Anyone remember Magdalene laundries?

[culchiewoman]

11. Product of the Magdalene Laundries

Just to clarify, the scandal of the Magdalene Laundries (and the initial focus) was in the Republic of Ireland, not the UK. Although Magdalene asylums started in the UK and Ireland in the 18th c. under Protestant reformers, several RCC religious orders quickly seized on the benefit of the commercial aspect of the laundries and set up a model in the late 19th c. in Ireland that was far more punitive, long-term and far-reaching than the original Protestant models. The repercussions of these privately-run facilities (unlike Irish industrial schools, mother-and-baby homes and other residential institutions, the Laundries were neither inspected or regulated by the Irish State, although the State certainly remanded girls and women to them, through the courts system and from industrial schools) continue to this day, as many children born to women who experienced the Laundries (or were sent after their children were born) were adopted out, in Ireland as well as through an export scheme to the US that spanned the 1940's-1970's. I was one of those 'banished babies' and my mother spent 12 years in an industrial school, 10 years at the Magdalene Laundry in Sunday's Well, Cork and 2 years in the Cork mother-baby home where I was born.

In an ironic twist of fate, I also fell pregnant as a 17-yr old Catholic school senior in Philadelphia in 1977 and was also forced to relinquish my daughter. I am reunited with both my mother and daughter, thankfully, and work as an adoption rights advocate as well as co-founded Justice for Magdalenes, an advocacy group fighting for restorative justice and reparations for Magdalene survivors. The Philadelphia (where I live) Magdalene asylum, by the way, didn't close until the 1940's. Although like all other US, Canadian and UK laundries, it operated in a far less punitive fashion than the Irish Laundries. Much different model.

All of this unfortunately gives me an insider look at the current adoption industry and the war on women, and it isn't pretty. It isn't hard to connect the dots with the GOP/extreme right wing's manic efforts to control women's reproduction and any resulting offspring, and the current 'deficit' of healthy, white infants available for adoption. This once billion-dollar industry is under enormous strain and will do almost anything (including illegal child-trafficking from countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Vietnam, Cambodia, African nations and other vulnerable areas) to satisfy the insatiable demand for womb-fresh infants. During the "Baby Scoop Era" (post-WWII to the 1970's), there were plenty of relinquished infants to go around. No family would have their shamefully pregnant daughter raising their child! So the norm (as was the case for me in 1977) was to be sent off to a maternity home, quickly sign over your child (while still under the influence of mind- and mood-altering medications, hormonal influence, and post-partum depression). No mystery why Christo-fascist 'pregnancy crisis centers' are springing up near every Planned Parenthood or other women's health clinic...they desperately seek to coerce vulnerable, frightened young women into turning over their children for adoption. No woman should ever make an adoption plan while still pregnant. There are too many unknowns and mitigating factors -- high hormone levels leading to inability to make rational decisions (e.g. sign a relinquishment agreement), pressure from greedy adopters eager to claim the pre-born child as 'theirs', and agencies breathing/lying/cajoling down their necks to relinquish at all cost. And the cost is high...just ask anyone who's surrendered a child to adoption. Agencies will tell these women adoption 'guarantees a better life for their child.' Nothing could be further from the truth. It only guarantees a different life. Some may be better, but many are far worse. Money still trumps good, hard vetting of prospective adoptive parents, and unfortunately, too many paedophiles, abusers and just downright sick people have been given rights to some mother's child. People you wouldn't allow to adopt a goldfish much less a child.

And in the US (as is the case in Ireland), adult adopted people cannot access their original birth certificate in all but 6 states, a right enjoyed by even convicted felons. A right also enjoyed in the UK since 1976, Scotland since 1982 and many other more progressive-thinking nations.

So yes, if we don't want to see a return to Magdalene Laundries, baby-scooping and other female/human rights abuses, I suggest we all get to the polls in November!

For more information on the Magdalene Laundries and JFM's work, visit http://www.magdalenelaundries.com. For more information on US adoption history, reform and activism, visit http://www.bastards.org.

Oh, and please don't call these asshats "bastards". That just insults those of us who were truly born that way and are rather proud of our bastard status Or as I like to say, "I was born a bastard; what's your excuse?"