A woman interviewed by Sweeney in the BBC program says that is what Bishop Mitt insisted she had to do to avoid excommunication.

She was facing excommunication NOT because she was pregnant out-of-wedlock, but for her refusal to give up the baby to the church.

If you watch the YouTube version this interview is in segment 3.

Sounds like he wanted her to give it up for adoption through LDS Soc Services, not quite like turning your child over to the the nunnery or something, but still out of line to tell a mother that I believe.

She said they threatened excommunication. I dont think that part happened. Maybe she recalls it that way but doesnt seem to be in line with asking for your baby.

Back in the 1990s sometime, a very good TBM friend of mine's daughter had a baby out of wedlock.


She worked with her daughter, and helped her daughter make a good home for the infant until the daughter grew older and eventually married a good man. She loved that grandbaby just as she loved her own daughter.


A couple of years after the grandbaby came into her life, the church presidency issued a letter which in essence said that if a girl gets herself "in trouble," that she should carry the child to term and then give it over to LDS Social Services for placement in a home where the child will have two loving parents that it can be sealed to.


All bishoprics in our area (and I think across the entire church) were instructed to read the letter in sacrament meeting.


I remember looking over at her when the Bishop read that letter. You could see the pain in her eyes. This was a lady that did everything the church asked, without question.


But the church was asking that she and her daughter give away that precious little child to LDS Social Services -- for what reason? So they could make money off of the placement of that child?


Fortunately, she and her daughter did not do it. I guess it helped that the boy was about two years old when the letter came out. They might have had more pressure applied had the letter come out before the baby was born.


A year or two later, the daughter got married to a good non-LDS man, and that baby -- now a teenager -- was adopted by his mother's husband and has a good home today.