March 2025

Sir Keir Starmer,

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

We the undersigned demand justice for mothers who had their babies taken, and for the adopted people who were taken.

The U.K. Government fully knows and understands the scale of pain, loss and trauma that many mothers and adopted people have been forced to endure over many decades. The government is aware that a formal apology for these abhorrent historic practices, as recommended by the 2021 Parliamentary Inquiry by the Joint Committee of Human Rights, is overdue, and cannot be ignored any longer.

We will not be left in a state of permanent deferral.

The need for parity with other Social Justice causes cannot be ignored, nor can an issue that predominantly impacts women be legally side-lined.

Many MPs of all political persuasions understand the issues and support us, for which we are grateful, but without a formal apology, they like us, remain ignored and undermined.

The cohort of people, both mothers, fathers and adopted people are now at a later stage in life - many are going to their graves with the unconscionable and preventable burdens of shame, guilt and grief, which an apology would alleviate.

We now demand that the U.K. Government issues an unreserved apology, for all the damage rendered to so many people, up to half a million - mothers who had their babies taken, and those babies who were taken for adoption, from 1949 until the late 1980s.

Visit our website: https://www.movementforanadoptionapology.org

Sign our petition: https://chng.it/xq8zNXSgCm

We demand justice. We demand an end to our shame.

Shame must change sides.