Australia: Western Australian government apologises to unwed mothers

Submitted by Minuteman on Tue, 2010-10-19 07:08

Link to article here. Excerpt:

'A woman who was handcuffed to a bed, drugged and forced to give up her newborn baby for adoption says an official apology has helped her regain her "selfhood".

The West Australian government on Tuesday issued a public apology to women who had their babies taken from them by authorities from the 1940s to the 1980s because they were unwed.

WA is the first state or territory to issue such an apology.
...

Dr Hames said the apology was not about compensation for the mothers or a criticism of parents who adopted the children.

"What they (the mothers) say to me is not that they want compensation. It is that they want to have somebody recognise that what happened to them was wrong and, hopefully, will never ever happen again," he said.

Premier Colin Barnett was to move a motion in parliament on Tuesday acknowledging that previous government policies were unsupportive of pregnant, unmarried women and failed to help them.'

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Comments

This one of those "big picture" posts. Point here is this: For no compelling reason associated even with an ostensible "welfare of the child" argument, a government just decided that it was "inappropriate" for someone to *gasp* be in possession of their own child merely because of the circumstances of the relationship (in this case, this national paternity) into which the child came into being.

As many men know reading this site, it can and has happened to men numerous times. The government basically decides the kid is not really yours even if you are a perfectly good mom/dad/couple and seizes him or her. Once they have and hold this power, no one, not even law-biding people, are safe from their own elected government. The problem of over-reaching governments is, IMO, an MRA issue.

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2010-10-19 11:58