One woman’s failed abortion attempts turned into a positive for another woman, illustrating some of the real-life effects of new reproductive laws. Amber Ferguson of The Washington Post joins host Krys Boyd to discuss two women, one who didn’t want to give birth and another who couldn’t, and how the fall of Roe changed their lives. Her article is “After abortion attempts, two women now bound by child.”
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Transcript
Krys Boyd:
Since the Supreme Court ruled that nobody has a constitutional right to abortion, some states have passed laws that require people to carry pregnancies to term, while others have acted explicitly to shore up access to abortion procedures. But far removed from all the politicking in state legislatures, there are real people affected in ways that. Can be really complicated. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think I’m Krys Boyd.
I read an article recently that I found incredibly compelling about a baby girl whose birth mother tried unsuccessfully to abort her, who was adopted soon after birth by a woman who had tried unsuccessfully to have her own child. I was drawn to it largely because their stories all intersect with changing laws and assumptions about who ought to be a parent. They don’t add up to a simple conclusion for or against reproductive.
Freedom Amber Ferguson is senior video journalist on the general assignment desk at the Washington Post and author of this article, which was headlined after abortion attempts, two women now bound by child.
Amber, welcome to think.
Amber Ferguson:
Hi Krys , I’m so happy to be here.
Krys Boyd:
This is such an intimate report that, like, just doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into everybody’s preferred narratives on either side of our very polarized debate over abortion access. Did you go looking for a story like this to tell, or did you learn of these women and realize? You ultimately wanted to write about their experiences.
Amber Ferguson:
I definitely did not go seeking this story. How this came about is a journey basically. So, in 2022 I wrote a story about the shortage of black sperm donors and after that story was published, I received an e-mail from Carolyn Whiteman. She was just praising me for the story. Thank you so much for the story. I couldn’t find a black sperm donor. And I’m trying to adopt, but it’s hard. Thank you so much for your story. And that’s how the e-mail ended. It kind of just piqued my interest a little bit. So, I responded to her, and I was like, do you want to hop on a zoom call? And she said yes. And she was just telling me that. She was denied by a few adoption agencies because she’s single. And I started reporting that story about single women’s struggles to adopt. And I was kind of going through that route and then about a month later, she emailed me again, saying, Amber, guess what? I adopted a baby girl. And I was like, how did you adopt a baby so quickly? Like that?
It just seemed a little different to me. So, I got on the phone with her, and she was talking about how much she loved being a mom. Then I asked about the birth mom, and she told me about a young woman named Evelyn, and she said, you know, she’s just. She’s an amazing young woman. But, you know, Amber, she tried to get an abortion, and she actually tried a couple times. She even tried to get a later term abortion. And I was like, I knew they were in Texas, so. I was like, oh, I wonder if the law had anything to do with that. Why she couldn’t get an abortion, and then a couple months later, I connected with Evelyn. And that’s how I fell in the story.
Krys Boyd:
So, we’ll get into all these details, but first, why is there a shortage of black sperm donors?
Amber Ferguson:
Oh, gosh. Thank you so much for talking to me about this. So how I even found that story was I have a cousin who’s about 15 years older than me and she’s super accomplished, has her PhD traveled, lived abroad for a number of years, and she’s single. And she was telling me about her struggles to find a black sperm doner and at the time this was probably 2018. I thought she was just being very picky and so I was like, OK, and then about a year or two later, I was on TikTok and I kind of saw the subject come back up again. I saw lesbian women. Lesbian black women who had biracial children and the comments were just kind of vile. Honestly, they’re like, why would you choose a donor of a different race? And in the comments, they would respond, the woman would say I couldn’t find a black sperm donor. And so, then I went through that route of reporting that story. And so, there’s several reasons why there’s a shortage. Less than 3% of sperm donors in the US are. Black. So, in in at 1 Crow Bank, there’s even more Native American sperm donors and black sperm donors, which really surprised me. So, a few reasons. Because Black men don’t know that they’re needed to donate sperm, so they’re not donating, and it’s a lot about medical mishaps. They’re not sure how their sperm will be used, and so they’re very hesitant to give their genetic material. And, as I was reporting it, I found out that gay men are still banned from donating.
Krys Boyd:
Hmm.
