file is delayed, or an adopted adult is forced to fight for the most basic facts of their own life.
So the question is no longer whether Britain can apologise. It already has. The question is whether Britain is prepared to do the hard work that apology demands: preserve the evidence, open the files, fund the tracing, support the survivors, restore fathers and wider families to the historical record, and tell the truth without varnish. Anything less leaves the apology as what too many state apologies become — a gesture of remorse wrapped around a refusal to reckon fully with the crime.7 ⁸ 9
References
- UK government: Government apologises for historic forced adoption practices
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-apologises-for-historic-forced-adoption-practices - UK government: Historic forced adoption: information and support
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/historic-forced-adoption-information-and-support/historic-forced-adoption-information-and-support - Adoption Act 1976
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/36/enacted - Adoption Act 1976 contents page
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/36/contents - House of Lords and Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights: The Violation of Family Life
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt5803/jtselect/jtrights/270/report.html - House of Commons Education Committee: Historical Forced Adoption
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmeduc/1713/report.html - BBC: Report into Mother and Baby homes to be published today
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1jyy29d1x6o - BBC: Expert panel to work with mother-and-baby home victims
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-56283644 - Department for Education: Increasing the retention period for adoption records
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/increasing-the-retention-period-for-adoption-records
#adoptees #Adoption #family #forcedAdoptions #historicForcedAdoptions #justice #KeirStarmer #politics #restitutionFamilyConnect helps adults who have been adopted, adults who have been in care, birth parents and relatives who have lost someone to adoption and professionals working in these areas.
- UK government: Government apologises for historic forced adoption practices
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https://www.europesays.com/people/138075/ British PM apologizes for historic forced adoptions #BritishPrimeMinister #ForcedAdoptions #KeirStarmer #PregnancyOutsideMarriage #StrongSocialStigma
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https://www.europesays.com/videos/53830/ ‘I am truly sorry’: Starmer apologises for state’s role in forced adoptions #ADOPTION #AdoptionApology #ForcedAdoption #ForcedAdoptions #gdnpfpnewspolitics #gdnpfpnewsuk #guardian #GuardianNews #KeirStarmer #KeirStarmerApology #politics #starmer #StarmerApology #uk #ww2
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https://www.europesays.com/videos/53700/ Keir Starmer gives statement in parliament on historical forced adoption case #ForcedAdoption #ForcedAdoptionUk #ForcedAdoptions #ForcedAdoptionsUk #gdnpfpnewspolitics #guardian #GuardianNews #HouseOfCommons #KeirStarmer #KeirStarmerLive #parliament #politics #starmer #StarmerLive #UKParliament #UKPolitics
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SOUTH KOREA S Korea acknowledges that past adoptions constituted ‘forced child trafficking’
Justice Minister Jung Sung-ho spoke in harsh terms to describe adoptions from South Korea in the 1970s and…
#Conflict #Conflicts #War #ChildTrafficking #Europe #forcedadoptions #migrantworkers #militarydictatorship #northkorea #saltmine #southkorea #UnitedStates
https://www.europesays.com/2912963/ -
UKGOV will happily wait out for all the victims to die rather than lose face and apologise. Considering everyone responsible for this outrage is long, long dead, why does UKGOV care about saving face on this? Is it that posho mentality of having to 'win' at all costs?
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UKGOV will happily wait out for all the victims to die rather than lose face and apologise. Considering everyone responsible for this outrage is long, long dead, why does UKGOV care about saving face on this? Is it that posho mentality of having to 'win' at all costs?
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UKGOV will happily wait out for all the victims to die rather than lose face and apologise. Considering everyone responsible for this outrage is long, long dead, why does UKGOV care about saving face on this? Is it that posho mentality of having to 'win' at all costs?
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UKGOV will happily wait out for all the victims to die rather than lose face and apologise. Considering everyone responsible for this outrage is long, long dead, why does UKGOV care about saving face on this? Is it that posho mentality of having to 'win' at all costs?
-
UKGOV will happily wait out for all the victims to die rather than lose face and apologise. Considering everyone responsible for this outrage is long, long dead, why does UKGOV care about saving face on this? Is it that posho mentality of having to 'win' at all costs?