ENGLAND — The Church of England apologized for its role in forced adoptions after the Second World War. This apology addresses practices in institutions affiliated with the church between the 1940s and 1980s.

Hundreds of thousands of children were separated from their mothers in England between the 1940s and the 1980s. Unmarried women were sent to Anglican mother and baby homes to give birth in secret before being compelled to give their babies to married couples for adoption.

Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, stated, "We are profoundly sorry for the pain, trauma and stigma experienced, and still carried, by many people because of historical adoption practices in homes affiliated to the Church of England. We have heard first-hand the accounts of mothers who were separated from their babies in circumstances where they had very few meaningful choices. We know that many women and girls were at times made to carry out menial and manual work as a form of correction."

The apology followed a research project using incomplete records, first-hand accounts, media reports, and parliamentary scrutiny. The church admitted involvement in potentially more than 200 homes and estimated mothers and babies involved was likely in the tens of thousands within a decentralized system.

The church's Moral Welfare Council guidance stated that mothers and babies should be kept together when possible. The church noted adoptions were considered consensual, but acknowledged this guidance was not always followed. Standards and experiences varied between homes, with some cases featuring judgmental attitudes and difficult conditions. The church cited limited resources, a lack of alternative support, and wider social pressures as factors that shaped outcomes.

Phil Frampton, a survivor and campaigner from Manchester, said, "The apology is a huge and historic victory for all those unmarried mothers and their children who had committed no crime but were persecuted by the church. The church has much more to do to undo the harm it did before it can go near restoring moral authority, but the archbishop's apology will help lift decades of shame and guilt off the shoulders of survivors and place it where it really belongs, on those of the church and the governments it served." Frampton was born in 1953 at the Rosemundy mother and baby home in St Agnes, Cornwall, because his parents were in a mixed-heritage relationship.

Mullally said, "The shame you were made to feel was wrong. We are deeply ashamed that this happened to people in the care of Christian communities. All of this took place in a society that often valued secrecy and respectability over compassion and care. The Church of England was part of that society and helped to sustain those attitudes. Our commitment now is to listen, to lament and to learn to acknowledge this history and to ensure that this leads to change. We pray for all people who carry these experiences."

The Adult Adoptee Movement, a survivors organization, stated that the church made no offer of redress or support. It said, "The statement given by the archbishop of Canterbury today is not a meaningful apology. For many of us, engaging with the church in their apology process was distressing and re-traumatising." The church stated that the research aimed to understand its role within a wider system shaped by the social attitudes and laws of the time.