What happened to Evelyn?

What happened to Marsha?

My school friends are still asking themselves these questions 55 years later. Both of them disappeared from our class after they became pregnant.

The question of what impact their teenage pregnancies had on their lives is something that I am increasingly concerned about as I live in Missouri after the Roe case.

I am a historian who has written extensively on women’s history, and I have long known how important reproductive choice is to women’s ability to support their families and participate fully in society. And yet it was not until this spring that I truly understood what it means to have lost choice, as I collected signatures to put the Reproductive Freedom Restoration Measure in Missouri on the November ballot.

The men and women who said they signed the petition to protect their daughters and granddaughters moved me to tears, reminding me of the fear of a new generation of Evelyns and Marshas derailed or lost by unwanted pregnancies.

Many people from my baby boomer generation knew women, often young teenagers, who had had illegal or clandestine abortions. We also knew girls who were sent to homes for “unwed mothers.”

The oral histories and memoirs of women who chose not to have children, in both anti-abortion and pro-abortion literature, describe a range of feelings related to the decisions, shame, and judgments they experienced. Many were told that keeping their children would “ruin” their chances, and some were uninformed about the finality of their decision.

Exact figures on the number of children given up for adoption are difficult to obtain. It is estimated that between three and four million babies were given up for adoption in the United States between the end of World War II and 1973. That is between 33,000 and 89,000 babies per year.

Memoirs from all sides of the abortion debate recount the decision to abort or give up a child. All sides except one: the young fathers of these babies are barely mentioned in the literature, if they even knew about the pregnancies or births. Social control was imposed exclusively on women, while little attention was paid to monitoring the sexual behavior or reproductive choices of young men.

In the 1960s, the momentum of social change and a new information environment grew, along with awareness of feminism. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the right of married couples to use contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut. In 1972, just one year before Roe, the Court finally recognized that single people also have a right to contraception in Eisenstadt v. Baird.

When I got to college, it was easier to avoid unwanted pregnancies, but it wasn’t until Roe, which gave a person the right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term, that we truly had autonomy over our lives and our bodies.

For 50 years, from 1973 to 2022, the right to choose was protected by law. That is now over. Missouri banned abortion minutes after the Dobbs decision. The news has since featured horrifying examples from across the country – and from Missouri – of women being denied medical care in emergency situations because doctors feared prosecution, lawsuits and losing their licenses.

Recently, several of my young colleagues – all women under 40 – have asked me for advice on their careers and lives. They are desperate about their future and wondering if they can choose to stay here in Missouri, where they cannot access comprehensive and reliable health care.

Some feel that other colleagues are disrespecting them professionally because they express concerns about their health and well-being. In such a socially antagonistic environment, how can we hope to retain promising talent in our state?

But I understand their fears because I remember the terrible old days. I am outraged that they have lost the rights that my generation fought for, and I join the fight to get those rights back.

This year, Missouri voters may have a chance to regain choice at the ballot box in November. I will vote to protect the Evelyns, Marshas, ​​and countless women and children currently denied health care and self-determination in this state.