Condemned to Lifelong Ignorance

Extract

A Dickensian law dating back to the dire days where women were driven, by poverty and stigmatization of single motherhood, to give birth in secret and abandon their newborn children outside nursing homes, allows women in France to give birth anonymously, which means that the child will never know the identity of its natural mother, nor—in practice—that of its father or any siblings, who in turn will never learn of the existence of the child. This legislative regime, originally introduced to encourage women to give birth to unwanted children in the safety of a hospital, is still invoked by roughly 600 women every year. Its compatibility with the European Convention of Human Rights was challenged unsuccessfully in a recent case before the European Court of Human Rights: Odièvre v. France, judgment of 13 February 2003 (Grand Chamber).