Forced Adoption: A Mother's Painful Journey

0:00I'm Cory with the story, and this is your pulse of the city, Sydney News Today. A 75-year-old Australian woman is sharing her painful story of forced adoption from 1971 when hospitals routinely took. Babies from unwed mothers, between 1950 and 1975, up to 250,000 infants were separated this way across the country. At Crown Street Women's Hospital in Sydney, at least 858 single mothers lost their newborns that year alone. Abandoned multiple times by her father as a child, the young teen got pregnant by an older man who denied responsibility. After a traumatic breach birth, nurses blocked her view of her healthy baby girl and declared her award of the state for adoption. Despite her pleas, she was moved to another facility, drugged, and pressured to sign consent papers without real choices or support. These practices caused deep, lifelong trauma for thousands of mothers, with many facing coercion and isolation. A 2000 inquiry in New South Wales called the denial of access to newborns, unlawful, and

1:05the lack of adoption alternatives, unethical, confirming. Lasting suffering from threats and manipulation. Over the years, she reconnected with her daughter after 26 years through a matching agency, though official records erased her existence. Recently, hospital files revealed her father's signature, approving her prenatal care he knew but offered no help, another abandonment. Australia has reckoned with this dark chapter through state and national apologies in 2012 and 2013, acknowledging the betrayal of. Vulnerable women. Her grief endures. A reminder that society must remember and support those scarred by these injustices.