Religious Babies
It is a particularly distressing thing that when- ever a mother hands over an unwanted child to an adoption society she must fill in a form, one of whose questions asks her to state the religion under which she would like the child to be brought up. It sounds harmless enough, but in fact the clause is legally binding and means that the child cannot be adopted by anyone who does not belong to the denomination specified. Again it is true that the mother can leave a blank, but this seldom happens. For, apart from the obvious sentimental urge to feel that the child is somehow being consigned to God, most of the adoption societies are themselves denominational and It must be hard to write 'atheist' or 'don't mind with an Anglican or Roman Catholic matron standing over you who may have given you in- valuable advice and shelter during pregnancy. For Roman Catholics the situation is especially difficult. Illegitimate births are not rare among Catholics Init. adoption relatively is, since so manY Catholic families are large enough to start with So 'Roman Catholic' quite often means simplY that the child will never be adopted. Clearly the practice needs some reform, at least to the extent of making it absolutely plain to the mother that she knows what she's doing. Agnostics Adoption Society, set up to do something about this, is hold- ing its first general meeting this Saturday in Lon- don (13 Prince of Wales Terrace, W8, at three o'clock). The Society aims at receiving children itself and looking after the mother if necessarY during pregnancy, and then taking application from prospective adoptees. I wish it didn't have t,0 be called 'agnostic,' but none the less I wish 11 well.
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