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Media: Julia Gillard offers national apology over forced adoptions in Australia

  • 21-03-2013 12:11pm
    #1
    The_Conductor
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 32,286 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    Links:

    News.com.au
    UK Guardian Newspaper
    Live video link to apology (compliments of the Sydney Morning Herald) (edit- video link now dead, url changed to include the photo gallery from the press conference)
    And from World crunch

    PRIME Minister Julia Gillard will apologise on behalf of the nation today for the "cruel, immoral and shameful'' forced adoption of 250,000 babies taken from their mothers.

    The Prime Minister will announce $11.5m in funding to help Australians affected by forced adoptions find their birth families, and for mental health workers to provide better care.

    In a historic speech to be delivered in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Ms Gillard will describe the bond between a mother and her baby as "the most primal and sacred bond there is''.

    "We can declare that these mothers did nothing wrong,'' Ms Gillard will proclaim. "That you loved your children and you always will.

    "And to the children of forced adoption, we can say that you deserved so much better.

    "You deserved the chance to know, and love, your mother and father.''

    A Senate inquiry found last year that up to 250,000 babies were taken from their mothers - most of them young and unmarried - between the 1950s and 1970s, and adopted out.

    Ms Gillard will promise that ''no generation of Australians will suffer the same pain and trauma that you did''.

    "The cruel, immoral practice of forced adoption will have no place in this land any more,'' she will say.

    "This story had its beginnings in a wrongful belief that women could be separated from their babies and it would all be for the best.

    "Instead these churches and charities, families, medical staff and bureaucrats struck at the most primal and sacred bond there is - the bond between a mother and her baby.''

    Ms Gillard will describe the apology as "a profound act of moral insight by a nation searching its conscience''.

    "It will stand in the name of all Australians as a sign of our willingness to right an old wrong and face a hard truth,'' she will say.

    Even though words cannot "give back childhoods that were robbed of joy and laughter'', the Prime Minister will tell her audience, "by saying sorry we can correct the historical record.''

    "We are a great nation but we must also be a good nation,'' she will say.

    "What we see in (the) mirror is deeply shameful and distressing, a story of suffering and unbearable loss.''

    All states and the ACT have already made formal apologies.

    Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/prime-minister-julia-gillard-offers-national-apology-for-forced-adoptions-f-says-sorry-for-forced-adoptions/story-fncynjr2-1226601952756#ixzz2OAvRZQkk


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