This started as a comment in Grand Moff Texas's Recommended List Diary
Don't Talk To Me About God but rapidly expanded into this diary.
America too has witnessed a pogrom upon certain sections of American womanhood, but in the name of "Science" not "God." For social workers - some religious, some not - who perpetrated what in my opinion were psychological atrocities against American mothers by taking their babies and "placing" them into adoption, (for a handsome fee, of course) against Mother's will during the Baby Scoop Era, i.e.post WWII to Roe v. Wade, their "Social Science," (which, again in my opinion, amounted to poorly understood and misapplied Freudian theory) was their God.
Mothers of the Baby Scoop Era have yet to receive any sort of acknowledgement or apology from the adoption industry for the outrages commited against American Motherhood bwetween 1945 - 1973. For us, there is no social justice. We, and in many cases, our husbands and children, have suffered for decades from the forced adoptions of our children for the crime of unwed pregnancy.
Some quotes from relevant texts and articles of the time:
DR. MARION HILLIARD OF WOMENS COLLEGE HOSPITAL, TORONTO, In The Daily Telegraph (1956)
"Unwed mothers should be punished and they should be punished by taking their children away."
UNMARRIED MOTHERS, Clark Vincent (1961), sociologist
One implication of this study takes the form of a highly qualified prediction of an emerging pattern or trend concerning unwed mothers and their children. This prediction is also the rationale for what some readers may have considered an over-emphasis on the need for caution in interpreting and using such research data as are reported here. We predict that - if the demand for adoptable babies continues to exceed the supply... then it is quite possible that, in the near future, unwed mothers will be "punished" by having their children taken from them right after birth. A policy like this would not be executed - nor labelled explicitly as "punishment." Rather, it would be implemented by such pressures and labels as: scientific findings, the best interest of the child, rehabilitation of the unwed mother, and the stability of family and society.
THE POLITICS OF ADOPTION, Mary Kathleen Beet (1976)
But as long as the mother was punished, it was inevitable that her child would suffer too. This problem is still unsolved; legislators and taxpayers are still unwilling to condone immorality by giving unmarried mother adequate support, and the encouragement of adoption can be used as one means of punishing the mother while avoiding the accusation of punishing the child.
Governor Reagan of California has said that an unmarried mother's third and subsequent illegitimate children should be statutorily removed for adoption.
The outcomes for many of us were horrifying. There are precisely 93 (93!) studies that have been done on outcomes for our cohort, and they all show the same thing:
Existing evidence suggests that the experience of relinquishment renders a woman at high risk of psychological (and possibly physical) disability. Moreover very recent research indicates that actual disability or vulnerability may not diminish even decades after the event.
....Taken overall, the evidence suggests that over half of these women are suffering from severe and disabling grief reactions which are not resolved over the passage of time and which manifest predominantly as depression and psychosomatic illness.
-- PSYCHOLOGICAL DISABILITY IN WOMEN WHO RELINQUISH A BABY FOR ADOPTION, Dr. John T. Condon (Medical Journal of Australia) Vol. 144 Feb 3, 1986 (Department of Psychiatry, Flinders Medical Centre, Bedford Park, SA 5042, Consultant Psychiatrist)
A grief reaction unique to the relinquishing mother was identified. Although this reaction consists of features characteristic of the normal grief reaction, these features persist and often lead to chronic, unresolved grief. Conclusions: The relinquishing mother is at risk for long-term physical, psychological, and social repercussions.
Although interventions have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness in preventing or alleviating these repercussions.
-- "Postadoptive Reactions of the Relinquishing Mother: A Review." By Holli Ann Askren, MSN, CNM, Kathleen C. Bloom, PhD, CNM. In the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug; 28(4)
Results shown in Table 3 demonstrate that mothers relinquishing a child for adoption tend towards more grief symptoms than bereaved parents ... ." ... "Table 3, comparing natural mothers in both open and closed adoptions with bereaved parents, shows that natural mothers suffer more denial, atypical responses, despair, anger, depersonalization, sleep disturbance, somaticizing, physical symptoms, dependency, vigor. Blanton, T.L., & Deschner, J. (1990). Biological mother's grief: The postadoptive experience in open versus confidential adoption. Child Welfare Journal, 69(6)
American women who were teens and young adults during the Baby Scoop Era have never received even so much as a public hearing of our stories. We have never received an acknowledgemnt, an apology, or any validation of any sort from the industry which took our children and shattered our souls.
We have lived our entire lives since that time in the sinkhole of our grief. Our losses and our griefs compound over time - not just the loss of a our newborns, but the loss of ever milestone in the life our our child since then, from the first tooth all the way to the weddings of our children... and we are now in the process of losing our grandchildren.
I for one would like to see some public acknowledgement, validation, and an apology before I die.