Tonight, 60 Minutes is turning back the clock to expose a painful and alarming piece of Australia’s past.
In a special report, Tara Brown investigates how tens of thousands of vulnerable young women were forced to give up their babies — and then made to take a powerful drug with catastrophic health effects for both them and their children.
It’s a story that resonates decades later, with families still battling the consequences today.
From Nine:
BITTER PILL
It’s a scandal that’s hard to believe. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s as many as one hundred and fifty thousand young Australian women were coerced into giving up their babies. The reason? They weren’t married. For the vast majority it was a heartbreaking torment.
But as Tara Brown reveals in this 60 MINUTES special report, there was worse to come. Tens of thousands of these teenage mothers, maybe more, were then made to take a drug to stop their supply of breast milk.
What they weren’t told, despite it being widely known at the time, was that Stilboestrol, also called DES, was linked to cancer and other serious diseases.
It’s a bitter pill that has not only wreaked havoc on the women, but they now fear they’ve passed on its terrible curse to their subsequent children and grandchildren.
Reported by Tara Brown and produced by Laura Sparkes.
Not only Single Mothers but Married Women too. My Mother had a son in 1958 Stephen Barry Gray who was taken at Birth. The Royal Women’s in Melbourne ( PANCH )
Mum heard him cry at Birth when he was taken away and the said he was Still Born. How did Mum hear him crying. Later both Mum and Dad investigated getting different stories. One being he died 4 hours later, the other he died 10 hrs later.
They just told Mum don’t worry you’ll be back next year with another baby. Mum and Dad investigated he was supposedly taken to Melbourne Cemetery (Carlton) in an unmarked grave. After searching there’s no record of his Death anf burial plot.
It nearly broke both my parents with the lies of deceit
I only hope that Stephan does a DNA through Ancestry, it will be the only way we will ever find him.
My parents passed 2 years ago and they never forgot him and neither will I.