My mother tried to force me into an illegal abortion and when that didn’t work, she told me that I would have to go to a maternity home and give up my baby for adoption. I refused. The pressure put on me to give up my child was so great that, in my fourth month, I attempted to commit suicide. Fortunately both Baby and I survived.

Eventually I was “married off” to someone who was not the child’s father (the father was under age too and his parents thought that a girl who “got herself pregnant” at 17 wasn’t good enough for their son!) The marriage lasted less than a year, but amazingly, the baby whom they all wanted aborted or given away to strangers and struck from memory was suddenly the “first grandchild,” the apple of all their eyes. This left a permanently bitter taste in my mouth and a painful spot in my heart.

It is not only the mothers who succumbed to the pressure to give up their babies who suffered greatly in those bad old days. Even though I was able to keep my baby, the circumstances were traumatic and had a life-long negative effect, not only on me, but on my children as well.

It’s more than just adoption that needs to be reevaluated, it is the whole concept that the emotional well-being of a teen mother and her baby are of less value that the expectations, pride, and reputation of her parents and/or extended family. Rather than turn the event of a teen pregnancy into a tragedy that scars the entire family, we need to look into effective sex and contraceptive education (instead of abstinence and denial), ways to empower teen girls so they don’t feel that having early sex is necessary to feel valued, and an acceptance and welcoming of new family members whether they arrive inside or outside the bonds of matrimony.