Wednesday, December 16, 2020

The Girls Who Went Away - Ann Fessler

 Sub-title: The hidden history of women who surrendered children for adoption in the decades before Roe v. Wade

I have been using DNA and genealogy to research unknown parentage within my own family and for others for the past five years.  This book has given me a powerful focus on the impact of adoption on the mothers who gave birth to adoptees.  Their pain is something I had not considered in my work to find birth parents for others.  I have seen first hand the impact on the adoptee but have never worked with a mother seeking her child.  Their stories told in this book and the background and information on adoptions from this period is education I should have sought earlier.


References: 

p 43 "Only when his [William Baird] case, Eisenstadt v. Baird, reached the Supreme Court and was decided in his favor in 1972 was access to birth control guaranteed to all single men and women in the United States."

Published: 2006   Read: December 2020  Genre: Non-fiction

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