Forced adoptions: Former MP Ann Keen recalls no dignity and no say

A former MP who was forced to give her baby up for adoption has recalled bonding with him for eight days before being told she would never see him again.

Ann Keen was sent to a Swansea mother and baby home at age 17 in 1966 and "didn't have a say" over the adoption.

She is one of hundreds of women calling for a government apology for forced adoptions in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Up to 250,000 women in Britain were coerced into handing over babies.

Many of the unmarried women never had more children and say the loss caused them to lead a lifetime of grief.

They want the UK to follow Australia, which in 2013 was the first country to apologise for forced adoptions.

Ms Keen, who was brought up in from Ewloe in Flintshire, told Claire Summers on BBC Radio Wales Breakfast she was forced to give birth without pain relief and initially told she could not see her baby.

Ann Keen is a former health minister and parliamentary private secretary to former prime minister Gordon Brown

She said: "I caught the eye of a midwife who looked to me to be kind, and I took a big deep breath, and said, 'Please, please, can I see him? Please can I have him with me?' and I don't know where she went but at some stage she came back to say, 'yes - you know, he is going to be adopted, but you can have him for 10 days'."

Ms Keen continued: "Of course I knew every day, every hour of those 10 days. And on the eighth day, I went to the nursery and he wasn't there...

"And I said, 'well what's happened? Where is he?'.

"'Oh,' she said, 'he's gone now - you were getting far too close, we were watching you, if you look' - and she pointed to a window - 'he's in that building there and that's where he'll stay until his new mummy comes for him, and you'll never see him again'."

'Felt humiliated'

She said she was then put in a bath where her breast milk was expressed and she was told "you will have no need for this now".

"I felt so humiliated, no dignity no rights, no anything, and I was 17 - so I just, I just was forced to go along with this practice."

Ms Keen, the former Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth, former health minister and former parliamentary private secretary to former prime minister Gordon Brown, said she felt a huge stigma as an unmarried mother.

"You're a bad girl, you're a bad person, you should be ashamed of yourself and you were treated in that way," she said.

She said she had no choice over the adoption.

"It wasn't a discussion, it was almost like a command, because it was never discussed that this was going to happen.... I didn't have any say," she added.

"It was about all about shame - real big shame - and so I felt burdened with that and so therefore went along with whatever was asked of me really and I was told what was going to happen."

'Total infatuation'

Ms Keen was eventually reunited with her son when he was 28.

"It was total infatuation at the beginning, it was like I wanted to take him around and show my baby to everybody," she said.

"It was exactly - sounds maybe a bit bizarre - but that feeling was the same [as having a new baby]....

"We are very close... we have very similar characters."

She said an apology was "exceptionally important".

"I want my name cleared, we want our names cleared, they write we 'gave him up', 'she gave her baby up' - I didn't, I didn't."