Nina Lopez points to adoptions occurring against the wishes of birth families, while one reader recalls how their sister was forced to give up her baby. And John Peniket says it was the prevailing social attitudes to sex and childbirth that were to blame
Gaby Hinsliff (The UK’s forced adoption scandal was state-sanctioned abuse, 27 May) draws an important parallel between the adoptions forced on single mothers between the 1950s and 1970s, the Rochdale, Windrush and Grenfell scandals, and preventable Covid-19 deaths. She points to “state-sanctioned abuse” of people “dehumanised in the eyes of officialdom”.
But she seems unaware that forced adoptions have not stopped. Of about 3,500 adoptions a year, 90% are against the will of the birth family. They are hidden by a closed family court system that was found to be ridden with sexism, racism and classism by the government’s review of harm in the family courts’ treatment of domestic violence.
