To the editors:
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During the late 1950’s when I was a high school student, girls who got pregnant either married in haste or were sent to homes for unwed mothers and forced to surrender their babies for adoption. I say “forced” because real choices did not exist then. Pregnant girls were not allowed to remain in school. Single motherhood was highly stigmatized. It was legal, and common, for employers to refuse to hire the mothers of young children, married or not.
The decision of whether or not to end a pregnancy takes place in a social context involving the woman’s family situation, her age, her health, the circumstances of impregnation, her educational situation, her economic resources, and so on. These factors can make a given pregnancy an intolerable event or a joyful one. Those of us who are truly concerned about the well-being of all people owe it to ourselves and each other to work for a society in which the need for abortion is less likely to arise, while affirming each individual woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions.