So, irony #1 in this story that made it so interesting to me is, you know, a woman like Carolyn, who you know has multiple degrees and is kind of firing on all cylinders professionally and really wants to be a mother, is presumed by at least some adoption agencies she contacted to be unfit because she’s not married. On the other hand, a single young woman who becomes pregnant doesn’t feel ready to carry the pregnancy to term raise that child, presumably in in states that have really toughened abortion laws. The assumption is they ought to be ready to be apparent.
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah, exactly. So, my story is really complex, and it’s layered. It wasn’t easy. So, Evelyn, she’s the birth mom. She’s adopted herself, and she was adopted at 3 weeks old. I say it in my piece, she feels like her parents gave her an ideal childhood. Her dad was a pilot. Her mom was a nurse, and she traveled around the world growing up, but she found herself in this unexpected situation. She was kicked out of school because of her GPA. She was living at home. She didn’t want to disappoint her parents, and she really wanted an abortion, even though she was adopted. She didn’t choose adoption initially. She chose adoption, really. So, my story really dives deep into her journey of trying so hard to get an abortion. And then finding out really at 37 weeks that she couldn’t.
Krys Boyd:
Alright, so she, Evelyn who’s 25 now, a couple of years ago got pregnant with somebody that she wasn’t even seriously dating. It became clear this other person was not going to be a source of support, but as you mentioned, Evelyn’s parents. You know, she was close with them. I mean, they were on her case about school as parents. But like, she never doubted that they loved her. And here’s one of these places where people who haven’t been in this situation might struggle to understand why did it feel impossible at the time for Evelyn to just tell her mom and dad that she was pregnant?
Amber Ferguson:
Yes. So, in my story, I say that Evelyn hit her pregnancy. The first conversation I had with her; she said her number one regret was not telling her parents. Everyone in her life, the very few people she told that she was pregnant, told her, ‘tell your parents they can help you’. She felt so ashamed. I talked to her dad later and he said that he thought she was a virgin. They had no idea she was pregnant, that she was sexually active. She was just like I should have used protection. She just didn’t. She didn’t want to disappoint them, and so she had her pregnancy.
Krys Boyd:
So, as it happens, she lives in Texas, and the timing of her pregnancy, I guess, came up against what at the time were very new restrictions on abortion created by this heartbeat law that Texas has, right?
Amber Ferguson:
Exactly at the time, Texas had a six week ban in place and everyone did know about the law. She’s like, I watched the news. I knew about it, and she took a pregnancy test, and she got an appointment for an abortion. Pretty much immediately. But when she got to the clinic, the doctor told her she was six weeks and four days pregnant, so she was just over that six-week mark and they told her go to Oklahoma before that state also enacts abortion bans.
Krys Boyd:
OK, six weeks and four days. I mean, I’ve been pregnant myself. I’ve got kids. I mean Is it possible for science to pinpoint that precisely the moment at which someone becomes?
Amber Ferguson:
I asked her the same thing because I didn’t know this myself. I was like, did you think about going to another clinic and maybe getting another opinion because I’m, I also think that doctors were just so afraid of the law that they didn’t even want to take any chances at that point because she was just over that mark, maybe. Another ultrasound could have revealed something different. Who knows? But she. At the time, Evelyn was following the directions that were given to her. You know, they gave her a sheet of paper that had all these clinics in Oklahoma, and they recommended one. And she called and in the parking lot, she called the clinic in Oklahoma to make an appointment. So, she was following what they told her to do.
Krys Boyd:
All right back to Carolyn for a moment, this is the woman in her early 40s who was professionally successful, had struggled to find a black sperm donor. She also had some health issues, right? So, she had, like, a limited supply of her own frozen eggs to work with regardless.
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah, exactly. Her father had prostate cancer. And so, she got genetic testing done, and she tested positive for the BRCA gene, which is commonly known as the breast cancer gene. That also affects just her reproductive health. And she was told that she was going to need her uterus and ovaries removed in her mid-40s. Actually, as I was reporting the story, she had the surgery. So, before she had that surgery, she froze her eggs in two different cycles, and she had that kind of paint, but she couldn’t find a black sperm donor. And so, for Carolyn, it was really important to have. The Black child and I hate the word fully black because there’s a lot of things around that, but she really wanted a black child and she couldn’t find a black sperm donor. And so she chose to end that search and not to use her eggs. I also I I’ve spoken to her. So much, and I speak to her so recently, she’s actually thinking about. Well, discarding her eggs now because she’s very afraid of. What could happen with the IVF laws in Texas? Kind of what? What followed with Alabama? So that’s the different story for a different day. So she chose adoption. She thought it was going to be pretty simple. She she had really good references. She saved her money. She has no criminal background. And then she was just denied. For being single.
