Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
It is an agonizing story, and a book has been written about it and a movie was also recently made about it. The story I am referring to is the story of Philomena Lee who at the age of 19 gave birth to a baby boy, out-of-wedlock, at the Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary, in Ireland. If you are unfamiliar with the story, Philomena became pregnant out-of-wedlock after being raised in a convent after her mother died at the age of 6. Her father kept 3 boys at home and put Philomena and her two sisters in the convent because he was unable to care of all of them.
After she left the convent at age 18, she became pregnant and was sent to the Sean Ross Abbey where her son was born and three years later, was adopted and moved to America. If you have seen the movie or read the book you know what happened to her son, who she never saw alive again. But the story of Philomena is not the main focus of this article. Philomena was one of thousands of Irish women who were forced by religious beliefs and societal pressures to hide their “sin”. However, what happened to some of the children who did not get adopted?
If the idea of watching your 3-year-old son being driven away from you is not horrifying enough, a recent disclosure out of Ireland exemplifies what happened to many of the children born out-of-wedlock and forced to live in these religious orders homes. “The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child abuse after a researcher found records for 796 young children allegedly buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.
The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that the former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children” Reader Supported News Evidence indicates that the septic tank was renovated to be used as a burial crypt.
We have to remember that this sad find was uncovered by a researcher and not disclosed by the Irish Catholic Church or officials from the religious order that ran the home. It is also important to note that this is just one of the many church run mother-child homes run in Ireland.
The Church or the religious orders that ran these institutions were considered the place of last resort for these women who, in most cases, were too poor to go elsewhere or to buy themselves out of the arrangement. Unfortunately, the homes were not maintained just for charitable reasons. It seems that the homes were paid by the government for each mother and each child being taken care of and then there were the adoption “fees”.
“Such was the power of the church, and of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, that the state bowed before its demands, ceding responsibility for the mothers and babies to the nuns. For them it was not only a matter of sin and morality, but one of pounds, shillings and pence. At the time young Anthony Lee was born, I discovered that the Irish government was paying the Catholic church a pound a week for every woman in its care, and two shillings and sixpence for every baby. And that was not all.
After giving birth, the girls were allowed to leave the convent only if they or their family could pay the nuns £100. It was a substantial sum, and those who couldn’t afford it – the vast majority – were kept in the convent for three years, working in kitchens, greenhouses and laundries or making rosary beads and religious artefacts, while the church kept the profits from their labour. ” The Guardian
The women and their children were money makers for the religious orders and the Church. The adoption fees at the time were reported to be in the range of $2000-$3000 dollars which during those days was a large amount of money. I wish I could say that this was the end of a horrible story. However, if the above abuses were not enough, it has now been reported that at various mother child homes, secret and illegal drug testing was done on the children in residence there!
“Michael Dwyer, of Cork University’s School of History, found the child vaccination data by trawling through tens of thousands of medical journal articles and archive files. He discovered that the trials were carried out before the vaccine was made available for commercial use in the UK.
Homes where children were secretly tested included Bessborough, in Co. Cork and Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, both of which are at the centre of the mass baby graves scandal. Other institutions where children may also have been vaccinated include Cork orphanages St Joseph’s Industrial School for Boys, run by the Presentation Brothers, and St Finbarr’s Industrial School for Girls, run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
In Dublin, it is believed that children for the trials came from St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, St Joseph’s School for Deaf Boys, Cabra, and St Saviours’s Dominican Orphanage. But Mr Dwyer said: ‘What I have found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg.
‘The fact that no record of these trials can be found in the files relating to the Department of Local Government and Public Health, the Municipal Health Reports relating to Cork and Dublin, or the Wellcome Archives in London, suggests that vaccine trials would not have been acceptable to government, municipal authorities, or the general public.
‘However, the fact that reports of these trials were published in the most prestigious medical journals suggests that this type of human experimentation was largely accepted by medical practitioners and facilitated by authorities in charge of children’s residential institutions.'” Reader Supported News
I realize that when all of these alleged travesties occurred the world was a different place for women and their babies born out-of-wedlock. However, why did it take researchers, through countless hours of research and the living victims of these mother child homes going public to uncover the truth?
I would assume that one of the questions the current Irish government will be asking is if these secret vaccination tests resulted in payments to these very same religious orders and the Irish Catholic Church.
I would think the Catholic Church of Ireland would have been doing its own research to try to get to the bottom of its seamy and relatively recent history. I wonder why not?
When Philomena Lee’s son returned to Sean Ross Abbey in the late 1990’s and suffering from an illness that would soon take his life, he pleaded with the Sisters at Sean Ross Abbey to tell him who his birth mother was and to help him find her, they rejected his plea. Maybe he didn’t offer enough money?
Philomena Lee has been able to forgive all of those who hid the truth from her and her son. I admire her ability to forgive, but at the same time, I don’t know how anyone could forgive these transgressions that went on for decades. And how many other mothers like Philomena and their sons and daughters are still searching? Shameful.
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Know it All’s should watch it and learn and then they wouldn’t make fools of themselves.
Who the hell is going to watch an hour reality show? LOL!
Spinelli are there fake PIs?
