Lynnie 
non-fiction
Wherever you fall on the spectrum of abortion/adoption debate, this is an important book to read.
I was interested in this book for many reasons, but particularly because my mother was adopted in the '40s and we really only learned her true adoption story after her death. I was curious to hear the stories of women who had limited choices and even less agency over themselves and their bodies. It was a heartbreaking book and I often found myself in tears at the stories of these women that Ann Fessler has curated.
Regardless of their ages, the women in The Girls Who Went Away broke my heart and I was shocked at how many of the same threads ran through their stories. Overwhelmingly, giving their children up for adoption was not something they chose; many were forced to comply by parents or by lack of family support, and even, in one particularly devastating story, by a husband who did not tell his wife of his intention to place the baby for adoption. Can you even imagine?
Lack of knowledge about sex and biology, lack of access to birth control, and lack of agency over their own bodies combined in a powerful combination to leave these women feeling shame, loss, sadness, depression, and many who felt manipulated, lied to, conned out of their children... no one in this book comes through unscathed, from birth parents and grandparents to the adoptees themselves.
As we head toward a time when the guarantees of Roe v. Wade are on the edge of crumbling, when birth control is more difficult to obtain than erectile dysfunction medication, and as many states continue to demand men consent to medical procedures that their wives want, it was important for me to understand what those rights and privileges mean for women in society. We cannot take them for granted nor underestimate their importance.
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