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...

Hey fellow #adoptees in Ontario ! my friend @madbastard1.bsky.social and I are hosting an open mic night for #adoptee voices - this is a very early heads up but summer gets busy! Save the date 🥚

While it is clear these women were subject to systemic abuse, a pressing question remains: how many children were removed and adopted through the enforcement of these deeply gendered and morally driven statutes? 🥚

🥚Posted June 25, 2025 "Are we even talking about adoption anymore? Moses Farrow here, listen to me reading my article "The Illusion of Adoption is Over" published in Severance Magazine December, 2024." www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7aU...

Read about what Bill S-206 will and won't do: ubiworks.ca/glbi-bill @kenjaminyang.bsky.social @kpateonthehill.bsky.social

A horrendous adoption story out of London, ON: Children's Aid Society took a mother’s baby. Both mother and child endured deep trauma and addiction. The adoptee—now tragically deceased—was failed at every level of so-called care. archive.is/2025.06.19-1...

10 years after Manitoba’s apology, Sixties Scoop survivors still fight for justice and reconnection winnipeg.citynews.ca/2025/06/18/1...

@notalegalrecord.net Letting you know something happened to the Adoptees of Bluesky feed.

This research highlights the need to recognize the hidden carceral birth histories of adoptees born to imprisoned mothers. Punished in utero, early separation and adoption can cause lasting mental health effects, making trauma-informed care vital for prison-born—and all—adoptees. 🥚

"It can no longer be assumed that one can replace the biological mother with another primary caregiver without the child being both aware of the situation and the substitution and traumatized by it." www.youtube.com/live/GrLCCxI...

🥚 12 Things People Always Ask Me About Adoption drbarbarasumner.substack.com/p/12-things-...

Headline: "The Mothers Were Told Their Children Had Died" Every country must scrutinize its adoption practices—especially those involving babies born to criminalized and incarcerated women and girls. Yet this issue has received far too little attention.

🥚Adoptees of Bluesky Anyone following the Scottish Adult Adoptee Movement (SAAM) on TikTok (@scottishaam)? Some of their videos are quite effective. #adoptees #adopteevoices #adoption www.tiktok.com/@scottishaam...

🥚 OTD 2023 I found my Great Aunt Carolyn living in section 8 housing near Death Valley. We’d been separated for 64 yrs by the enforced secrecies of #adoption. She too had been given up by her mother (my great-grandmother) during Okie Dust Bowl migration and joined a convent at 17 to have a family. 🧵

Do your fellow adoptee authors and researchers (and readers!) a favor. Request your local library to add the author's books to the library's collection. It makes a difference. 🥚 cc: @thesusanito.bsky.social

A scandal has emerged out of New Zealand. Although numerous countries are investigating abuses in intercountry adoption, the adoption of babies born to criminalized and incarcerated mothers remains largely unexamined—whether domestic or intercountry. #prisonborn 🥚

Despite many countries having conducted investigations into adoption practices, minimal attention has been given to babies born to criminalized and incarcerated mothers whose children were subsequently removed and adopted through state intervention.🥚 #prisonborn www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j....