‘I was with my child for eight days when I gave birth at 17 before they forced me to give him up...’
Hundreds of women forced to give up their babies are fighting for an apology. Former MP Ann Keen is one of them. Cathy Owen reports
WHEN Ann Keen became pregnant aged 17 in 1966 she was “absolutely terrified” because she knew how society at the time viewed teenage pregnancies.
And her fears were justified when she was sent away from her home in Flintshire in shame to have her baby. Eight days after giving birth to her beautiful son, he was cruelly taken away from her because she was bonding too much with him.
Today, she and other young mothers are telling their story of how they were forced into giving up their babies for adoption in the 1950s, 60s and 70s in a bid to gain a government apology.
In those decades up to 250,000 women in Britain were made to hand over their babies because they were unmarried.
Many of the women had no more children and say the loss caused them to endure a lifetime of grief. They want the UK to follow Australia, which in 2013 was the first country to apologise for forced adoptions.
Telling her story, Ann, who went on to become a Labour MP, said she was scared about telling her family when she became pregnant.
“I was terrified to tell them, absolutely terrified, because I knew that they would be ashamed of me, they would be concerned, worried but ashamed, because that was the way it was viewed in that time,” she told BBC Radio Wales.
“I knew that I would be really in trouble because the word that was used was ‘don’t you bring any trouble here’. That was sex education at the time.”
Ann was told that there was no way she would be able to keep her baby.
“It wasn’t a discussion, it was a command,” she said. “It was discussed outside of my ears, I didn’t have any say. The age of majority was 21 at the time.
“It was something that had to be cleared up and I had to be sent away. It was all about shame, real big shame, and I felt burdened with that and therefore went along with whatever was asked of me. I was told what was going to happen.”
She was sent to Swansea and
Brecon Moral Welfare to have her baby, and she remembers how cruel the staff were to her while she gave birth without any form of pain relief.
“I wasn’t given any pain relief,” she says. “The midwife said ‘you’ll remember this, so you won’t be wicked again’.
“I was a bad person, a bad girl and you should be ashamed of yourself and you were treated in that way. It was so clinical, not like today.
“They were very strict and I was told that I couldn’t have any for the pain, so I was to stop making a fuss and get on with it.”
After her son was born she was initially not going to be allowed to see him, but a midwife took pity on her.
“I caught the eye of the midwife who looked at me to be kind and I took a big deep breath and said ‘please, please can I see him and have him with me?’” she recalls. “She came back to say yes. She said he was going to be adopted but I could have him for 10 days.
“I knew every hour of those days, but on day eight I went to the nursery and he wasn’t there and a midwife who had been in the labour room said he had gone because we were getting too close.
“She told me he was in that building across the way and that is where he will stay until his new mum comes.
“I went into the bathroom and she expressed the milk out of my breast and said ‘you will have no need for this’. It was humiliating. There was no dignity, no rights. I was 17 and forced to go along.”
Ann says that her case was typical of the time. Lawyers examining the birth mothers’ cases have focused on the period between 1945 and 1975 – before a change in adoption law – when around 500,000 babies were adopted in Britain, mostly from mothers who were under 24 and unmarried.
Their research suggests about half of those women faced sustained pressure to give up their babies from professionals, including doctors, midwives, workers in mother-andbaby homes and adoption staff in religious and council-run homes.
Ann, who has since been reunited with her son after he tracked her down, says she has gained huge strength from speaking to other mothers.
“Apology is exceptionally important,” she says. “I want my name cleared. I didn’t give my baby away.
“I chose to love the lovely people who adopted my son because they did nothing wrong.
“It is about who gave them that permission. How was it done and the affect on all of us and families and the children.”
Speaking about being reunited with her son, Ann says: “It was total infatuation at the beginning. I wanted to take him around and show my baby to everybody. That feeling was the same.
“I only had a short period of time when I heard he had found me. Less than an hour. I couldn’t believe it. Every emotion was racing through my body, excited, nervous.
“My lovely husband, who supported me, was so, so thrilled.
“He knew something was missing and couldn’t do anything about it.”