Fact Sheet #21: CURING INFERTILITY

The first Adoption Act was passed in 1926 but childless couples influenced by the bad blood theory wouldn’t risk adopting an illegitimate baby, they preferred an older child whose health and level of intelligence could be established. The overwhelming majority of illegitimate babies were incorporated into the extended family and passed off as the motherless newborn of a distant relative, or the unmarried mothers sibling.

Born illegitimate and raised by grandparents the late author Catherine Cookson was typically unaware that her older sister was really her mother.

The plight of unmarried mothers changed dramatically when the 1945 Children Act stated it was in an illegitimate baby’s best interests to be brought up by its own mother and she should be helped to provide for it.

To ensure an unmarried mother without resources could keep and support her baby Government entitled her to the same National Assistance Benefits as widowed mothers with dependent children, on the grounds an unmarried mother was: ‘A person in need due to the care of a child and not in employment.’

Unmarried mothers were also entitled to rent and rate free housing, an additional allowance if baby was handicapped, priority nursery placement, and grants for pram, cot and bedding, but in spite of adequate Government provision unmarried mothers were in an extremely precarious position when the bad blood theory was debunked and infant adoption came into vogue after World War II.

End of war signalled a return to normality, everybody wanted to settle down and start families but there was no fertility treatment for those unable to conceive.

Infertile married couples had no hope of becoming parents until Britain’s Adoption Industry replicated the American innovation of ‘promoting infant adoption as a means of curing infertility in marriage.’

For the first time in adoption history babies were in demand, Adoption Agencies were inundated with applications from couples that wanted to adopt a normal healthy white baby, but few of those available met the criteria.

The scarcity of suitable babies seriously impeded the Adoption Industry’s plans until unmarried mothers were successfully targeted using illegal and unethical practices in an unprecedented scale.

They were lied to, told they had no rights, no entitlement to State Benefits, and had no alternative but surrender their babies for adoption. Unaware of the coercive methods used to procure normal healthy white babies infertile married couples adopted them at the rate of 600 per week in the 1960’s.

Today’s figure is less than 300 per year.

MP Dr. Peter Brand’s Statement to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, 3rd February 2000: “We owe those women an apology for not protecting them and allowing them to look after their own children.”

Copyright © Patricia Basquill, 2002 - 2008