What Ireland is only now beginning to fully investigate and understand is a story involving potentially thousands of children who were almost certainly neglected and mistreated, and whose deaths were addressed as a mere trash disposal issue. It is now believed a total of upwards of 4,000 children were similarly disposed of in other homes across the country. It's a story of untold even higher numbers of children who were unwitting subjects in a vaccine test that further refused to see them as human beings, capable of fear and pain. And an interesting insight into why so very children may have been so casually treated and tossed away was revealed in a recent feature on the scandal in the Independent. Babies born to unwed mothers – and this, let it be noted, would have included mothers who were raped – "were denied baptism and, if they died from the illness and disease rife in such facilities, also denied a Christian burial." In other words, the Catholic institutions that these women and their children were forced to turn to as their only refuge viciously turned their backs on them -- treating them, quite literally, as garbage. This is abuse of the highest order. Abuse in life, abuse in death. Carried out by religious orders so warped, so perverted in their utter lack of mercy that they participated in the suffering of an unfathomable number of babies and children. This is what the Catholic church of Ireland is capable of, when it is given free reign over the bodies of its most vulnerable members. And an official inquiry hasn't even begun. As Michael Dwyer told the Mail this weekend, "What I have found is just the tip of a very large and submerged iceberg."

I want to focus on, so I always wind up just posting the link.

Then again, I don't start too many threads. This whole thing in Ireland has me so upset that I feel the need to post about it. The mainstream media in the U.S. isn't covering the story. And yes, I do think that this should be receiving international coverage, arguably leading off the news.

and then, when I see it pasted into the OP, make a quick decision on which three (the limit) are best, and delete the others. Just put "snip ...." to show it is missing a bit between paragraphs. A LOT of people do not click on links, and only skim.
Good article- thanks for posting it!!

to include some of the article.

I hope it looks OK. Could you let me know if you think I should change the appearance or text format?

I never touch the quoted material myself except to put quotes around the part I copy.
What a horrible bit of info, those poor babies. Horrible to think that's the church my parents grew up in. No wonder they had a big fear of god.

Before modern medicine millions of children died from disease and medical complications. That is why parents would have up to five children because often time many of their children died.

~snip~

There has been a widespread call for a full inquiry into the fate of the children of not just the Home but other similar institutions across the country, including a recent public petition that quickly garnered over 30,000 signatures. This week Enda Kenny has announced a special commission of investigation into the homes, including the high death rates, the burial practices, the vaccine trials and illegal adoptions. It is to be an inquiry into “the kind of country Ireland was, the kind of country where women in particular were the focus of shame and suppression” and out-of-wedlock children “were deemed to be an inferior sub-species.” An inquiry long overdue and utterly essential. Ignoring the misdeeds of the past doesn’t make them go away. And when you try to bury them, eventually, they’re found anyway.

~much more @ link~
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/11/the_pathetic_scramble_to_rationalize_the_irish_babies_scandal/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow


I read an article from an Irish newspaper yesterday when one of the survivors tells of the conditions. Meanwhile, I am biting my lip to meet your post with civility.

This scandal is shocking, but not surprising, if that makes any sense.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/columnists/gerard-howlin/our-public-anger-is-the-incoherent-expression-of-our-private-shame-271620.html
Very interesting article about how the oppression of women within the society and church manifested itself by what happened in these "mother and baby" homes.

Ireland still has a long way to go in terms of reproductive rights.
http://www.nwci.ie/discover/what_we_do/womens_right_to_health/reproductive_rights

This topic should be important to DUers as it is about reproductive rights, women's rights, and ultimately human rights.

my Grandmother was eight years old in Oklahoma City, OK when several diseases swept through the city and over 1,000 children died.

These women and children were used as human guinea pigs in medical research. One of the homes had two outdoor toilet facilities for the children that were overflowing.

The children who were deemed to be less marketable were neglected and malnourished which is why so many died of malnutrition. One person investigating just before the laundries were closed reports of putrefied diarrhea in the diapers of babies.

This was systematic abuse and neglect because these women and their children were seen as sub-human.

Is that from The Mail or do you have a reputable link?