Krys Boyd:
- And what are the reasons given for denying a single person who wants to adopt a child? I mean, I think we can all agree it’s helpful to have two adults in the house, but millions of us are or were raised by people doing this on their own.
Amber Ferguson:
My mom is a single mom and I’ve only grown up with my mom as a single parent in my household. So that shocked me. I didn’t even know that was a thing, and so they asked her two questions. Will you raise this baby in a Krys tian home? And are you married? And she said yes to the first one. No to the second one. And they denied her so to denied. She said she was just automatically feeling rejected again. And our first conversation, she was like, I already feel kind of rejected because, you know, I haven’t been doing well in the dating scene. I feel rejected because I can’t find a black sperm donor. And now I feel rejected again because I’m not married. And it’s another hurdle for me to adopt. And that honestly kind of just, like, broke my heart. And so then she contacted three more adoptions agencies and they told her, you know, there’s a long wait list she didn’t like, get to the application part. Then they tell her. You know, there is a need for more black adoptive parents, so they accept her.
Krys Boyd
OK, back to Evelyn. The younger woman who was pregnant and didn’t want to be. She’d been told by these clinic staffers in San Antonio they couldn’t do an abortion procedure, but she should get an appointment in Oklahoma. So, she makes this appointment. But Oklahoma clinics had been extra busy, right, taking overflow patients from Texas, people like Evelyn herself. So how long did it take for her to get an appointment in Tulsa?
Amber Ferguson:
It took over 4 weeks, so she discovered she was pregnant in February, and she got an appointment for the beginning of April 2023, and she contacts her birth mom, who she met when she was 16, Tim a lot to help her because remember, she’s keeping the pregnancy a secret from her adoptive parents, and they make the truck out there. I spoke to the executive administrator of the Oklahoma Clinic she went to, and she was saying, you know, we were seeing 500 patients a month and many of them were women coming from Texas. And so, Evelyn. She told me that the room was packed, and she was called back and she was like, right at that line of nine or ten weeks pregnant. And they gave her the abortion pills.
Krys Boyd:
All right, Amber. So Evelyn gets this appointment in Oklahoma and in Oklahoma. She first reaches out to her birth mother, whom she’d connected with a few years earlier and remained in touch with. It’s so interesting that she imagined, correctly, that her birth mom at the very least, would relate to how. Distressed she was.
Amber Ferguson:
Mm-hmm. Tamela was 19 when she got pregnant with Evelyn and Tamela. At the time, she told me, you know, I was pro-life back, but she was like, when? When? When Evelyn called me, she could hear the fear in her voice and she wanted to help her daughter. And so they drove to Oklahoma, and Evelyn would say, you know, do you think I’m making the right decision? And Tiwa said yes, you know, I think this is best for your future. She sat outside while Evelyn went in the clinic. And Evelyn? She took one pill when she was there, and then she came back and. What Evelyn decided to do was to go back to San Antonio, where she’s from, to complete the abortion, and she did it in her home. Her parents were home. She did it in her room and she told me she bled. She cramped, she felt pain, and she thought it was successful.
Krys Boyd:
So, she thought it was safe to skip the follow up appointment that had been recommended.
Amber Ferguson:
Yes. So it was highly recommended. The clinic told me this. Evelyn told me this, that she should have done an ultrasound to follow up to make sure that the abortion was completed. Evelyn thought. You know, I bled. I cramped, I had clots. I’m OK. And so a couple months passes. She’s still not in school. And she gets a job at Macy’s, but she still didn’t get her menstrual cycle. So she takes another test, and it comes back positive. And she’s like, OK, well, you know, maybe the HCG hormones are still my body. Let me go to the clinic, and that’s where it’s discovered. That. No, this baby still has a heartbeat. This baby is growing, and she actually faints when she finds this out. And I spoke to the midwife and the midwife told me she was in and out of consciousness for 5 minutes and the midwife at this point, you can tell like you’re getting. I think she’s at like 5-5. At this. Yeah. And the midwives like, you know, maybe you should consider adoption. And Evelyn said, no, no, no, I can’t go through with the pregnancy. And so, Evelyn. Tells me that she was desperate and she finds an organization online that where you can buy pills. The pills were coming from India and she bought more abortion pills and she took that and it was unsuccessful.
Krys Boyd:
How common is it for medication abortions to fail?
