Long ago in Ireland young babies were taken from their unmarried mothers "for the good of both" and given to couples who desired children to bring up. There was no regulation, some babies were exported and frequently these irregular placements were made by members of the medical profession and the church.
The Adoption Act of 1952 began to regularise the situation but until the passing of the Act of 1998 private adoptions, after certain criteria had been applied, could take place. The new Act prohibits private adoptions except within the family. How, then, did the outrageous cases involving the babies of a girl of 17 and a young woman of 21 being taken for private adoption by a couple who run a pregnancy counselling service occur, apparently with the co-operation of a medical practitioner and a barrister, both of whom I regret to say are women?
The Adoption Act of 1998 did allow the Eastern Health Board to initiate a case swiftly to recover the children but on its own the law is not enough.
Anyone can set up a pregnancy counselling agency as the couple involved did in 1995. They have, from their own admission, been involved with about 2,000 cases.
Are there many more children involved than these two and where are they now? Surely, now, a register of these agencies is needed and the Minister should monitor their activities and ensure they are working within the law.
Until we have this, the health boards should publicise those agencies which they support or young women with crisis pregnancies will shy away from all agencies and head straight for England where a doctor who works in an abortion clinic told me years ago they are "emotionally and financially beyond counselling".
The action of the general practitioner who was involved in both cases is difficult to comprehend. Society allows doctors many privileges, one of which is self-regulation. But with privileges go responsibilities and one of these is to work within the law.
The doctor involved knew private adoptions were illegal, she was reminded of the fact by a public health nurse who dealt with one of the babies. The doctor must have had serious concerns about Ms A who was so terrified of bonding with her child that she wanted delivery by Caesarean section and not to see her new-born child.
The doctor discussed the case with various medical friends who, to quote her, "share her interest in life issues". All advised counselling for the girl. Did she really think the man who ran the agency and proposed to adopt the child was an adequate counsellor?
She admits the couple told her they proposed to adopt Baby B and she examined Ms B at their instigation. Was there no ethical conflict of interest here regarding her patient, Ms B in this case, and her friends who ran the agency and wanted to adopt the child?
The Medical Council ethical guidelines advise doctors to note the legal position in relation to the placing of children for adoption and that they should encourage pregnant women thinking about adoption to contact an adoption agency. This did not happen with either girl.
My great hope, with the increased number of women in medicine, is that women's problems and difficult situations such as this would get a more concerned response than the paternalistic attitude of which many have accused the medical profession in the past.
My dismay at the doctor's apparent disregard for the law and her ethical responsibility to the patient is increased by the fact that she is a woman.
Then another woman professional, a barrister, appears to have given advice which she must have known was contrary to the new Act. Ms B appears to have told the barrister of her reservations regarding the couple from the agency as prospective parents for her child but, rather than encouraging Ms B to discuss this with a social worker, she discouraged her with bizarre stories about what the Eastern Health Board might do.
The Adoption Board has rightly pointed out that adoptions such as those proposed could not have gone ahead. If she had any knowledge of even the old Adoption Act, she must have known this.
The health board involved in these cases, the Eastern Health Board, did manage to catch up with this couple who repeatedly moved house with the baby/babies. They even moved to a different health board area because, the man said, and I quote from the judgment as published in The Irish Times: "My wife and I believe we have been unfairly treated by certain staff in the Eastern Health Board and we, therefore, tried to ensure that we lived in areas where we could deal with public health nurses and social workers in whom we could have greater confidence."
Also, they were considering using an adoption agency under the patronage of a member of the Hierarchy whom the man knew and obviously thought would give him a more favourable hearing.
It might be advisable for the Hierarchy to explain that all adoption agencies, including those over which it has control, work within the law so that any notion that any agency, or indeed health board, would work outside the law is immediately scotched. I am sure this is the case but obviously the couple involved in this terrible saga did not think so.
Unless we set up a register for those providing proper counselling services at once and reassure women that all options will be explained to them, the bad publicity from these cases will result in fewer women making informed decisions regarding crisis pregnancies.
We must be thankful that Miss Justice Laffoy made her judgment public, but her judgment will not be read by terrified 17- or 21-year-olds. They will not know their rights will be upheld. All they will read is that going to a counselling agency could mean losing the baby. The headlines in the tabloids make a great impact, the dense typescript of a legal report less so.
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