Catholic pressure on unmarried mothers continued into 1980s
The Catholic Church continued to pressure unmarried mothers into giving up their babies for adoption well into the 1980s, despite this practice supposedly being ended by the Adoption Act 1976, The Mail on Sunday has revealed. Julia Macklin, now 60, says her Catholic parents and parish priest forced her to give up her daughter for adoption in 1983 when she was 15, using threats against her father's teaching career to secure compliance. This matters because it extends the known timeline of Britain's forced adoption scandal beyond the period officially recognised by government, and beyond the scope of a recent apology from the outgoing Prime Minister.
Around 250,000 forced adoptions took place before 1976, and Sir Keir Starmer formally apologised in July to women affected up to that year, but this apology did not cover later cases like Macklin's. She gave birth to her daughter, Siobhan, in March 1983 at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, and the baby was taken for adoption by a Catholic couple through the Catholic Children's Rescue Society two weeks later; the pair were not reunited until 2001, when Siobhan turned 18. Macklin, believed to be the first mother to speak publicly about being forced into adoption in the 1980s, is now seeking her daughter's adoption records, held by Salford City Council, to prove she was coerced, and has shared her story in a BBC documentary called Stolen Babies.
- Catholic Church pressured mothers into adoption into the 1980s, beyond legal cut-off
- Julia Macklin forced to give up daughter Siobhan in 1983 aged 15
- PM's apology to forced adoption victims excluded post-1976 cases like hers
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Julia Macklin was 15 when she became pregnant in the early 1980s, and says her Catholic parents and parish priest pressured her into giving up her baby daughter for adoption, threatening consequences for her father's job as a teacher if she refused. Her daughter, Siobhan, was born in Manchester in March 1983 and placed with a Catholic couple through a church adoption agency, with mother and daughter not reunited until Siobhan turned 18 in 2001.
This case matters because it challenges the assumption that forced adoption practices in Britain, driven partly by the stigma once attached to unmarried motherhood, ended with the Adoption Act 1976. Around 250,000 women are thought to have been pressured into giving up babies before that law changed, and this year the Prime Minister apologised to those affected, but only for cases up to 1976. Macklin's account suggests similar pressure continued into the following decade, beyond what has so far been officially acknowledged.
Macklin is now trying to obtain her daughter's adoption records from the local council to support her account, and has spoken publicly about her experience, including in a BBC documentary. Her case has drawn attention because she is believed to be among the first to describe this kind of coercion happening as late as the 1980s.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Macklin’s account suggests that coercive adoption practices continued after the 1976 Act, and that the official apology’s cut-off may leave later victims without recognition. Her case merits serious investigation, including access to records that could establish what happened and whether safeguards were followed.
The case against
A single account, however serious, does not by itself establish how widespread such practices were after 1976 or whether the adoption was unlawful under the rules then in force. Fair assessment should distinguish Macklin’s experience of pressure from what documentary evidence can show about the parish, the adoption process and the law, while avoiding conclusions before those records are examined.
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Originally published by Daily Mail as “Catholic Church forced unmarried mothers to put their babies up for adoption ‘into the 1980s’ despite law banning the practice”.