Lani Jo Leigh: Unfit

What happened to women who got pregnant before Roe v Wade? Suzanne LaGrande interviews filmmaker, community activist and writer Lani Jo Leigh about her memoir, Unfit: The Tale of One Pregnant Teen in the Bible Belt Before Women Had Choice. In this episode of Disobedient Femmes, Leigh talks about what it was like to be get pregnant as a young woman in the Bible Belt, the family and larger social pressures that lead her to spend six months in a home for unwed mothers where she was forced to to give her child up for adoption. As one of 1.5 million girls and young women who were sent to maternity homes and coerced into relinquishing their babies, she talks about the enforced silence, shame and long term emotional and social consequences of this experience.