IRELAND
Irish Times
Padraig O’Morain
Mon, Jun 16, 2014
“When it came to the signing of the papers I remember being brought over to the room. There were two men and a big, big table. I knew I was signing the baby away but I was terrified not to sign it. I remember my hand was trembling and I think it was the cruellest thing.”
That is how one mother described to me, in an interview arranged by Barnardos in 1996, the process of signing her baby over for adoption.
Powerlessness and fear, combined with invisibility, are at the heart of the story of the mother and baby homes, of which we can expect to hear a great deal more in the near future. Remember that word “invisibility”. We have our own invisible people these days, but more of that later.
“It is fair to say that when a girl became pregnant outside marriage, she lost control of her life,” I wrote on a website I put up in the late 1990s to explain to adoptees abroad that their mothers had little choice in what happened to them. (The articles from this website are now on a section of my mindfulness website at padraigomorain.com)
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