Pregnancy before Roe: I thought I was alone...but I wasn't

Lorraine

How many of us got pregnant during the years when mores were changing in fact but not in public acceptance--the years after World War 2 and before abortion became legal? When I read about the various states--North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, to name a few--which are making abortion increasingly difficult and expensive, I am reminded of the time back when...I got pregnant. This is a excerpt from my memoir, hole in my heart:

While I felt completely alone in my catastrophe, I actually had a lot of company. We women who got pregnant when we weren't supposed to in the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies were trapped in the transition era that has come to be known as the Baby Scoop Era, a period that began after World War II and continued on through the Seventies. [1] 

Adoption is a critical part of women’s history

Mothers who lost their children to adoption deserve more attention in Gail Collins’ otherwise entertaining and informative account of the transformation of the condition of American women over the past 50 years, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.

Between the end of World War II and the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade nullifying laws prohibiting abortion, hundreds of thousands of mothers lost their newborn infants to closed adoption in a radical social experiment, the effects of which reverberate today in the damaged lives of these women, and often, their children and the fathers of their children. While women with unplanned pregnancies have more choices today thanks to Roe v. Wade and more enlightened mores, unnecessary adoptions continue.

Adoptees ask: "Why Was I Given Away?"

Jane

“Why Was I Given Away? What were the circumstances of my adoption?” are often the first questions adoptees newly in reunion ask. We find that people Google such a question frequently. Lurking beneath these questions is the fear that