{"id":383728,"date":"2026-07-02T15:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/383728\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T15:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:51:09","slug":"uk-apologizes-for-unwed-mothers-forced-adoption-policy-nbc-7-san-diego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/383728\/","title":{"rendered":"UK apologizes for unwed mothers forced adoption policy \u2013 NBC 7 San Diego"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Keir Starmer<\/a> formally apologized Thursday for the British state’s role in separating tens of thousands of unmarried mothers from their babies, a practice that lasted for decades until the 1970s.<\/p>\n

He said in Parliament that \u201cwe are deeply and profoundly sorry\u201d for what he called a \u201cstain on our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 185,000 babies of unmarried mothers were adopted in England and Wales between 1949 and 1976. Campaigners have fought for years for acknowledgment that women were pressured, deceived and threatened into giving up their babies.<\/p>\n

Starmer met Thursday with a group of campaigners, who watched from the public gallery of the House of Commons as he delivered the apology. <\/p>\n

He said that women were \u201ccoerced, bullied or misled into feeling that they had no choice but to have their children taken away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren grew up believing they were unwanted\u201d and mothers were told \u201ctheir babies would be better off without them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo every one of those affected we say a deep and heartfelt sorry,\u201d said Starmer, who is his fina<\/a>l<\/a> weeks<\/a> as Britain\u2019s leader.<\/p>\n

Alongside the apology, he announced support for affected mothers and children, including better access to adoption records and mental health support.<\/p>\n

Apology follows others from Scotland, Wales and Church of England<\/p>\n

Britain is one of several countries reckoning with the legacy of social norms, religious practices and government policies that heaped shame on unwed mothers, hid them away in institutions while pregnant and took their children to be adopted by married couples.<\/p>\n

Ann Keen, a former U.K. health minister whose baby was taken for adoption in 1966 when she was 17, said the apology was part of \u201cbeing released from my shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need this apology, because we have always been accused of giving up our babies, and we didn\u2019t give them up,\u201d she told the BBC. \u201cWe\u2019ve now got the opportunity to really put this wrong right.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, Parliament\u2019s Joint Committee on Human Rights said the British state should apologize for \u201cthe pain and suffering caused by public institutions and state employees that railroaded mothers into unwanted adoptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The semiautonomous governments in Scotland and Wales issued apologies the following year, but the Conservative U.K. government at the time declined to follow suit, saying that \u201cthe state did not actively support these practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Starmer said forced adoptions were the result of “practices embedded within systems\u201d across local government, religious institutions and the health and social care systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state bears responsibility for the systems it funded and legitimized which enabled these practices to occur,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The apology from Starmer\u2019s Labour Party government comes two weeks after the Church of England said sorry <\/a>for its role in forced adoptions.<\/p>\n

Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally said that \u201cwe are profoundly sorry for the pain, trauma and stigma experienced \u2014 and still carried \u2014 by many people because of historical adoption practices in homes affiliated to the Church of England.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other countries have also apologized for forced adoptions<\/p>\n

In 2013, Australia\u2019s then-Prime minister, Julia Gillard, delivered a landmark national apology for the country\u2019s history of forced adoptions and the \u201clifelong legacy of pain and suffering\u201d it had caused.<\/p>\n

Ireland has been reckoning with the legacy of mother-and-baby homes run by the Catholic Church, in which tens of thousands of women were housed in often degrading conditions. An inquiry found in 2021 that 9,000 children had died in 18 mother-and-baby homes during the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Miche\u00e1l Martin apologized for the \u201cprofound and generational wrong\u201d visited upon mothers and their babies who ended up in the institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Keir Starmer formally apologized Thursday for the British state’s role in separating tens of thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,41259],"class_list":["post-383728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}