Ireland’s Mother and Baby Home Survivors Were Protected — The Background Is Heavy

Ireland’s government has established legal protections and a redress scheme for survivors of the Mother and Baby Homes — institutions where unmarried mothers and their children were confined from the early 20th century through the 1990s. An estimated 9,000 children died in these institutions. Many were adopted without their mothers’ meaningful consent.

The protection of survivors is straightforwardly good. The background is not straightforward at all. These institutions operated with state knowledge and, in many cases, state funding. The Catholic Church ran them; the Irish state enabled them; the families of the women involved often delivered them. Assigning responsibility across this network of complicity is the work the redress scheme is attempting — imperfectly, as such attempts always are.

Analysis based on public reporting. Global Watch Japan.