Madam, – The Rev Con McGillicuddy (November 2nd) could not have more inappropriately commented on a topic, nor could he have got it more wrong. And I note his address as Grace Park Road, Drumcondra: site of the High Park Magdalene Laundry, where thousands of women were given no choice, options or freedom in their lives.
What Rev McGillicuddy fails to understand is that his own church (along with society) condemned, shamed, and coerced thousands of women into relinquishing children to adoption, often illegally. Ireland’s past history of adoption is fraught with deception, fraud, stigma and shame – both in-country and intercountry. Children and women were routinely subjected to violations of their rights through unethical vaccine trials as well as improper and illegal relinquishments. Its practice of incarcerating women and young girls in laundries is equally shameful and documented evidence details a legacy of human rights violations, including slave labour.
As one of more than 2,000 children exported from Ireland to the US for adoption from the 1940s to the 1970s, and as the daughter of a woman consigned to the Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry at Waterford for 10 years, Father Con’s comments chill me to my core.
The new adoption legislation is flawed. It continues the abrogation of adopted adults’ rights to identity and the documents of their birth; rights every other Irish citizen enjoys. It fails to address or regulate the horrendous post-adoption services provided to now-adult adopted people by many of the very agencies who brokered their adoptions.
The good reverend also seems not to understand that adoption is not about providing children for homes that desire them, but about finding homes for children who desperately need them, and without stripping away the child’s heritage, identity and rights. In other words, in the best interest of the child – not the prospective adoptive parents. But then again, the subjugation of women and children has always been a business model for the church, and a very profitable one at that. – Yours, etc,