Mothers affected by forced adoption policies call for royal commission into medical professionals
ABC 28th July 2015
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The stigma surrounding single mothers from 1958 to the mid 1970s and states’ forced adoption policies robbed up to 250,000 women of their babies.
Hospitals pushed adoption consent forms on women, which most do not even remember signing.
Many, like Lyn Kinghorn, were guilted into it.
“I was told to go home and be a good girl,” Ms Kinghorn said.
“I was dragged from the hospital screaming, it’s still the worst memory of my life.
“I was told, ‘you are not having her, if you don’t sign [an adoption consent form], she’ll grow up in an orphanage’.”
“It’s just so raw,” fellow mother June Smith said.
“This is a baby I welcomed [and] really loved.
“The nurse on the ward put me through the most humiliating, disgraceful, cruel and unjust period of my life.
“She informed me that I was no good, that my son deserved a lot better than me, that I shouldn’t be selfish, that I should think of him and if I did love him, I would want better for him.”
Janet Tough said mothers were given a drug to make their breast milk dry up and their babies were ripped from their arms.
She said the hardest part was knowing the children grew up believing they were not wanted.
“They don’t know the truth about what has happened, many don’t recognise they were stolen or adopted,” she said.
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