Sunday, May 14, 2006

The Girls Who Went Away             There was one in my high school. Disappeared over the summer. Rumors flew. Never saw her again. It was creepy. This was pre Roe v. Wade, before contraception was on open shelves at the pharmacy, before abortion was legal, when unmarried motherhood was out of the question, shameful for families, impossible to even contemplate in the post WWII suburbs where I grew up.  Author Ann Fessler has found 100 of the birth mothers as we'd call them now and written The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Years Before Roe v. Wade. Devastating stories of being "plunged into a condition of radical powerlessness." A lifelong trauma inflicted on the "Bad Girls", the taking of their children who were said to be better off with adoptive parents. This was not so long ago. I wonder whatever happened to my friend. And I feel bad that I didn't have the temerity to ask. To insist. That was how it was. -RH 3:29:55 PM    comment []

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