The Girls Who Went Away

Hoping to keep her child, a second girl was tied to her bed by hospital workers as she gave birth because they feared she would run away with her newborn.

Determined to raise her baby, a third young woman refused to sign adoption papers until a social worker told her she must pay thousands of dollars in maternity and hospital bills in order to keep the child.

These and other heart-wrenching stories comprise The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade (Penguin Press, 2006). In this groundbreaking new book, released just this week, author and adoptee Ann Fessler offers first-person testimony from girls who "got into trouble," disappeared mysteriously, then returned home months later with downcast eyes and ruined reputations.

A videographer and professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, Fessler began collecting birth mothers' stories in 1992, when she was coming to grips with her personal history and considering a search for her own biological mother.

Fessler compiled tape recordings and oral testimonies from more than 100 women who surrendered children for adoption between 1945 and 1973. First, she used the material to create an art exhibit that toured the United States. Now, she has transcribed interviews to create a 352-page book that is a must-read for anyone touched by adoption.

Told in the first person and in gripping detail, The Girls Who Went Away chronicles the injustice suffered by "unwed mothers" in the decades before abortion was legal. Under crushing social pressure — and often under coercion — these young women gave up children when they were still children themselves.

Despite differences in race, age, and socioeconomic status, contributors echo the same themes: a lack of sex education, a surplus of shame, and grief that haunted them not only through their pregnancies but through the rest of their lives.

Life Before Roe

In the years leading up to Roe v. Wade, sex education was rare, and in the few schools where it was offered, health teachers referred to intercourse as "the marriage act." Birth control was difficult to obtain, as many states prohibited its sale to the unmarried. Meanwhile, parking, heavy petting — and sex — became the norm as the sexual revolution blossomed.

Since a sexually active teenager who doesn't use contraception has a 90 percent chance of conceiving a child within a year, thousands of girls found themselves missing periods and suffering morning sickness. "For the few girls who had money and connections, a clean illegal abortion was available," says National Women's Health Network co-founder Barbara Seaman, who had an illegal abortion in 1954 at age 19. "But for many girls, it was either a dangerous, back-alley abortion, a shotgun wedding, or adoption."

Though two-thirds of teenage mothers in this era married before their babies were born, one-third remained single, and 1.5 million children were relinquished for non-family adoptions between 1945 and 1973.

In The Girls Who Went Away, birth mothers speak of other shared experiences: guilt, isolation, and shame. During the three decades Fessler chronicles, social stigma against unmarried mothers prompted high schools and colleges to require that pregnant students withdraw immediately. "Some families made their daughters hide in the house so their pregnancies wouldn't be seen, drawing the drapes, and making them duck down when they were in the car," writes Fessler.

Many girls were sent to maternity homes run by Catholic Charities, the Florence Crittenton Association, and the Salvation Army. While there, they usually used pseudonyms and rarely ventured outside. After giving birth, they returned to school with tales of illness, visits to distant relatives — and hopes that they might be accepted again.

By far, the most common theme in these stories is the lack of individual choice. Fessler writes that one "prevailing myth is that these women were all eager to surrender their child and be free of their problem." But, she says, "many of these girls, even in their twenties, had no other option than to go along with their families or be permanently ostracized."

In Fessler's book, one teenager in the throes of a difficult labor is denied pain medication until she signs adoption papers. A second refuses to surrender her child, only to have her parents place her in a mental institution until she complies. A third says, "I never felt like I gave my baby away. I always felt like my daughter was taken from me."

In Fessler's estimation, the toll of these experiences was nothing less than devastating. In response to their loss, some birth mothers delved into substance abuse and dead-end relationships. Others became overachievers in an attempt to redeem themselves. Many developed migraines and other chronic health problems that repeatedly flared up on the anniversaries of losing their children.

Hope and Healing

Fessler's book — the first of its kind — is part of a growing effort to heal these wounds. Since the 1970s, groups including the Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association, Concerned United Birthparents, and the International Soundex Reunion Registry have worked to reunite birth mothers and adoptees. The infamous maternity homes are gone, shuttered now or transformed into programs for at-risk youth.

"Instead of keeping mothers from their children, employees at former maternity homes are actively trying to reunite birth mothers and adoptees," says Ann Shervington Davis, CEO of Florence Crittenton Services of Baltimore. "The process can be difficult because state laws vary. But the Internet — and growing interest — help make these reunions easier."

To date, more than half the women who contributed to Fessler's book have succeeded in finding their lost children. In some cases, their stories are mournful as they discover their sons and daughters want no contact or have passed away. In others cases, their stories are joyful as they exchange histories and health information, discovering they share the same hobbies, the same deep-set eyes, or even the same easy laugh.

Fessler's own story is among the positive ones. At the end of her book, she describes finally finding the birth mother who surrendered her for adoption in 1949. Pregnant in her late teens, Fessler's mother was an Ohio farm girl who went to a Crittenton Home. She never told her mother, siblings, or other children about Fessler's birth. Like the women who contributed to The Girls Who Went Away, she is now breaching the divide of her history — and her hurt — and taking tentative steps toward reunion.