rattle his bones, over the stones, he's only a pauper whom nobody owns

The founding principle of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic was a promise to “cherish all children of the nation equally”. One wonders what the executed leaders of that rebellion would make of the fact that the greatest stains on our nation’s short history have been related to how the State and its instruments have treated the children who have needed its help most.

The church-related child abuse scandals, along with the stories of how children in State care were treated, brought with them a shock, a revulsion and a collective shame that has left an indelible mark on the more recent pages of Irish history. It is no coincidence that these revelations only came to light decades after they took place, such was the level of power within society and the ability to foster secrecy wielded by the perpetrators. If cherishing all children equally was to be a fundamental pillar of the new independent Irish Republic, it was one which crumbled rapidly in the decades that followed the founding of the State. Indeed, if you were a child born outside of wedlock during that period, being cherished or treated as equally as your counterparts born to married parents was as farfetched a notion as one could imagine.

The inner workings of Ireland’s notorious mother and baby homes have been well-documented in the past twenty years or so; these were places where unmarried pregnant women were sent to be kept out of sight, to reduce the shame on their families and to atone for their committed sins. In effect, they were prisoners, sentenced to penal servitude, worked hard (sometimes even up until such a point as they were in labour) and, after they gave birth, very little time was wasted in taking their baby from their arms and adopting them out to married couples, often in America. The fruits of these women’s labours were often a lucrative source of income for the religious orders running the institutions, both figuratively and literally. In many cases, prior to adoption, babies were used as test subjects by pharmaceutical companies who were trialling new vaccines. It can go without saying that these trials were carried out without the consent of the mother, whose incarceration in these homes robbed them of so many basic human rights. In a full-length film on tonight’s Prime Time, Katie Hannon investigates just how wide-spread this practise was; speaking to those on whom these experiments were carried out and examining the level of complicity of Ireland’s authorities. In addition to this, Prime Time discloses shocking new revelations about an outrageous and ghastly practise within the mother and baby homes that has until now remained hidden from the public, and even from those affected by it.

Adoption Rights Alliance strongly condemns use of deceased infants in anatomical experiments

bron Paddy Doyle

Adoption Rights Alliance, a group advocating for equal human and civil rights for those affected by Ireland’s closed secret adoption system, has strongly condemned the use of the bodies of deceased infants in anatomical experiments, as well as the use of children in Mother and Baby Homes in vaccine trials, as reported in RTÉ’s Prime Time programme on Thursday 6th October. The group says its helpline has been inundated with calls since the programme aired, with 50 calls alone coming in within the first half hour of the programme ending.

The medical practices exposed in the Prime Time programme demonstrated an utter contempt for children born outside of marriage, and for their mothers who were denied an opportunity to bury their children with dignity. These latest revelations reinforce our assertion that children who were born outside of marriage were viewed as “nobody’s children”, disposable and therefore reduced to the status of mere commodities to be used by church and state as they saw fit.

Questions must now be asked as to why previous inquiries, investigations and audits into organ retention practices failed to reveal the experimental use of deceased infants originally destined for adoption. In searching for the truth on medical experimentation and illegal vaccine trials, the whole truth of Ireland’s murky adoption industry must be sought, because if we do not fully own and acknowledge all of our nation’s history, there is little to prevent such abominations from happening again. Adoption Rights Alliance is calling on the Minister for Health and the Minister for Children to establish a statutory inquiry into these practices.

KLIK

The Prime Time programme also highlighted the extreme difficulties experienced by adopted people in accessing their records, including their medical information. In August 2011 Adoption Rights Alliance submitted legislative proposals to Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald calling for adoption information legislation, as well as recommendations for inquiries into illegal adoption practices and the treatment of women and girls in Mother and Baby Homes. The group is reiterating its call on Minister Fitzgerald to introduce adoption information legislation to open adoption records without delay. Ministerial expressions of regret are meaningless to adopted people without parallel remedial action to open adoption records immediately.

The Ryan, Murphy, Cloyne and Ferns reports were a damning indictment of the systemic abuse of children in church and state care and the systemic cover up of crimes committed by church/state institutions. It has been clear to those of us working in the areo a of adoption rights for more than a decade that church and state inhumanity also extended twomen and girls in crisis pregnancy and their children, whose only crime was to have been born out of marriage. The natural mothers seeking advice from Adoption Rights Alliance tell us that women and girls who resided at Mother and Baby Homes were routinely treated in a sub-human fashion, including being denied adequate medical care or pain relief while giving birth and forced into unpaid arduous labour. Other testimonies from our service users, both adopted people and natural parents, include forced adoptions, illegal adoptions, false birth registrations, non-registration of births, as well as disturbing accounts regarding the use of babies in vaccine trials. The news of the use of such children in anatomical experiments is just the latest – though incredibly disturbing – revelation.