Thousands of Canadian mothers were forced to give up their babies. Some were told to ‘get a puppy’ instead.

Their stories would not seem out of place in an episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” – pregnant women shuttered away, violently restrained during childbirth, banned from looking at their babies – and, finally, coerced by social workers into signing adoption papers.

More than a half-century after unmarried and largely non-consenting Canadian women were sent to maternity homes to give birth in relative secrecy, a report released Thursday by a Senate committee acknowledges a “disturbing chapter” in Canadian history, when the country’s adoption policies led to hundreds of thousands of unwed mothers being forced to give up their babies for adoption.

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