CANADA: Too Many Cases to Ignore Despite Lack of Proof, January 27, 2008

EDMONTON JOURNAL
January 27,2008


Too many cases to ignore despite lack of proof
Anecdotal evidence gives ample cause for concern


The mountain of stories about birth mothers being tricked or coerced into adopting out their babies makes it clear there were abuses for decades, says a leading adoption researcher.

Adoptees and biological mothers from across Canada have told of their problems since The Journal reported this month on an Alberta woman who alleges she was falsely told her daughter had died at birth in the 1960s.

Most stories lack documentary proof, but researcher Michael Grand, a University of Guelph psychologist specializing on adoptions, says there are too many cases to ignore.

Grand, while not speaking of the Alberta allegation which is part of a lawsuit, says young, single mothers generally had no one to defend them.

The pressures to adopt out were immense in past decades, when single motherhood was taboo, he said in an interview from Guelph, Ont. The situation in Alberta was no different.

It's only in the past 25 years that abuses dropped off sharply, with changing attitudes, Grand said. Even in the past, there were biological mothers who were treated fairly and professionally.

"But I have to tell you that the stories just keep coming." He counts them in the hundreds.

Typically, victims were young, unmarried, from lower-middle or working class roots, with little chance of earning a living while raising a child, he said. Doctors and social workers once considered it best for the baby to be adopted.

"There are other cases that I've heard over the years of women who have been told that their babies have died. Or in the state of postpartum, where they've just given birth and under the effect of raging hormones, are told to sign (adoption) papers," he says.

"It's a process in which there was very little independent legal counsel or independent personal counselling of the young woman to look at the kinds of options that were available to her." A social worker may have worked with the birth mother, but they also would have worked with the people wanting to adopt the baby, Grand said.

"So many birth mothers have reported to me that they were not allowed to see the child," likely to prevent bonding.

"I wonder how many of those young women, if they had been able to see and hold their child, might have found the courage and means, in spite of the abandonment by everyone, to raise that child," he said.

"Everything was set up against them. The counselling beforehand, the actions that took place in the birthing room, the actions that take place right after in the hospital, and then eventually just being pushed out onto the street." An unmarried mother was seen as morally loose, he said.

"So no one ever seemed to be concerned about her best interest. The feeling was, the sooner the child was taken away from her, to a good middle-class white home, the better the child would be."


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