You can get nitrous oxide from a tech in a dental office. All they do is put a mask on you.
http://youtu.be/hPtn5-An-rs
Watch for yourself. And when it comes to the States it will be the labor and delivery nurses that will be setting up and giving the hand held gas delivery system to the laboring woman, which she then holds herself. An anesthiologist isn’t going to be sitting in the labor suite holding it up to the woman’s lips.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/01/laughing_gas_for_labor_could_nitrous_oxide_be_the_next_big_thing_in_american.html ”
“I learned about nitrous oxide not from my doctor or WebMD, but rather by watching PBS’s Call the Midwife. The show is based on the memoir of a 1950s midwife and her team in London. In one episode, a patient pleads with the midwives to “bring me the gas!” A midwife runs to the car and grabs a tank and mask, and after a few puffs the woman in labor looks euphoric. My first thought was they’re going to kill the baby! Unable to cope with the suspense I immediately Googled “gas during labor.” The search results revealed that I was watching my ideal analgesic: nitrous oxide, commonly referred to as “nitrous.”
Nitrous does not eliminate pain, as an epidural does; women report that nitrous makes them care less about the pain.
Nitrous does not eliminate pain, as an epidural does; generally women report that nitrous makes them care less about the pain. “I felt the pain but I was able to distance myself from it,” is how Shauna Zurawski, a new adopter who used it during the birth of her son last year, described it to me.
Because it doesn’t block pain, nitrous allows women to maintain control during labor. “You can still move around, you can also use it in a tub,” says Fletcher Wilson, obstetrician at Monadnock Community Hospital (MCH) in Peterborough, N.H., which recently started offering the gas to obstetric patients. Other plusses: Nitrous has not been associated with prolonged labor, it can be used at any time during labor, it does not require an IV.”
Are there LPN anesthetists?
Oh what a tangled web we weave.
Obsessive even.
http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/index.cfm/search-for-guides-reviews-and-reports/?pageaction=displayproduct&productid=1230
Karen, you have no idea what I’m talking about do you? You are so busy trying to prove twighlight sleep is horrible that you are not reading what I’m writing. My point is, ONCE AGAIN, that nitrous oxide gas was readily available back in the 20’s , 30’s, 40’s , 50’s and even the 60’s. It was inexpensive and safe and it could’ve been offered to the laboring girls. Now if you wan t continue a one side conversation about twighlight sleep, be my guest. You have stopped making any sense at all. I don’t find that funny, I find it odd.
Then why bring up the straps, thrashing, and semi-consciousness, which was NOT part of the pain management conversation, but rather the TS?
You’re too funny!
Annie – then why do you keep explaining other reasons for leg straps and thrashing? This is the funniest non-conversation I’ve ever had!
Paul:
“during my father’s time they were NOT allowed in the delivery room.”
I was born in a military hospital. No fathers had EVER been allowed to attend a delivery in its history. My dad was the first one. When it comes to my mom, my dad moves mountains. He even moved red tape in a military hospital. I’ll have to ask him if he was allowed to wear his sidearm on base back then. Because I have no idea how he managed to stay with her.
Karen! For pity sake, I am not talking about twilight sleep AT ALL! How can I possibly make myself clearer? Dang why are you so fixated on twighlight sleep? I am comparing NOTHING to twilight sleep, but merely talking about pain relief in laboring women.
In the old days, women had “natural childbirth”, often at home.
Women who could afford it had the Twilight Sleep, and thought (wrongly) that they had a pleasant delivery. They also did not realize their babies often had to be revived.
So obviously poor women, such as unwed mothers, would not be offered expensive anesthesia deemed a luxury.
Again, it’s amazing what passed for normal for the medical community.
Good lord Paul. There are things called standing orders and nurses are allowed to follow the standing orders. Do you think that nurses call the doc for every single thing? If the doc leaves standing orders the nurse better damn well not call him and bother him.
Annie – I am finding no place that says that nurse administer anesthetics, especially gases of any type other than oxygen.
Good grief Paul really this is getting nutty.
This might be a helpful reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_anesthetist
But I defer any questions to the medical professionals. They know more than I do about this.
Darren – I was aware of this professional qualification, but Annie was making the claim that any nurse off the floor could do it.
Paul – you are right. That is why anesthesiologists completed their speciality.
You keep explaining ways in which women will thrash, kick, and scream that is not Twilight Sleep. And you keep insisting you are not talking about TS.
What I was talking about is the wild hallucinations caused by TS. I said it was horrific that TS was deemed acceptable by the medical community.
I am NOT talking about women in natural childbirth who get overcome. I am not talking about modern sedatives. I am not talking about ether. Or Nitrous.
So if you are not talking about TS, please stop bringing up other things that you seem to be comparing with TS.
The good nuns could’ve offered gas to the laboring women.
http://americanpregnancy.org/labornbirth/spinalblock.htm
Paul, your mother had a saddle block, also known as spinal block, different than an epidural, which weren’t used regularly until much later. When I had my children the thing was natural childbirth and even saddle blocks weren’t offered.
Karen, it depended entirely the hospital, my husband was there in the delivery room with me also. I was NOT talking about twighlight sleep in any way shape or form. I was talking about the use of gas,nitrous oxide which was available from 1881 onwards and used regularly. No thrashing or hallucinations with gas, because of the gas itself. Watch “Midwives” on BBC, not “The Midwives”. Although a woman in transition will thrash, swear, hit, kick, vomit and even scream with perfectly natural childbirth. It all depends on the woman.
annie – whatever they gave her made her a happy camper.