The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer. Kat Stratford is a Democratic candidate for the state House of Representatives in LD 18:
Kat Stratford
It looked like an archetype of a haunted house as we pulled up. Three stories tall with worn paint, and covered in vines, the house my mother was born in lies in ruins. A fitting end to a building that once played host to “ruined” women: the Evangeline Booth Maternity Home in Richmond, Virginia.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the woman who gave birth to my mother. But we know that in 1947, a woman named Rachel had found herself pregnant and unwed 26 years before Roe v. Wade. Abortions were illegal, and even obtaining an illicit operation was expensive and dangerous; botched abortions accounted for about 40% of maternal deaths during this time.
If a hasty wedding was out of the question, women were often sent to maternity homes and hidden away until the baby was born. Often, these homes were abusive. Women were not told what to expect, and left to labor alone in the dark for hours before delivery. Some birth mothers were not even allowed to see or hold their baby. Many were unlawfully coerced into adoption, and told they had no rights in the matter.
We don’t know how Rachel was treated. We know that she cared for my mother for the first 6 weeks of her life, and named her Judith. We know that she named her next child after the baby she’d given up. A 1950 census showed her waitressing in Richmond, indicating that her family never accepted her after her pregnancy- a common consequence at the time. She eventually married and had other children. She died in 2001.
Some years later, my mother, named Ann by her adoptive parents, found herself pregnant, unwed, and just beginning a career in computer programming. In her state, Ann had a choice. She chose to terminate her pregnancy and start a family on her own terms when it was right. Many years later, she had my sister and I.
Until recently, I never understood my sister’s fascination with our biological family. She began piecing together the mystery of our ancestors in her spare time, and eventually traced our biological grandmother, grandfather, cousins, and more. But still, these were people who I felt had rejected us. Rachel had made that choice.
It wasn’t until my sister organized a pilgrimage to our mother’s birthplace that I decided to read more about the circumstances that led to my mom’s adoption. As we explore the ruins of this place, I look at the boarded up windows, and imagine Rachel looking out at the street. Maybe holding my mother. I picture that winter, when she would hold her baby for the last time.
As I mentioned, we don’t know a lot about Rachel. I don’t know whether she wanted my mother, or hoped the father would marry her. I don’t know what kind of bond she may have formed with my mother in caring for her. Did she love her? How could she not? There’s a million questions whose answers lay in an unremarkable cemetery plot in Virginia, where they’ll remain forever shrouded in mystery. But there is one thing we do know:
Rachel never had a choice. My mother did, thanks to laws that came before Roe v. Wade cemented our right to choose in legal precedent.
My sister and I are the direct products of my mother’s right to choose. We are also products of a choice that was denied to another woman a generation before.
It’s been 74 years since Rachel was robbed of her choice; the same choice that is being taken from her great-grandchildren.
There’s a lot I don’t know about Rachel. But I know one thing: she’d hope we have more rights than she did. She’d want us to have a choice.