Records from mother and baby homes passed to child and family agency
Children in homes were used in scientific experiments

^^^audio available @ link provided^^^

~snip~

Earlier, Newstalk revealed that experimental drug trials were conducted on 298 children across 10 mother and baby homes during the 1960s and 70s.

Three trials were conducted at homes at Bessborough in Co. Cork, St. Peter's in Westmeath, St. Clare's in Stamullen, and The Good Shepard in Dunboyne - both Co. Meath - as well as six Dublin homes.

The research was carried out between 1960 and 1976.

In one of the trials, 80 children became unwell after they were allegedly given a vaccine intended for cattle as part of an experiment run at five care homes and orphanages in Dublin during the mid 70s.

~more, including audio, @ link~

http://www.newstalk.ie/shows/47.305.358/26433/0/


This isn't about bashing the Catholic Church. This is about the results of a society shaming women.

The mindset is sickening. And just as Tuskegee was rooted in racism, this was rooted in misogyny. And the misogyny ran so deep that even extended to their children.

And that is exactly how single mothers and their children were thought of and treated during this time period~subhuman.

Misogyny kills, folks. Just as racism does.

Conducted on children by MIT and Quaker Oats.
In both cases, the children were chosen as subjects because they were powerless and devalued.

medicine. Defending tossing these babies away like refuse is repulsive. Shame on the church.

Try again.

IOW, the mortality rate can not be explained away as just what was typical of the times.
Even in a country with a high mortality rate such as Ireland in that era, the death rates in these homes were extraordinarily high. When the country had a 7% death rate, the Sean Ross abbey rate was over 30%.

before posting such an uninformed opinion.

Women had children because there were no reliable means of birth control. There is a reason the baby boom ended in the early to mid-60's. It is called Griswald vs CT.

Google butterbox babies.

Besides being an unwed mothers home, it was the local maternity ward - for married couples.

In that home the babies were starved to death, if they were deemed unadoptable. Then either tossed into the ocean or buried in a butter crate. The babies were sometimes ripped from the mothers arms to be "adopted". Mothers were told their babies had died because they had already sold them to a waiting couple. There is no way to know how many babies were actually killed. That home was run by evangelical Christians.

I suspect many of the babies in the septic tank in Ireland suffered a similar fate.

The simple fact is, women and babies were thought of as expendable, devoid of human emotions.

The simple fact is women will face a similar fate if the religious right get there way with outlawing birth control and abortion.
I guess the church would rather kill the born babies outright, themselves.

Or is he too busy washing feet and driving around in his shitbox Renault?

Sid

Let's make all women have babies by not allowing abortion, so that we can throw them away in the septic tank. That is cruelty of the worse kind.

wow. just. wow.

the Catholic Church in Ireland; these humans were treated as animals, at best. May their agony and misery shame the Catholics in that country.

He will continue to assert his moral authority to judge all others. Hewill continue to attack good gay parents while his own organization will continue to pillage and do harm.

Every time I hear another horrific story about the Catholic Church in Ireland, I keep thinking it was common knowledge to the people in power what the church was about. And the people knew as well. Sinead certainly did.
What nightmares. I don't think it's possible to shame the Catholic Church. Fundamentally they are all about patriarchy and power, dressed up in robes. carrying a cross, and blaspheming the concept of a higher power. Let's not forget where the money came from. It started as a reign of terror, burning women and taking their assets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Scoop_Era
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixties_Scoop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_adoption_in_Australia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

associated with the home from public and thus documented 796 deaths; (2) Barry Sweeney says he and a friend, playing in the area in 1975 when he was about ten years old, found about 20 skeletons under a 1.2 x 0.6 square meter concrete slab there; and (3) there is archival evidence of a sewage tank somewhere in that area, before public services were connected in 1937

The larger site had been the public work-house since 1840 or before, and it apparently remained a county institution funded by public monies even after it became the Home staffed by Bon Secours. It's certainly possible the area in question has been used as a burial ground, though the current state of knowledge is very limited

A surprising number of the deaths are from the WWII era, when it seems about 300 of the children died in four years