300,000 babies stolen from their parents – and sold for adoption: Haunting BBC documentary exposes 50-year scandal of baby trafficking by the Catholic Church in Spain
A new instigation has revealed that approximately 300,000 babies in Spain were stolen from their genuine parents over a period of five decades. The babies were bargained by a group of doctors, nurses, nuns, and priests and sold to other couples for a large sum of money, which continued until the early 1990s. According to the parents who adopted the babies, they were told that the real parents of the babies gave them up. On the other hand, the genuine parents of the babies were told that they had died during or soon after the birth and that they were not allowed to see their dead babies or attend their burials. Some of them were given the cold corpses of “their” dead babies and were disheartened. The Spanish government started regulating their adoption policies in 1987, but no nationally co-operated investigation has occurred yet.
In my opinion, this widespread practice in the Spanish hospitals neglected the principle of equality and justice and explicitly informed consent. The doctors and nurses disregarded the rights and justice of the babies and sold them in an inappropriate method. They forged the official documents as well as the signatures on the birth certificates to fake the theft and deceive the adoptive parents. The doctors also did not follow the principle of signing a fully informed consent with any of the genuine or adoptive parents. They forged and created a counterfeit birth certificate, which is not even close to receiving consents from any parents. In addition, the doctors had a paternalistic relationship with the babies’ parents, who could also be the proxy decision makers, which gave the power to the doctors to control their relationship and provided no chance for the parents to find out whether their babies were actually dead or not.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049647/BBC-documentary-exposes-50-year-scandal-baby-trafficking-Catholic-church-Spain.html
A new instigation has revealed that approximately 300,000 babies in Spain were stolen from their genuine parents over a period of five decades. The babies were bargained by a group of doctors, nurses, nuns, and priests and sold to other couples for a large sum of money, which continued until the early 1990s. According to the parents who adopted the babies, they were told that the real parents of the babies gave them up. On the other hand, the genuine parents of the babies were told that they had died during or soon after the birth and that they were not allowed to see their dead babies or attend their burials. Some of them were given the cold corpses of “their” dead babies and were disheartened. The Spanish government started regulating their adoption policies in 1987, but no nationally co-operated investigation has occurred yet.
In my opinion, this widespread practice in the Spanish hospitals neglected the principle of equality and justice and explicitly informed consent. The doctors and nurses disregarded the rights and justice of the babies and sold them in an inappropriate method. They forged the official documents as well as the signatures on the birth certificates to fake the theft and deceive the adoptive parents. The doctors also did not follow the principle of signing a fully informed consent with any of the genuine or adoptive parents. They forged and created a counterfeit birth certificate, which is not even close to receiving consents from any parents. In addition, the doctors had a paternalistic relationship with the babies’ parents, who could also be the proxy decision makers, which gave the power to the doctors to control their relationship and provided no chance for the parents to find out whether their babies were actually dead or not.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049647/BBC-documentary-exposes-50-year-scandal-baby-trafficking-Catholic-church-Spain.html
Do you know why the Catholic church condoned such practices? Was it purely money, or was it a misguided attempt to reward/punish particular families, or was it a social experiment?
ReplyDelete