Victims of forced adoption give Prime Minister Julia Gillard standing ovation for national apology speech Prime Minister Julia Gillard is mobbed as she leaves the Great Hall after delivering the national apology on forced adoptions at Parliament House in Canberra. MOTHERS, fathers, daughters and sons sat and sobbed yesterday as their plights as the victims of forced adoptions was revealed to Australia and they got their long-awaited apology. "No collection of words alone can undo all this damage," Ms Gillard told hundreds who gathered for the formal event at Parliament House in Canberra. Cherry Blaskett, grandson Neo and daughter Jenny Moon embrace after hearing Prime Minister Julia Gillard's national apology. Full text of apology Acknowledging every person affected by the deeply wrong practice, Ms Gillard said: With profound sadness and remorse we offer you all our unreserved apology. From the 1950s to the 1970s, an estimated 150,000 unwed mothers had their babies forcibly adopted under a practice sanctioned by governments, churches, hospitals, charities and bureaucrats. Ms Gillard spoke of young women shackled to hospital beds, drugged and tricked into signing away their babies. Sometimes papers were forged. She told of the fathers ignored and left off birth certificates, and the children who grew up wrongly thinking their parents had not wanted them. "They faced so many voices telling them to surrender, even though their own lonely voice shouted from the depths of their being to hold on to the new life they had created," she said. Too often they did not see their baby's face. They couldn't sooth his first cries. Never felt her warmth or smelt her skin. And somewhere, perhaps even close by, their children grew up denied the bond that was their birth-right. Ms Gillard won a standing ovation for her words. But hecklers turned on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott when he used the contentious term "birth mothers." Attendees said Mr Abbott had failed to grasp the sensitivity of the occasion and inflicted further pain on a day meant to heal. I honour the parents, who have always loved their children," Mr Abbott told the audience.