Amy Coney Barrett, in recent Supreme Court hearings leading to an upcoming decision that could well shred the right to abortion, put forth Safe Haven laws¹ as a “recipe” that would take care of the concern about forced motherhood.

I lived that “recipe.” This is my story.

I was just barely 17, about to graduate from high school, looking forward to going to college, when I missed my period. My heart still races at the memory of the panic that gripped me.  Maybe you can imagine the terror that I felt—the dread that any young girl in those times felt if she had sex and then her period didn’t come. There was no legal abortion (and no available birth control other than condoms) and I didn’t know where to turn. I wanted to have an abortion, but I had no idea where to look for someone who would perform one, and I felt scared and desperate.

In those days, in the early 1960s, there was a lot of shame if you got “knocked up”—meaning getting pregnant when you were not married—and many in my situation rushed to get married. That is, if they had a boyfriend who would agree to share in the all-too-early adult responsibility for becoming a family and raising a child. I didn’t want to do that, but I was completely trapped by a fetus that continued to grow inside of me. I frantically tried to find a way to provoke a miscarriage. I tried many crazy things, but I recoiled at doing what so many other desperate women and young girls did in these kinds of circumstances—poking a sharp object up her vagina to open up the uterus that would—hopefully—end the pregnancy. I was too scared to do that—and I was also just scared and devastated at the prospect of being forced to become a mother when I was just barely starting to take responsibility for myself.

Week after week I hoped for a miracle, but I did not miscarry, and the fetus kept growing inside of me. Finally I was forced to accept this reality—and there were only two choices open to me. Either accept being a mother at that time in my life, or carry through with the pregnancy and then give the baby up for adoption. It didn’t feel like there was a baby inside of me, I didn’t feel a maternal bond to what was taking over my body. I could only feel anger and despair that I was being forced to endure this. The accepted morality in society at that time was that I should feel shame for having sex before I was married. I was supposed to feel blame for putting myself in this situation. And this did impact me. But what I most felt was how unjust it was that I was forced into such a horrible situation, giving me no choices that did not require that I become a mother against my will. This really hurt my sense of myself as a person.

My parents were very disappointed when I told them I was not going away to college because I was pregnant. They strongly disapproved of my having sex with my boyfriend, of having sex at all outside of marriage. But fortunately for me, they did give me support, unlike what many other young women faced in this situation. To protect my privacy as my belly expanded, I eventually went to live in a home for unwed mothers—think about that name—until I gave birth. There I shared this torture with many other young women, all of whose stories I do not know. Many were younger than me—still in high school or even younger—and all of us were there to keep from facing the gossip and public shaming thrown at us as we lived through this very difficult time. And all of us were suffering personal anguish every single day.

I can’t forget the 11-year-old Mexican-American girl, still playing with dolls, who undoubtedly was there as a result of incest or rape from someone close to her family. I also remember the mentally challenged young woman who had clearly been raped, and didn’t really know what had happened to her. And I remember how all of us felt like we were doing time, anxiously awaiting the day we would be free from this. 

 I can’t tell you all the agonizing that others felt as they weighed what to do, about the decisions they had to make in this situation that they did not choose to be in. In my case, I made arrangements to sign over the baby for adoption via the county social service agency. I felt this was the right decision for me. Once I did that I had no rights nor responsibilities for who was now a full human being. While I did not want to take responsibility to be a mother to that baby—and I was not interested in having any further connection—I was not callous to the fact that this baby was now a helpless human being at the mercy of a county agency. I worried that maybe the baby would not be adopted, and would languish in some kind of orphanage, or in perpetual foster care. For some, this anguish is understandably unimaginable. After I learned that she had been adopted by a couple who really wanted a baby, I felt relief that the worst I had imagined was not the case and I could now go on with my life. Yet to this day, the scar of this experience has never left me.  

For many years I tried to put this behind me, and never spoke of this part of my life outside of a small circle of family and friends. This happened almost 60 years ago, but over the years, sometimes at unexpected moments I would wonder: What happened to her? Did she survive? Did she end up in a safe environment? Where is she now? How did life treat her? I kept all this to myself.

But now when I hear Amy Coney Barrett ‘s argument in the Supreme Court, I am filled with rage. Her argument was that given “safe haven” laws, “forced motherhood” is no longer an issue. Her logic: adoption is the solution to abortion, leaving aside what she views as the minor inconvenience of being pregnant against your will. How callous and cruel, such a blatant disregard for the woman, the human being who she feels should have no objection to being merely reduced to an incubator!! And from someone who claims to be concerned about human life, what blatant disregard for the infant-child, who may be cast adrift as a ward of an uncaring oppressive State, furthered by the uncertainty of adoption and what we now know as the extent to which the foster care system is very frequently abusive.

Millions of women are already now facing the terror of living in a world where no matter what your circumstances, no matter how it is that you ended up missing your first period, and then the next one.  You have nowhere you can legally turn to escape your whole body being turned into a vessel for what has resulted from an egg being fertilized by a sperm. Your options, your choices, and your future are now set in stone by this reality.

There are far too many horror stories of what has happened to women of all ages, nationalities and circumstances when the right and access to abortion has been denied to them. Mine is but one of them. But at this moment, all of us who have lived this do need to speak out, as loudly as we can, bringing to life our stories and experiences, the sheer horror of living in a society where forced motherhood for all those who are born female is the law of the land!