Two years after Senate report on forced adoption, mothers are still waiting for apology

The B.C. Catholic continues a series on forced adoption in Canada with part 2. This week, a Senate report that called for an apology, a new documentary, and a sister’s perspective. See links to additional stories at the end.

Two years ago, Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology finally recognized the trauma Bernadette Dumas-Rymer and hundreds of thousands of other women have gone through in Canada.

The committee in July 2018 released a report titled The Shame Is Ours: Forced Adoptions of the Babies of Unmarried Mothers in Post-war Canada. It recognized that the post-war era, in many English-speaking countries, produced a climate of “social ideologies” and scorn for women pregnant outside of wedlock and their “illegitimate” children.

“Those societal pressures may have been at least in part responsible for creating an environment in which forced adoption practices were often applied to unmarried mothers in Canada whose babies would go to ‘traditional’ couples looking to establish and grow their nuclear families.”

The committee heard from witnesses who between 1945 and 1970 gave up their children for adoption under circumstances that were coercive and kept secret.

“Committee members heard the tragic accounts of women who, at the most vulnerable points in their young lives, were abandoned by family, banished from society, and mistreated during pregnancy and labour. The women were then dispatched without regard and with the sole instruction to never say a word about the babies they had just surrendered for adoption.”

The report also said some women were told to use false names, not allowed contact with the outside world (including the fathers of their children), and not informed of their rights. Some received too much or too little medication, little postpartum care, and had their breasts bound to inhibit lactation. Some never found out if they had a boy or girl, or even if their child survived delivery.

As a result, 82 per cent of these mothers suffered from major depression in their lifetimes, 21 per cent attempted suicide at least once, and almost one third never had any more children.

The “emotional and heart-breaking accounts … painted a detailed picture of this shameful period in Canada’s history, when human rights may have been violated and, if no laws were broken, certainly the forced adoption policy for unmarried mothers was unethical.”

The report added that while some children were adopted into healthy families, others had “much less desirable family lives” and parents who were unfit or unable to care for them. “The pain and sadness described by those who were surrendered for adoption by their mothers is all the more tragic considering that forced adoptions were supposed to have been done in the best interest of the children.”

The federal government provided funds for the maintenance of maternity homes for unwed mothers in Canada, many of which were run and staffed by local church communities: Catholic, United, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Salvation Army.

There is no official data on unmarried women who were coerced into giving their children up for adoption, but according to Statistics Canada, between 1945 and 1971 almost 600,000 children of unwed mothers were recorded as “illegitimate births,” the report said.

During that period, as many as 95 per cent of unwed mothers in maternity homes and 74 per cent unwed mothers outside those homes gave up their children for adoption, the senate committee heard. Today,  that rate is about two per cent.

“As such, it would appear that hundreds of thousands of Canadian infants were put up for adoption by vulnerable, misinformed, and mistreated mothers in the post-war years.”

In recent years, the Australian government has hosted several public hearings about forced adoption practices in that country and in 2013 delivered a formal, national apology, along with the offer of counselling and support services. Various Australian religious and health care groups also issued apologies, including the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, Sisters of Mercy, and Catholic Health Australia.

The head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, also made an apology on behalf of the Church in 2016.

When the Senate committee in Canada wrapped up its 2018 report with several recommendations, a formal apology from the Canadian government was on the top of the list.

The recommendations also included creating an advisory group that includes mothers, adoptees, and members of reunification organizations to advise the government on that apology; funding to train professional counsellors to better serve those affected by forced adoption; a public awareness campaign; an online platform for mothers and adoptees to share their stories; and to initiate a discussion with all levels of government on a uniform policy on access to adoption records.

The report said many mothers are now in their 60s and 70s and “time is running out for many of the surviving mothers and adoptees to be acknowledged as having been wronged.”

Witnesses to the Senate committee included Origins Canada executive director Valerie Andrews, Adoption Support Kinship president Wendy Rowney, Senator Pachel Siewert, Australian Catholic University professor Daryl Higgins, and University of British Columbia historian Veronica Strong-Boag.

Four mothers testified to being coerced into giving up their children for adoption in the hearings, and others submitted written testimonies.

In early 2019, Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos, responded to the Senate report with thanks to the committee for studying the issue of forced adoption and to the “courageous women who shared their painful personal experiences.”

Duclos said under current legal protections in Canada, “forced adoptions can no longer take place.” Duclos did not offer an apology on behalf of the Canadian government or directly respond to the other recommendations.

The Salvation Army submitted a 13-page brief to the committee in which it said its role in homes for unwed mothers was to ensure safe housing during pregnancy and provide health care. It said most funding for these programs came from the government, and when it came to deciding whether or not to parent, an unmarried woman’s “family and social circles appeared generally to be instrumental in the making of those plans,” rather than the Salvation Army.

“Societal prejudices and attitudes ultimately drove these mechanisms ... fueled by the attitudes and views of the family and friends of the young woman,” it wrote. “The Salvation Army has never supported the deliberate breaking of, or any attack on the bond of a mother and a child. Such views and actions, regardless of who expresses them, run contrary to the spirit, mission, and heart of The Salvation Army.”

The Canadian Religious Conference released a short statement responding to the committee report, saying it is “aware of the tragic history of forced adoptions in Canada” and “that young vulnerable women were coerced into consenting to adoptions against their will was morally wrong.”

The CRC urged Catholic religious orders in this country who were involved in running homes for unwed mothers to consider implementing the Senate’s recommendation #4, which asks the orders to “examine their roles during the post-war years, acknowledge the harm that resulted from their actions, and accept responsibility.”

As far as Andrews knows, no religious order has done so.