In a “civilized” first-world nation how can babies simply be stolen from their mothers right at the hospital? The country is Spain and the practice began during the reign of dictator Francisco Franco.

Victims of a baby-stealing policy approved by Franco’s dictatorship demanded that Spain's attorney general's office fully investigate the alleged theft of hundreds of newborns.

Over 1,400 cases of newborn babies who were allegedly taken from their mothers in hospitals and ended up with other families have been filed with the office over the past year and most have been shelved.

Anadir, one of the three organizations behind the petition, estimates there could be as many as 300,000 cases of baby snatching during the 1939-75 dictatorship and up to the end of the 1980s.

What happened to them? Where did they go?

Politics at its Worst

Under a 1940 decree the state was allowed to take children into custody if their "moral education" was at risk. The decree allowed the dictatorship to take children of jailed left-wing opponents from their mothers and have them placed with Catholic religious orders or adopted by ideologically approved families to purge Spain of feared Marxist influence.

Many of the same doctors, nurses and officials who carried out the Franco-era policy are accused of continuing it illegally after the dictator's death and Spain's return to democracy, as a business that provided babies for cash to women unable to give birth.

New mothers were often told their babies had died suddenly within hours of birth and the hospital had taken care of their burials when in fact they were given or sold to another family.

Teumila Dominguez, 64, was told her daughter was born deformed and had died shortly after she gave birth to her at a Madrid hospital in December 1973.

She was never allowed to see her daughter and has always suspected that the hospital put her newborn baby up for adoption.

 Last year the attorney general's office rejected calls for a national investigation into the baby thefts on the grounds that those responsible were not part of a single network but operated from different parts of the country separately.

If there is nothing to hide they should investigate. It is a matter of human decency. No mother should have to suffer like that. Can you imagine even five cases here in the USA?

Source: Google News