"Faith-based" homes for unwed mothers. Bush's secret plan revealed!

When Bush spoke last night of his desire for "homes" for unwed mothers, did the extreme right cringe that he had let slip part of their plan for the aftermath of overturning Roe v Wade? Can't happen here? It happened in Ireland very recently.....


"From the front, the former Good Shepherd Convent in Cork looks like an exclusive private school, with a hidden history too heavy to tell. At the back of the convent, you can still see the skeleton of the washhouse, one of dozens of Magdalene institutions scattered across the countryside......"


(CBS) Someone once said the only thing really new in the world is the history we don't know. The Irish people are learning that right now and it's a painful experience.

It began five years ago when an order of nuns in Dublin sold off part of its convent to real estate developers. On that property were the remains of 133 women buried in unmarked graves, and buried with them was a scandal.

As it turns out, the women had been virtual prisoners, confined by the Catholic Church behind convent walls for perceived sins of the flesh, and sentenced to a life of servitude in something called the Magdalene laundries.

It sounds medieval, something that happened hundreds of years ago, but, in fact, the last Magdalene laundry closed just over two years ago. And as the story was firstly reported in 1999, revelations have shocked the Irish people, embarrassed the Catholic Church and tarnished the country's image......read on!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/08/sunday/main567365.shtml

Someone build a home for wayward Dominionists, and quick...

They'd like that. Women as chattel.

the disgusting war on women the Roman Catholic Church has waged for centuries, or their crocodile tears when they get caught.

and attempting to codify it into law with the help of the Republican Party.

My 78 year old mother remembers this place cause she had to bring pies to the nuns from home ec....it was all walled up and it had glass on the top of the walls to keep inmates from leaving.....they were incorrigibles....pregnant, runaways, etc.

Well, what a wonderful step backwards we have here, lock up pregnant youngsters and take their babies, like they did back then.

Have Mercy!!!!!

on us all.

You got a roof over your head, food, forced prayers, and your payment was your child when you gave birth. When out of wedlock pregnancy was a shameful thing, this looked like a great deal to a lot of families of pregnant teenagers. After the "home" took your child, you were discharged and allowed to return home to face the gossip surrounding your year absent from school. You were not allowed to mention it. You were certainly never allowed to grieve for your missing child.

I had a friend who did mention it.

This is one of the horrors that Roe vs. Wade ended for us. It also ended the parade of butchered, bleeding, dying women in emergency rooms who couldn't face being forced to bear a child in shame and secret and then having that child taken from them, never to be seen again.

People wonder why those of us who came of age in the 50s and 60s are so vehemently prochoice. This is why.

and they're still messed up from it! How different things were then. Our kids have no idea what we went thru. They take for granted our freedom. That freedom was not free for some. I don't mean ALL young people and it's not because they're bad or thankless young ones. It's just that they didn't have to go thru it.

are certainly wrapped up in some football-game mentality about elections that was created in year 2000. They know nothing of the consequences of their 'ideology', only that they 'win'.

their tune when they are drafted and shipped off to Iran and Syria next year.

My mother is 78 and I am a younger baby boomer, but she remembers the horrors of going to the Home of Good Shepherd and the time a girl tried to escape and was cut by the glass on top of the stone/brick wall.

It is a sickening tragedy.

in the early sixties and never spoke about it. It is so horrible that bush* thinks that is an acceptable thing to do! He is a monster. I went out and rented "The Magdalene Sisters". It was just horrible how those girls were treated.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2468993

and

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2472062

and

maybe * it is a 'faith based' bush family plan for his twins. Letting America know he has a protection plan just in case the abstinence discussion didn't take. The alcohol one went so well...

spellin' ain't my strong suit

I don't see society going back to maternity homes. Maybe some very far right folks would pack their pg daughter off to one but it seems doubtful even for them.

In a generation we went from pregnancy being a reason to be excluded from public school to public schools offering daycare for students' babies. Girls aren't sent away anymore; they stay at home and usually keep the baby. The world has changed.

http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLiberty.cfm?ID=16138&c=142

--This is an ACLU press release from July 2004--

DETROIT - The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today asked the state Supreme Court to hear the case of a Catholic man who was criminally punished for not completing a Pentecostal drug rehabilitation program, which prevented him from practicing his own religious faith. His request to be transferred to another program that would allow him to practice his own faith was denied and he was sentenced to six months in jail and boot camp.

"This man was punished for insisting on the right to practice his own religion and refusing to be religiously indoctrinated as a condition of a court order," said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. "The endorsement of any faith as well as the discouragement of any other is clearly a violation of the First Amendment."

Joseph Hanas of Genesee County, now 22 years old, pled guilty in the Genesee Circuit Court to a charge of marijuana possession in February 2001. He was placed in the county’s "drug court" for non-violent offenders, which allowed for a deferred sentence and possible dismissal of the charges if he successfully completed the Inner City Christian Outreach Residential Program.

Unbeknownst to Hanas when he entered the program, one of the goals of Christian Outreach was to convert him from Catholicism to the Pentecostal faith. According to ACLU legal papers, Hanas was forced to read the bible for seven hours a day and was tested on Pentecostal principles.

*******The staff also told him that Catholicism was a form of witchcraft and they confiscated both his rosary and Holy Communion prayer book. At one point, the program director told his aunt that he "gave up his right of freedom of religion when he was placed into this program." *******

Hanas was told that in order to complete the program successfully he would have to declare he was "saved" and was threatened that if he didn’t do what the pastor told him to do, he would be "washed of the program and go to prison."

After seven weeks of being coerced to practice the Pentecostal faith and receiving no drug treatment whatsoever, Hanas left Christian Outreach and requested reassignment to another facility. Despite his request, Judge Robert M. Ransom determined that he did not satisfactorily complete the drug court program and sentenced him to serve three months in jail and three months in boot camp. It was only after his release from boot camp that he finally received drug treatment at a secular residential rehabilitation program.

"I needed help," Hanas said Joe. "Instead I was forced to practice someone else’s religion."

Concern over government-funded religion, specifically in the administration of social service programs that may fire or refuse to hire employees if they are not of the same religion, has been increasing in recent years.

"This case underscores the danger of the state mandating participation in a religious institution," said Greg Gibbs, one of the ACLU cooperating attorneys working on this case. "Mr. Hanas’ free exercise of religion has been greatly jeopardized."

In addition to Moss and Gibbs, cooperating attorney Frank S. Ravitch and ACLU of Michigan Legal Director Michael J. Steinberg are representing Hanas.

I can only speak for western Pa. because that's where I grew up, but there were quite a few of Homes for Unwed Mothers there. I remember it being one of those hush hush subjects. When my dad would be driving us somewhere, my mother would lean over and point up to a large brich house and whisper...That's one of them homes for unwed mothers". As far as I know, all the babies were put up for adoption because it was a very bad stigma for someone to be raising a child and not be married. Of course it was also a really bad thing to be divorced too! People would whisper "she's a grass widow ya know!

Boy, another lifetime huh?