Recalling grim days before the landmark ruling of Roe vs. Wade
In the late 1950s and early ’60s, when I was a teenager, three close friends got pregnant. This was a sad time because these girls were too young, not married and still needed family support. Scared out of their wits, they knew that telling the guilty boys would be daunting, but confessing to their socially conformist parents would be 10 times worse. There were tears, sobs and outbursts, but that was only a little of what happened.
One mother accused her daughter of being promiscuous. A father called his daughter a “whore.” These girls weren’t promiscuous, and they definitely weren’t whores. They were victims of a little front seat kissing that led to a lot of backseat loving. In those days, sex education wasn’t taught in school. Most of us learned about sex from reading the risqué bestseller “Peyton Place,” a book I kept under my mattress and read late into the night with a flashlight so I wouldn’t get caught.
Predictably, the guilty boys retreated into the shadows. This meant the girls didn’t have any choice but to go full term and give their babies up for adoption. Hearing their news shocked me, too, but I wanted to be a good friend. The only words I knew to say were “everything’s gonna be all right,” but my words meant very little. I was still a virgin — what did I know?
Life as a single mother wasn’t a consideration back then, and abortions were illegal. If you were willing to risk mutilation and death, you might find some shady person who would do it, but it would cost you. And the cost would be high because many who took the risk ended up nameless in the morgue. In those days, these illegal procedures were called coat-hanger or back-alley abortions. Until the Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision in Roe vs. Wade, women had no choice. This was a prehistoric era.
Eventually, each friend disappeared from sight, traveling to a distant place. They didn’t want to be ostracized and called an “unwed mother.” I know this because one was related to me. I knew about the shame her parents inflicted on her. I think her father would have disowned her if her mother hadn’t interceded. She suffered terribly because she never received support.
Everybody close to her suffered too because we thought if this could happen to her, maybe it could happen to us. I don’t remember making any conscious decisions about my future as a mother, but I’ve often wondered whether this crisis could be the reason I never wanted children.
Two friends sought out what they hoped would be unconditional love and support in a home for unwed mothers, but there were conditions, the ramifications of which nobody fully understood at the time. After residing in “the home” for only a short time, the girls were deployed as nannies, working for happy families and taking care of infants and toddlers who were wanted and loved. This environment inflicted more pain — an undeserving punishment.
Weeks before their due dates, the girls returned to “the home” to deliver their babies among strangers and give them up to strangers. These girls were victims of a prescription that needed to be rewritten, which happened with the decision in Roe vs. Wade.
Currently, Roe vs. Wade is under assault from conservative groups, who seem to have the support of the president and members of Congress. In this environment, I worry about the future of our daughters and granddaughters, nieces and cousins. I hope they will always have control over their bodies, as well as their minds. The word never to forget is “no.”