International Family Remembrance Week will be launched on the 14th November 2011 to bring attention to harms wrought by the legal transference of filiation through adoption legislation. Filiation is the fact of being a son or daughter of a given parent and is a relation which can be said to form a new branch of society; hence, the symbol of the Family Tree.
The symbol of the Family Tree at left is to signify not only loss of filiation by severance of legal channels to its knowledge and honour, but of the love of the parent as guardian of human rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights maintains that, in nations protected by its ratification:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12)
The Convention on the Rights of the Child, regards identity:Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity. (Article 8)
The Convention of the Rights of the Child came into force on 2 September 1990. Australia was one of the first countries to become a party to it, in December 1990, and it became binding on Australia in January 1991.
International Family Awareness Week, soon to be launched in Australia, calls on governments to condemn the abuse associated with the denial and stigmatization of human identity through adoption legislation.
On the 21 November 2011, the final report of the current Australian Senate inquiry into commonwealth contribution to forced adoption policies and practices will be handed down. So what evidence is there that the commonwealth did contribute to forced adoption policies and practices?
Evidence is that an authoritarian regime spanned over five decades through the vestment of political power in the hands of both commonwealth and state officials across the commonwealth, in order to facilitate forced adoption (kidnapping of 'illegitimate' babies) primarily with the motive in mind of saving costs associated with maternal-infant welfare. Nevertheless, this was driven by hate speech and propaganda, one of the marks of genocide evident throughout this period.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, which Australia ratified in 1948 bans acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It declares genocide a crime under international law whether committed during war or peacetime, binding all signatories to take measures to prevent and punish any acts of genocide committed within their jurisdiction. The act bans killing of members of any racial, ethnic, national or religious group because of their membership in that group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, inflicting on members of the group conditions of life intended to destroy them, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and taking group members' children away from them and giving them to members of another group.
The following features of genocide clearly appear to distinguish the era of forced adoption across the Australian commonwealth circa 1940s - 1980s.
Public propaganda and hate speech
Denial of personhood (legal, as per discriminatory practices)
At this public meeting at the Town Hall, Sydney, the Reverend Norman Webb advocates
for the abortion of 'illegitimate' babies then being taken illegally at birth for adoption
In the book Unmarried Mothers by Clark Vincent, 1961, published after a ten years study on unmarried mothers in the US who were confined to unmarried mother homes, the author warned 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 labeled explicitly as "punishment." Rather, it would be implemented through such pressures and labels as "scientific findings," "the best interests of the child," "rehabilitation of the unwed mother," and "the stability of the family and society."
Presented in 1959 and published in 1960, the Medical Journal of Australia published a paper by Dr D.F Lawson titled the Fetherston Lecture in which Dr.Lawson reiterated the need to punish the unmarried mother. While Vincent’s words served as a warning of what was to come as a result of that demand for babies, Lawson had instead invited the medical profession to ignore the law when it came to adoption when he announced that “The last thing the obstetrician might concern himself with is the law in regard to adoption.”
Denial of personhood (legally as per discriminatory practices)
"Where it is more than simply a synonym for 'human being', 'person' figures primarily in moral and legal discourse. A person is a being with a certain moral status, or a bearer of rights." Charles Taylor, "The Concept of a Person", Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 97.
In 1984 the Human Rights Commission Discussion Paper No.5, stated the following:
Policies, particularly in hospitals, have been altered recently, another factor which has contributed to the fall in the number of babies available for adoption. Since, for example, unmarried women have been allowed the same rights to see and hold their babies in Western Australia as married women, the number of babies available for adoption has fallen form 670 in 1969 to 99 in 1981…..and
The unreasonableness of rules restricting access to children likely to be put up for adoption is arguable on the grounds that such restrictions, rather than helping the mother make a responsible decision, are designed to make that decision for her.
In 1986 the Review of the A.C.T. Adoption of Children Ordinance” Report No. 23, Human Rights Commission, stated on page 3:
Adoption procedures have largely disregarded the rights of the parent considering relinquishment to be made aware of the alternative options to adoption, and to full and disinterested support in arriving at a decision. The many submissions received from natural mothers who relinquished children for adoption, describing their unresolved grief and sense of loss, bear testimony to the failure of bureaucratic procedures to protect their rights.
In May 1975 Miss Pamela Roberts Head Social Worker in Charge Women’s Hospital Crown Street between 1964 and 1976 addressed a meeting between representatives of unmarried mother’s hostels held at the Queen Victoria Hospital and admitted that 'Strong but subtle pressure to have baby adopted” was used over the previous ten years.'
In August 1975, a meeting of representatives of unmarried mother’s hostels held at the Queen Victoria Hospital felt they had a right to decide how much contact a mother should have with her own baby and discussed the trend of allowing unmarried mothers to “see” or “cuddle” or “bottle feed” their babies and decided that girls should be allowed to see their babies and nurse it if she wished, and this was often helpful to the girl and did not necessarily cause her to change her mind. The final sentence indicates that the previous practice of not allowing the mother see her baby was based on their belief that if she saw her baby she would be less likely to give it up.
1. Set apart from the rest or from each other; isolate or divide.
2. Separate or divide (people, activities, or institutions) along racial, sexual, religious or lines of marital and legal status.
Efficiency
The efficiency is startling, as the machinery of forced adoption worked in a well-organised way in removing tens of thousands of 'illegitimate' babies from their mothers at birth circa 1940s - 1980s.
Extent of the operation
Across the commonwealth of Australia for over five decades.
Cruelty
Despite the known consequences to mother and child in the act of separating them at birth, the abuse continued for decades.
In circa 1966 Social Work Caseworker Miss M. Nicholas ran a course for adoption workers employed in post adoption counseling, titled The Natural Parent’s Needs After Placement of Her Child, in which she outlined what was already known by 1966 about the psychiatric and psychological injury caused by relinquishment.
In 1963, ‘A psychiatrist’ writing on behalf of the Presbyterian Church of Australia,
and associated with the Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital in Annandale, NSW,
said:
All unmarried mothers are not delinquents, and certainly not libertines. How often they are looked upon as a lower order of human beings, as animals who live by their instincts…it is essential that the whole community be made aware of the real problem of these girls and made to realize that they are just human beings like themselves.
Children and adult prisoners
Incarceration of unwed mothers in maternity homes, babies removed at birth and kept in locked nurseries, refusal to allow the mother to leave the hospital until she signed an adoption consent (called 'social clearing' at Crown Street) - these are established facts of history.
See: Gone to a Good Home, story of Lily Arthur who was thrown in prison for being an unmarried pregnant woman.
Medical experiments
Medical experiments were performed both on mothers and their taken children.
International Family Remembrance Week will be launched on the 14th November 2011 to bring attention to harms wrought by the legal transference of filiation through adoption legislation. Filiation is the fact of being a son or daughter of a given parent and is a relation which can be said to form a new branch of society; hence, the symbol of the Family Tree.
