Adopted as a baby, denied any information about her natural parents, Lohan has spent years fighting for the church and state to reveal what they know – about her and the thousands of others in the same position
A “destroyer of lives”. That is what a nun called adoption rights activist Susan Lohan when she sought answers from the religious order that brokered her adoption. Instead of being given the truth, Lohan was told not to ask questions. She was born in 1964 to one of thousands of unmarried mothers forcibly separated from their children – usually women who had no choice but adoption due to their circumstances. In the mid-60s in Ireland, up to 97% of all children born to unmarried mothers, like Lohan, were taken for adoption, mainly by the religious institutions and agencies that controlled social services and opposed reproductive choice.
On our drive to her home in Malahide, a coastal suburb of Dublin where she lives with her husband and son, Lohan reels off the heritage of her dog, Flynn, happily sprawled on the back seat. She laughs at the fact that her dog had documents to prove his ancestry but, as an adopted person, Lohan had to fight for decades to access her own birth information.
