🥚Adoptees of incarcerated moms exist—but no one’s paying attention. No research. No tracking. Just silence.

🥚6-mth follow-up, breast exam. The dreaded question — your family history. “I’m adopted.” “Oh, sorry — yes, you are. I didn’t see that.” “What? It’s on my chart?” I exclaim. I check — literally a box ticked for Adopted. “New field,” she says. Digital progress: logged. Human noticing: still pending.

🥚How many were scooped from criminalized parents? "Sixties Scoop... calling for a national inquiry into the tens of thousands of Indigenous children who were scooped from their families and placed in non-Indigenous homes as a result of government policies." www.aptnnews.ca/videos/60s-s...

🥚For all those adoptees punished in utero, whose carceral birth histories were hidden as they suffered innumerable harms and whose lives were cut short — may their truths be unearthed, their stories honored, and the silence end for those still unaware of their carceral beginnings.

4 girls — including my mother — escaped Mercer’s OTS wing but were caught and locked in the dungeon, where another desperate escape was attempted. It’s time to end these brutal, inhumane isolation conditions that disproportionately affect Indigenous, Black, and disabled people. #S205 #EndSeg

🥚Statistics from the Children of Unmarried Parents Act were used to support claims of mass adoption among unmarried mothers. So how is it that only 562 out of 4,023 consented to relinquishment — or 562 out of 1,992 non-cohabiting mothers? Race? Age? Institution? Incarcerated mothers? See alt txt

🥚Adoptees of Bluesky: Horrendous case of Ashley Smith! 👇For those who don’t know, she was an adoptee too.

What would Canada uncover if it examined carceral births—children born to incarcerated mothers, especially those labeled “juvenile delinquents”? These histories are still sealed under youth protection laws, leaving adoptees unaware of their institutional origins.

🥚Adoptee born of a mother at a Salvation Army home? They ran a wide network of maternity and receiving homes, often with the courts, to house girls labeled “delinquent” or mothers on remand or released from jails or reformatories. YCJA prevents disclosure. #HiddenHistories

🥚𝐀𝐝𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐒𝐤𝐲: We rarely hear about mothers who were pregnant, criminalized, and incarcerated. Why? Because girls criminalized as “juvenile delinquents” and locked away in maternity homes, jails, and reformatories have had their stories buried—kept hidden by youth protection laws.

🥚Note to adoptees: Youth protection laws will prevent you from learning your mother’s circumstances—whether she was criminalized or not. As one account explains, "girls found wandering the city streets are picked up by police and convicted of vagrancy even though they committed no criminal offence.”

🥚Very few adoptees know we were born in prison. I suspect thousands share this history — but it’s hidden behind youth privacy laws worldwide. Upcoming event with Deborah Jiang-Stein, author of Prison Baby.

Today, on #MMIW Action Day, we honour the lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People and demand justice and accountability. Too many lives have been lost while governments continue to resist implementing the National Inquiry’s Calls for Justice. 1/2

🥚Canada's "placing-out" system for indentured domestic and farm labour often secured the children of criminalized and incarcerated women and girls. Full story of the D’Andrea, case coming soon. Re D'Andrea, 1916 CanLII 479 (ON SC), <https://canlii.ca/t/gw6np>, retrieved on 2025-09-27

🥚“Children are being falsely labelled with Russian citizenship and passports,” the Prime Minister told a UN event being held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. “A decree to fast track the citizenship process for abducted children has been signed by Putin himself.”

Folks in the US pay attention 👇click on the post below to read the whole thread on how to contact your US Senators and your US Representative.

🥚This is a tragic story beginning in the 1930s. It’s unbelievable what happened to this family—the children, the foster care system, and the adoptions that followed. Stay tuned as the descendant uncovers truths long buried… and still hidden behind the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA).

🥚Adoption statistics declined rapidly in the early 1970s when “juvenile delinquents” at Training Schools were under investigation.

🥚Full article discusses unmarried mothers in maternity homes & ends with a focus on those in Mercer. One of them—my mother—was imprisoned there from Mar/53–Oct/54. Records state her firstborn was being adopted, yet the Ministry holds no record of the agency involved. #disappeared Title in ALT text

🥚🧵1/5 Mari lost a child to adoption while confined in a U.S. 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄—a facility where, as she vividly recalls, “half of the home was devoted to 𝐣𝐮𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐭 girls” (@13:40). 🎥 www.facebook.com/mari.steed/v...

🥚Errors in adoption studies too!! "I get asked that many times: What is the worst study? No, there’s just millions of studies." www.madinamerica.com/2025/09/scie...

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🥚Adoptees of Bluesky: we urgently need to bring greater attention to the high rate of suicide within our community—worldwide. The trauma of adoption, loss, and identity struggle continues to impact our mental health. It’s time to raise awareness and support healing.