Amber Ferguson:
It’s very uncommon. It happens only in 3% of cases when your station reaches 70 days or 10 weeks. Remember, Evelyn was at that line, but again, she did bleed. She had cramping. She had pain. But I did talk to several doctors about this, and they said This is why the follow up. Ultrasound is so important to make sure that it was completed. Evelyn didn’t know what could fail, and and so she she told me her second regret was not doing that ultrasound. She was like, I know I was told to do this, but I just thought it. Worked.
Krys Boyd:
So she does get another prescription sent by a supplier in India. She took the medication again. What happened?
Amber Ferguson:
Nothing happened and she emails the company that sent it to her, and she said, you know, I’m really scared. Nothing’s happening. They say take the medic, take more medication. They did send her additional medication. She takes that medication. We didn’t put this in my story, but she took 12 pills that second time and nothing happened. She told me she felt a little bit of cramping, but that’s it and. The clinic said OK, We will send you more abortion medication and, in the e-mail, she’s like, am I allowed to pick this up? You know, there’s a law here. And so, she was afraid. She was afraid of what these pills could continue doing to her body. She was. Afraid of the law. You know, Evelyn, she’s like I didn’t. Want to get arrested? You know people. We just don’t know what’s going to happen at that time. And so she decides not to take any more pills, and so she spends the whole summer, the whole summer of 2023, trying to, I’m sorry. She spent the whole summer of 2022 trying to find it. Places to have a surgical abortion late term and she finds a place in New Mexico. She contacts 2 organizations to pay for it because it’s a $12,000 procedure, she needs a plane ticket out there. She’s still hiding it from her parents, and she’s able to get an appointment. And she goes out to New Mexico.
Krys Boyd:
And then that clinic. Does ultrasounds and sort of dates the pregnancy and they say you’re 32 weeks alone–We can’t do this?
Amber Ferguson:
Yes, it’s way too late at that point. She’s full term to have a baby and you know, throughout this I’ve, I’ve. I’ve talked to Evelyn so many times. I spoke to nurses who saw her. The common consensus was Evelyn was in such an extreme denial and Evelyn will tell you this herself. She’s just like I knew I was pregnant. I just really did not think I was going to have this baby. She was in denial about how far along she was. She was in denial about, like, everything. It was up until she was in labor. She still didn’t think she was in labor. She thought she was having gallbladder pain. It was like, no, you’re in labor. She didn’t have a hospital backpack. She didn’t know the gender of the baby. She had no prenatal care at all. She was like, in that much denial that she. Was going to have this child.
Krys Boyd:
After Albuquerque, she realized she would have to tell her parents had they suspected anything?
Amber Ferguson:
Her dad was shocked. Her dad did not know her mom was suspicious, her mom told me, you know, she was wearing a robe in the house all the time, like a big robe. She was, and she was covering her stomach a lot. I had seen a picture of Evelyn pregnant, and she was wearing very flowy tops. She didn’t really gain weight until the very end, I will say. But they were shocked. Her dad just dropped his head in disbelief. But. They said, we’re going to support you in whatever decision you choose to make. And Evelyn chose to call the adoption agency that she was adopted from Gladney Center for Adoption, and she contacted A caseworker, and she started the process.
Krys Boyd:
That detail in the story, Amber, I must tell you of her dad. Sort of dropping his head in disbelief. I’m choking up thinking about it now. Like the import of that tiny movement and what it must have meant to everybody involved.
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah. I mean, her dad. I mean, I’ve talked to him a few times. He still seems a little shocked. He’s just like, I can’t even believe she had the baby. He was. She was his baby girl. He loves Evelyn. And he’s just like, I can’t believe my baby girl went to these states to have an abortion. And that she didn’t trust us enough to tell us that she was pregnant. And he’s just like, I just don’t understand why they’re. And then Evelyn says, you know, they were older. They’re like in their early 70s. I didn’t think they would understand. And but I mean, they have such like a beautiful close relationship now that it’s kind of like water and under the bridge, really.
Krys Boyd:
But at no point, even after she told them did Evelyn think OH, you know, my parents can help raise this baby? I guess based on their age and some other factors?
Amber Ferguson:
No, I asked this. I asked them several times. Did you ever think about parenting? And she said no, she says. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to go back to school, and she said if I had the baby, I’d know myself. I would not have finished. School Evelyn was already struggling in school, and she, I will say, even though Evelyn was in denial this whole time, she was very self-reflective. I know that sounds a little strange to say, but everyone knows herself enough to know that she couldn’t care for the child.
