“I had done the worst possible thing for an officer’s daughter: disobeyed orders and shown no discipline. So I was given a new order: Give up my baby at birth and never speak of him again.”
The Supreme Court’s overturning Roe v. Wade represented the largest blow to women’s constitutional rights in history. A series from Ms., Our Abortion Stories chronicles readers’ experiences of abortion pre- and post-Roe. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.
I heard the clacking wheels of the bassinet approach from the hallway as they brought my baby, bathed and swaddled. “It’s a boy,” was all I knew until then. I’d heard them across the room weighing and measuring, but I hadn’t seen or held him yet. He wore a tiny blue knit cap.
I propped him on my lap and cradled his head in my right elbow. His dark blue eyes met mine. You have my eyes. I stroked his impossibly soft cheek with the back of my finger and took off his little cap. Quite a lot of hair, and it was blonde! I put my nose to the top of his head and inhaled. He smelled like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Milk leaked from my aching, not-yet-dried-out breasts. He looked up at me again and yawned, a languid pinkness. I was blown away.
And then they took him away. I was 15 years old.
*
It was 1970 in pre-Choice America. The lonely only child of a high-ranking naval officer and a socially ambitious mother, after our eighth move in 13 years, I longed for a normal adolescence—to have lasting friends, to feel rooted.
What I got was a pregnancy at 14 and exile to the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers, where I was given a fake name, my identity erased. I had done the worst possible thing for an officer’s daughter: disobeyed orders and shown no discipline. So I was given a new order: give up my baby at birth and never speak of him again.
I delivered my son alone at a hospital that I entered through the loading dock door, registered under a number instead of a name. To ensure there would be no dramatic hospital scene or change of heart, my parents were only notified postpartum. I was returned to Florence Crittenton and moved to the second floor where delivered girls were isolated—so the pregnant girls wouldn’t hear us cry. I remained there for six weeks until my mother deemed my pregnancy weight to be dissolved.
Three weeks after giving birth, my baby in the hands of a foster family, my mother brought me to Child and Family Services, where we sat at opposite ends of an old vinyl sofa. A fluorescent light hummed. Stale cigarette smoke mixed with Mom’s Chanel No. 5 and triggered my gag reflex. Muzak played softly. My chest ached. We were here to terminate my parental rights, though I didn’t feel like a parent. Treated as a child without rights or agency, desperately wishing to keep my baby, I had no more control of my destiny than did my infant son.
Forced to give birth, forced to relinquish, ordered to forget. I was told that what mattered was to give a chance to this new life I had brought into the world. What I got to keep was the enduring pain of an untenable lack of choice.
Goodbye again, baby Thomas. You have a good life.
Three years later, with the Roe v. Wade decision, and for almost 50 precious years thereafter, we believed America had evolved as a culture, had embraced modernity and equality, had confirmed the value of a woman’s life and agency. We trusted she would craft her own future, make decisions about her own body, and had that right. Never did we imagine we would regress to 1970.
*
June 24, 2022, Dobbs decision. We’d sensed the dark storm coming, felt that chill on the back of our necks as the life-altering wind arrived. Like a hurricane, it shattered our carefully constructed façade of dignity and fairness.
I heard the news and the floor slanted away from me. I grabbed a counter for support as I was transported back to Child and Family Services, blue Bic pen and three sheets of paper in front of me, told my child wouldn’t suffer my mistake if I signed the papers. Not knowing how to make it stop, I followed orders—hands trembling, tears falling and bouncing off the old oak desk. As I was blown back to Norfolk General Hospital, legs still numb from the epidural, not yet feeling the stitches from my episiotomy after forceps dragged him out from my tiny hips, my baby already wrested from my arms and handed over to strangers.
I was told that what mattered was to give a chance to this new life I had brought into the world. What I got to keep was the enduring pain of an untenable lack of choice.
There’s a new order now, and we’re at sea in a maelstrom. Miscarriages investigated as murders; women forced by law to carry pregnancies to term—even, in some cases, those caused by rape or incest or when the fetus has a fatal birth defect or has already died. Some of those women will die also. Men go unpunished for their culpability, yet we’ve been flung overboard into patriarchal waters in which women’s rights are conditional, like a child’s.
Out of our depth, our heads held under, we search for the bottom with our feet. We almost touch ground, and then the sand rushes out.
*
This story is adapted from Tracy Mayo’s forthcoming memoir, Childless Mother: A Search for Son and Self, which will be released by Vanguard Press on March 28, 2024.
Editor’s note: For help, please look to these trusted groups:
- Safe websites to buy abortion medication: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A
- If you need help affording abortion care, contact an abortion fund near you.
- To protect your digital privacy when planning your abortion, click here.
- For free legal help as a patient or doctor, call If/When/How’s Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812
- For medical advice, contact the Miscarriage & Abortion Hotline: 833-246-2632
- If you need to know the abortion law in your state, look to the Center for Reproductive Rights.
(Thanks to Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day for this list.)
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