LONDON, July 2 -- For decades, they were told to be ashamed. Unmarried mothers in postwar Britain who became pregnant at the wrong time, in the wrong circumstances, were institutionalized, coerced, and in many cases had their babies taken without their consent - by local authorities, faith institutions, and health services working in concert with a state that treated unwed motherhood as a social problem to be solved, not a family to be supported.

On Thursday, the British state finally said it had that backwards.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer stood before the House of Commons and delivered a formal parliamentary apology for the forced adoption practices that separated an estimated 185,000 mothers, children, and their wider families between...