The
pregnant 17-year-old was told that unless she signed the adoption papers
she wouldn’t get any help from the organization. Alone, scared, confused
and unaware of her basic rights, the girl signed the papers. Almost
immediately she regretted it, but saw no recourse.
On the day
she gave birth, she was put on the birthing table, and roughly told to
push and keep pushing. When the baby began to come out, a pillow was
placed between her head and her belly. All she knew of the baby’s
presence was its cry. She wanted to see and hold it but was too scared to
ask. They quickly took the baby out of the room, and she felt totally
alone, though there were people around her.
There had to
be; they still had to take the placenta out. But, if they said anything
to each other they didn’t once include her in their conversation. She was
seized by a terrible sense of loss, of despair, and she just wanted to be
swallowed by oblivion.
A scene of a
tear-jerking telenovela (soap opera) on Indonesian television? There was
a familiar ring to it and so feasible in Indonesian culture anywhere in
the country. But, no. It was a true story that took place in Australia in
the 1960s.
On March 21,
Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered an apology to some 250,000 mothers
and children affected by Australia’s forced adoption policy between the
1950s and 1970s.
Addressing
hundreds of victims who had come to Parliament House in Canberra, Gillard
said, “Today, this Parliament, on
behalf of the Australian people, takes responsibility and apologizes for
the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from
their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering.”
She then
announced that the government would provide A$5 million (US$6.5 million)
of funding to improve access to specialist support, records trading and
mental healthcare for those affected by forced adoption, and A$1.5
million for a special exhibition, a gesture of recognition for their
suffering.
The term
“forced adoption policy” may have led people to think that there was
actually such a policy in Australia. There was not. There was, rather, a
social convention that gave birth to the abominable practices.
Social
convention demands tidiness; one dictum being, young people marry before
they sleep together. Then, and only then, will they have children.
Nowadays, at least in Australia, while the dictum still exists, and is
considered preferable, some have begun to defy it and yet the world does
not come to an end.
However,
during most of the 20th century (probably barring the war years) through
the late 1970s, women who had children out of wedlock, known as
“unmarried mothers”, were regarded with a great deal of suspicion, and
seen as seriously lacking in morality, thus not the type whose society
you sought, or invited to your home, in case your children — particularly
your husband — became close to them.
They also
brought shame to their families. So, women would instinctively avoid
falling into that situation; so much so that if they did become pregnant,
to spineless boyfriends or in some cases irresponsible married men who
quietly returned to their respectable married lives, they would do their
utmost to hide the situation. If they had strong, supportive families,
they would count themselves lucky.
When a young
teenage girl became pregnant and her boyfriend showed no intention of
marrying her, it would be like a non-swimmer being thrown into the
merciless sea: nothing to hang on to, and unless she grabbed at
something, anything, fast, she would drown. Her family had either turned
her out, or she was too scared to tell them. So, most likely in
desperation, she’d go to one of the charitable houses she knew, run by
government or religious institutions.
Unfortunately,
while she may have received the help she immediately needed she was not
in a strong bargaining position. Almost without exception, girls who
found themselves in this situation were asked to sign papers
relinquishing their babies.
Many
naturally never recovered from the trauma of separation, though they
managed to keep it under the surface, and often their mental health
deteriorated.
In the 1980s,
a number of organizations concerned themselves with tracing the children
and reuniting them with their mothers. They discovered that the children
had not all fared well, either. Even those brought up in happy family
situations, upon discovering that they had been adopted — their mothers
had given them up — had lived with an inevitable sense of rejection until
they met face-to-face with their mothers (those who were lucky enough to
have the opportunity). The most often-asked question was, “Did you want
to give me up?”
This is not a
phenomenon peculiar to Australia. It can happen in Indonesia, or anywhere
else in the world, where a similar social convention still prevails.
Unfortunately, women are the hardest hit by the tyranny.
In many
cultures, men who have impregnated their girlfriends but are unable or
unwilling to marry them can generally go about their business with
impunity, even continue living in a respectable family situation if they
are already married.
With an
increasingly liberated media, Indonesia has gone a long way toward
understanding the tenets of basic human rights, and people are more
uncomfortable, and more willing to speak up when they see unfairness or
instances of blatant injustice. Would revisiting an unjust convention be
too much to ask? ●
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