In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, being an unwed mother carried a significant stigma in America. It’s now called the “baby scoop” era and during this time young women -- usually in their teens -- were either hidden at home, sent to live with distant relatives or quietly dispatched to maternity homes to give birth.





Estimates are as many as 1.5 million young mothers who say they were forced -- some just minutes after delivery -- to hand over their babies for adoption during this period. It was a decision that they seldom made on their own. Mostly, it was preordained by the young woman’s church or her parents. Often too, it was a decision that was dictated by the social customs of the time because having a baby out of wedlock was seen as a disgrace to a family.

[Related: Adopted or abducted?]





Since last October, Dan Rather Reports has interviewed nearly one hundred women from around the world who shared a common experience: They say during this time they were lied to, denied their rights and duped into handing over their babies for adoption. And, they believe, it is time to lift the veil of secrecy.





Last month I interviewed two people with very different stories to tell that suggests perhaps some of the policies and practices of the past that led to forced adoptions lingered into the 80’s and beyond.





Marc Mezibov is an attorney who represented a woman who claims to have been manipulated into handing over her newborn for adoption in 1965 when she was 16 years old. But the story is much more sordid than that.







In a lawsuit filed against the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 2004, Mezibov’s client, known as “Jane Doe”, claimed that the father of her child was her parish priest.





“The priest and her elementary school teacher, who's a nun, and her parents, are all telling her basically, ‘You need to get things right with the church’,”Mezibov told me. “And to do the right thing means to keep quiet about the parentage of your child and not to bring any trouble to the church's door.”





Mezibov says his client was intimidated into relinquishing her parental rights to the baby and as a result had been separated from her child for about 40 years.





“She was told, ‘The fact that you have this out-of-wedlock child with a priest is your fault and your fault alone. The public must never know that the father of your child is a priest.’”





“And the priest told her, ‘Look, you have to do the right thing. The right thing is -- give up the child -- don't ever tell anyone that I was the father. And, by the way, I'll have to leave the church if the church is required to pay child support for this child.’”





It took about 40 years for “Jane Doe” to come forward with the allegations. When asked why it took so long Mezibov said, “This was a question of coming to grips with the reality of the situation and having the courage to face the situation. This is many years after considerable psychotherapy, some hospitalizations and a lot of emotional pain to get to this point.”





And then there is Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy. She claims at age 19, she experienced a much more subtle form of coercion that led her to hand over her son for adoption in 1987.





As an unwed teen, D’Arcy says the social stigma against keeping your baby was not much better than it was in 1965.





D’Arcy told me, “If you were stupid enough to get pregnant, and then to keep your baby there was something wrong with you. Smart girls didn't do that.” She added, “I was a smart girl.”





During an in-depth interview in New York City at the beginning of April, D’Arcy told me how she was sent from the comfort and familiar surroundings of her Long Island home to the Boston area during her last month of pregnancy.





D’Arcy says she didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back feels that the adoption agency was actually a place where helpfulness and support masked a hidden agenda.