{"id":165210,"date":"2012-02-29T12:30:22","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=165210"},"modified":"2012-02-29T12:30:22","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:30:22","slug":"australia-must-apologize-to-mothers-and-children-parliamentary-inquiry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/02\/29\/australia-must-apologize-to-mothers-and-children-parliamentary-inquiry.html","title":{"rendered":"Australia Must Apologize to Mothers and Children: Parliamentary Inquiry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australian governments must formally apologize to mothers and children who were victims of past forced adoption practices, a parliamentary inquiry has recommended, the <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sbs.com.au\/news\/article\/1630479\/Apologise-for-forced-adoptions:-inquiry\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Australian Associated Press<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> reports.<\/p>\n<p>Between the 1950s and 1970s, about 150,000 Australian unwed mothers had their babies taken against their will by churches and adoption agencies.<\/p>\n<p>The report by a Senate inquiry investigating the Commonwealth government&#8217;s involvement in past forced adoption practices was tabled in the upper house on Wednesday with 20 recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>The committee recommended a formal Commonwealth government apology, as well as similar statements from state and territory governments and non-government institutions involved.<\/p>\n<p>Australian Greens senator Rachel Siewert, who chaired the inquiry, broke down as she tabled the report. &#8220;This was a really hard, emotional inquiry,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>About 100 victims of past forced adoption practices were in the Senate public gallery. Many cried out and clapped during speeches.<\/p>\n<p>Liberal senator Sue Boyce said the inquiry took 18 months because of the sheer volume of information and people wanting to tell their stories.<\/p>\n<p>Labor senator Carol Brown said women had been tricked into signing adoption papers and physically shackled to hospital beds.<\/p>\n<p>She said the pain of women affected was &#8220;unimaginable&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Doctors, nurses and midwives showed no respect to these woman. They were taunted about their unwed status. Single-parent women were pushed toward adoption as their only legitimate choice, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Many nurses and social workers now looked back on the practices with anxiety.<\/p>\n<p>Catholic Health Australia admitted being involved in past forced adoptions and apologised to victims in July last year.<\/p>\n<p>Chief executive Martin Laverty encouraged other organisations to apologise and supported the recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We think they are concrete steps that can help those affected by past adoption practices move towards healing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This report that is many years in the making must now not sit on the shelf.&#8221;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australian governments must formally apologize to mothers and children who were victims of past forced adoption practices, a parliamentary&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":165172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[36151,13821,38751,38752],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}