🥚"Previous data from Femicide Census suggests far fewer women are killed by adopted sons than biological sons - three, as opposed to 172, over the period of the earlier study."

According to Ont Agricultural College, in 1934 L. Payne, a grad, published a book: Bread and Water Diets of Prisoners Found Inadequate. In 1947, K. Sandford documented punishment in the dungeon and the bread-and-water diet at Mercer. This raises the question: when was this punitive practice ended?

🥚Grueling process retrieving records from the Mercer Reformatory. Sometimes descendants reach out after finding a relative in a census—with a baby! Yet access requests are denied under the YCJA. What!?! Ontario maintained the age of delinquency under 16 in the JDA until the YOA.

Incarcerated pregnant mothers face serious issues across Ontario in 2025—imagine what they endured from 1880–1969 at Toronto’s Andrew Mercer Reformatory. 🔗 Bancroft et al. (2025), Precarious Perinatal Care: doi.org/10.1186/s128...

🥚 #AdopteesOfBluesky This thread isn’t unique to Ontario, Canada. If you were born to a young mother, you may want to question your adoption — especially given that records may be withheld under your country’s laws protecting juvenile records. #MaternityHomes #AdoptionStories #HiddenHistories

We're trying to get this collaborative documentary off the ground. Hoping #adopteesky has some connections! 🥚 Please and thank you! maidenindiafilm.wordpress.com

🥚Adoptee suffering has long been ignored. Professionals are only now sharing troubling stats. But one question remains unanswered for prison-born adoptees: What’s the impact of prenatal exposure to a mother’s incarceration on child development? —Punished in Utero 🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wCf...

🥚Great work moonlyfe.bsky.social Note: Ontario has been moving historical records to CPIN—one CAS said, manually! Suspicious. How many files were destroyed in the manual process of uploading to the new system? . www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEnD...

On this day, Aug 28, 1880: The first two women were incarcerated at Mercer. Over the next 80 years, more than 20,000 women and girls—many of them pregnant—were held there before it closed in 1969. 🧵 (1/2)

🥚The 1958 annual report by the superintendent of Mercer notes 26 prenatal examinations that year for Training School girls. If these girls’ babies were forcibly adopted, no adoptee would ever know they were born to an incarcerated mother. #adopteesofbluesky

🥚Generations of prison-born babies—born to these mothers, adopted out, and still unaware of their carceral birth history—continue to live with the consequences today.

1/ “In 1903 Arthur Griffiths lamented that to be born in prison carried with it an ‘inalienable heritage of woe.’” That phrase stopped me cold. 🧵 A thread on carceral birth, adoption, and uncovering hidden legacies:

🥚Many women and girls were incarcerated under the Female Refuges Act and had their babies forcibly adopted.

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At 1155 King Street West, now home to Lamport Stadium, once stood the Mercer Reformatory, a grim institution founded in 1880 to “reform” so-called “wretched” women. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCbA...

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of Prisoners’ Justice Day, a day to honour those who have lived and died in prisons across Canada and to reaffirm our commitment to ending systemic neglect, discrimination, and rights violations in our correctional system. Read more in my statement below. 📄

🥚A New Musical about Adoption, Identity and Truth For the Record(s) LIVESTREAM thegreenroom42.venuetix.com/show/details...

𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐨 holds a brutal history of confinement. Institutions here and surrounding area imprisoned people from across Ontario—criminalized women and men, those labeled ‘insane,’ and youth. 1/3 #CarceralHistory #TorontoHistory

The YCJA protects the identities of young offenders—including those who were pregnant teens. For some adoptees, this means their carceral birth history remains hidden behind current restrictive disclosure regimes and past practices of concealment. #Adoption 🥚

🥚 “More than 80,000 children were jailed in training schools across Canada, yet 9 out of 10 Canadians we asked had never heard of training schools.” #HiddenHistories www.unmanageabledoc.ca

Georgina Brooks, a Black woman incarcerated at Mercer, was a victim of systemic racism and institutional neglect. She couldn’t save herself—and like many others, she died behind the walls of the Mercer Reformatory. 1/2

August 1st marks Emancipation Day in Canada — a day to honour the strength and resistance of those who fought to end slavery and continue to combat anti-Black racism and oppression. 1/2

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When you realize that you will never find what you've been searching for, and that there is nothing outside of yourself that can save you. An adoption story, and the struggle between resilience and suicide. rockwilk.com/this-is-the-...

🥚Adoptees on Bluesky: Are any of you aware of or following the work of Dr. Julian Somers, who is both an adoptee and in long-term recovery? He also presented HESA Committee Meeting: www.ourcommons.ca/documentview... #addictions #Adoption www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DDB...

🥚After the babies are born they are "forcefully taken away" either for adoption at a price, or to be trafficked to become "prostitutes or child labourers". theweek.com/world-news/n...