The Shame That Bound Us

An excerpt from my memoir - Choiceless: A Birthmother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Reunion

“My mother scheduled a doctor visit for me……There was no smile on our family doctor’s face, and no chitchat. He curtly gave me directions, and I was completely embarrassed as I lay on the exam table with my feet in stirrups. As he examined me and I winced in pain, he showed no compassion, made no apologies. There wasn’t a nurse in the room as he did the most invasive part of the exam. The doctor’s disappointment in me was palpable. He simply stated, “Yup, you’re pregnant",” and then uttered something about being a huge disappointment to my parents.”

He was the only doctor I had known. In the old days of doctors’ house calls, I always started to cry as soon as his car pulled up to the curb in front of our house. He treated me for mumps, measles, pneumonia and migraine headaches. He always had a hypodermic needle in his little, black bag. If he had to be called, there would be a painful injection.

But, I was never more uncomfortable with him than the day of my first pelvic exam. I walked alone to his office, and shivered in fear in the air-conditioned waiting room. The receptionist was expressionless and made no attempt at small talk. My parents were embarrassed and ashamed of me. They wanted no part of a face-to-face meeting with this family doctor of 20 years. No. This was the first of many lessons I would have to learn on my own.

I was sworn to secrecy, and forbidden to speak to anyone about the pregnancy. I was violently ill from morning sickness, and had to fabricate stories of illness to mask my symptoms. I had been fired from my job, because it was a “family business” that could not condone a single, teenage pregnancy. I was surrounded by blame and shame for the “trouble I had gotten myself into.”

From post WWII until 1973, single mothers were shunned and shamed. We were cloistered in maternity homes or hidden away with out-of-state friends and relatives.

We were all told the same things: What we had done was wrong. We were not fit to be mothers. Some nice, childless couple could give our babies the love and homes they deserved.

We were not given options. We were not given hope. Above all things, we were told, it was our responsibility to free our innocent children from our sinful shame, and do the right thing: Relinquish our children to adoption.

I just learned that a Christian group in my community is coercing young mothers into choosing adoption because it is what “Jesus would want them to do.” Today. In the year of 2019.

Mothers all….it was our shame that bound us. Today it is our joined voices that will free us. We must shout from the rooftops that our basic human rights of motherhood were violated. It is our right and our responsibility to speak up and to speak loudly on behalf of today’s young mothers.

Salvation Army Booth Memorial Hospital - Wauwatosa, WI