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.
