Reply #58: Back in my day, this was the world I entered into. [View All]

[Cleita]

Women were expected to be virgins when they married. The boys were expected to have experience, with whom I don't know if all the girls were virgins. No over-the-counter birth control was available except condoms and only adults could buy them. You had to go up to a pharmacist and ask for them. If you looked too young they ID'd you. Married women could get a diaphragm.

If an unmarried girl got pregnant, she was often forced to marry the father even though the marriage would often only last through the birth so the baby wouldn't be "illegitimate". If not, then they went to a home in another city for unwed mothers where they were "strongly encouraged" to put the baby up for adoption.

Some girls opted for an illegal abortion. Many women died or were mutilated because of them. Many doctors, who performed illegal therapeutic abortions because they felt it was the right thing to do or often for the money, risked going to jail.

Girls did those above things because a woman who kept her "illegitimate" child was condemned to a life of ostracization and poverty. A few of them braved the odds like a very dear life long friend of mine, a victim of rape, who raised her child alone against many odds. She never married.