SITE NEWS: Two new articles Coercion: Evidence from Researchers Adoption Trauma: The Damage To Mothers

     Have you lost a family member to adoption? Origins Canada is here to support you. The grief, loss, and pain of adoption separation is forgotten by society, and those who suffer it often suffer in silence. We are a national support group and network that is here to support anyone separated by a family member by adoption.

The sad reality of unnecessary adoption ...

      Many mothers during "The Baby Scoop Era" (approx. from 1955 to 1985 in Canada) lost their newborns to adoption, often lacking support because they were young and unwed. Some were sent to unwed mothers "homes," which in some cases acted like "maternity prisons." For other mothers, their newborns were taken without notice and withheld from them by hospital staff at birth. Human rights were often violated. Some mothers today are being sold on promises of "open adoption," never being told of the lifelong consequences or that open adoptions can "close" at any time at the discretion of the adoptive parents.

     Many adopted persons grew up with not only the loss of parents, but also the pain of feeling "given up" or unwanted, their identities buried in government records. Our babies may have been unplanned but they were not unloved or unwanted!

      Origins Canada supports government inquiries into illegal, unethical, and inhumane adoption practices in Canada.

Separated from a family member by adoption? Looking for a support group? Join our Mothers Support and Action Group or Support for Mothers and Adoptees Group

A Call to Exiled Mothers

Our parent organization, Origins Inc., was founded in 1995 in Australia by a small group of mothers who, having lost their children to adoption, were being continuously re-traumatised each time so-called 'experts' and health professionals minimised and invalidated the severe emotional anguish, trauma, and grief left in the wake of our adoption experience, assuming that we, as mothers, should have accepted the loss of our living babies - as if it were possible to do that.  We are affiliated with Origins NSW Inc., Origins Victoria Inc., Origins Queensland, and The Baby Scoop Era™ Research Initiative.

Read these quotes for the truth about adoption:

"A grief reaction unique to the relinquishing mother was identified. Although this reaction consists of features characteristic of the normal grief reaction, these features persist and often lead to chronic, unresolved grief. CONCLUSIONS: The relinquishing mother is at risk for long-term physical, psychologic, and social repercussions. Although interventions have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness in preventing or alleviating these repercussions." Journal of Obstetric, Gynecological and Neonatal Nursing, 1999 Jul-Aug. pp.395-400.

"Every adopted child at some point in his development, has been deprived of this primitive relationship with his mother. This trauma and the severing of the individual from his racial antecedents lie at the core of what is peculiar to the psychology of the adopted child. ... The adopted child presents all the complications in social and emotional development in the own child. But the ego of the adopted child, in addition to all the demands made upon it, is called upon to compensate for the wound left by the loss of the biological mother". "Psychology of the Adopted Child," by F. Clothier M.D., in Mental Hygiene (1943)

" Unwed mothers should be punished and they should be punished by taking their children away." - Dr. Marion Hilliard of Women's College Hospital, Toronto. Daily Telegraph (November 1956)

"To the Province generally the great advantage and economy of the Adoption Act can be realized when it is stated that many of the children before their adoption were costing five and six dollars a week for maintenance." - 35th Report of the Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children (Ontario, 1928)

"... the tendency growing out of the demand for babies is to regard unmarried mothers as breeding machines...(by people intent) upon securing babies for quick adoptions." - Leontine Young, "Is Money Our Trouble?" (paper presented at the National Conference of Social Workers, Cleveland, 1953

". . . babies born out of wedlock [are] no longer considered a social problem . . . white, physically healthy babies are considered by many to be a social boon . . . " (i.e. a valuable commodity..). - Social Work and Social Problems (National Association of Social Workers, 1964)

"If the demand for adoptable babies continues to exceed the supply then it is quite possible that, in the near future, unwed mothers will be "punished" by having their children taken from them right after birth. A policy like this would not be executed -- nor labeled explicitly -- as "punishment." Rather, it would be implemented through such pressures and labels as "scientific findings," "the best interests of the child," "rehabilitation of the unwed mother," and "the stability of the family and society." Unmarried Mothers, by Clark Vincent, 1961)

. "The interaction . . . between the girl and her parents, is extremely complicated . . .The caseworker must . .. be decisive, firm, and unswerving . . . The 'I'm going to help you by standing by while you work it through' approach will not do. What is expected from the worker is precisely what the child expected but did not get from her parents - a decisive 'No!' It is essential that the parent most involved, psychologicially, in the daughter's pregnancy also be dealt with in a manner identical . . .in dealing with the girl. An ambivalent mother, interfering with her daughter's ability to arrive at the decision to surrender her child, must be dealt with as though she (the girl's mother) were a child herself." -- Casework papers 1960, National Conference on Social Welfare, "Out-Of-Wedlock Pregnancy In Adolescence" - Marcel Heiman, MD (1960)

The Adoption Irony: "In order to drive a car you must be of a certain age, to drink you must be a certain age, to have your own credit card or even your own bank account without parent signatures you must be a certain age - yet government allows very young vulnerable single mothers to sign a legally-binding document handing over their own flesh-and-blood, another human life, to complete strangers." - Claudia Ganzon, 2004.