Krys Boyd:
So she, as you mentioned, she chose the same adoption agency that she’d been adopted from, and by coincidence, this was the only agency that Carolyn had found willing to work with a single mother.
Amber Ferguson:
Yes, exactly. Uh, Evelyn gives birth and she has a very quick six hour birth and she does choose to hold the baby and some of some birth mothers I spoke to said they may not choose that to not become attached, but Evelyn wanted to hold the baby and immediately she looked down at the baby. And she fell in love. She told me. And she said Amber, I know what’s crazy. I spent my whole pregnancy not trying to have this baby, but like, I do love her and her feelings changed. And. And it’s kind of like she got into like, a different mode. She sent me so many videos of her bottle feeding her and swaddling her, and Evelyn is super into Snapchat. So she did like all the Snapchat filters on the baby and taking videos. And the next day after she gave birth, the caseworker came in from Gladney and was talking to her about adoption. And said, you know, it’s your decision. And she said, you know, I still want to go through with this.
Krys Boyd:
I mean, it is an interesting set of emotions to go through after having tried multiple times to end the pregnancy. How was she? Had she sort of set that aside in the moment just in in this time that she was overwhelmed with love for this baby?
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah. I mean, of course some of it is hormones and things, but her parents were there in the hospital when she gave birth. She did feel that support. But Evelyn told me, you know, I know, like by. Placing this baby up for adoption, this baby will have a beautiful life. And she told me that. And so she had a bunch of profiles of adopt of adoptive parents to choose from, and she chose 5 parents that she wanted to interview, but she gravitated towards Carolyn, and it was her first. Interview and they actually have three interviews that day, like I’m zoom, zoom calls, and they really connected on their love of, you know, food and traveling. And Carolyn said that she was on the board of Girls Inc, which is a nonprofit to help young girls. And Evelyn. Because I really like when I I, when I was younger, I was part of Girls, Inc and so they connected that way and then that was their first zoom interview. And the second one Evelyn’s parents got to meet Carolyn over zoom and then they had another interview later that night. And then Carolyn got the call that. Someone shows her and that she was going to become a.
Krys Boyd:
I can’t imagine how fraught those interviews are between prospective. Parents and prospective birth mothers or birth mothers who are thinking about adoption, I mean, such an enormous decision to make.
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah. And Evelyn didn’t think she was going to choose that quickly, you know. The people I’ve spoken to, it can take several days, sometimes weeks, to make this decision. She chose within the number of hours, she said, that she wanted the baby to grow up to be like Carolyn. She wanted her to be educated, to have friends from all walks of life, to be able to travel and. And Evelyn also wanted black parents for her baby. That was, like, really important to her. So she did have, you know. Interracial couples who she was talking to and others, but she really did want at least one black parent.
Krys Boyd:
So she tried not to get too attached, knowing that she had chosen adoption, but she gave her baby a name.
Amber Ferguson:
She did she? Gave her baby the name Kaya, which was the name that she was originally born with, and she didn’t take Kaya home with her when she after she gave birth, it went. The baby went into like a temporary home and it took a couple weeks for the adoption to be finalized. And they traveled Carolyn and Evelyn to Fort Worth, where the adoption day would be taking place and the night before the adoption day. They had dinner. Carolyn. Evelyn, where they met for the first time, and Carolyn told her. You know, I’ve always loved the name Olivia. And I really do want to change her name, but I want to keep. You in the name, so her name is Olivia Kaya, Simone Whiteman.
Krys Boyd:
What were things like for Carolyn? It sounds like it was. A pretty quick. Time between learning she’d been chosen and the moment when she got to be a mother. How did she get herself ready?
Amber Ferguson:
Oh my gosh, the second she got off the phone learning that she was going to become a mom, she signed up for infant CPR class which is required by Gladney for 8:00 AM the next day she hired a nanny. She went shopping for, like everything. I mean, usually, parents have several months to prepare for a child. She had two weeks to prepare, so it’s like testing out strollers and formula makers and, you know, going in different Facebook groups and just learning things and when during adoption day, some of her family members stayed behind at her home. Like open up Amazon boxes to get the nursery fully prepared.
Krys Boyd:
Was Carolyn worried at all that Evelyn would change her mind at the last minute?
Amber Ferguson:
For sure, she was very worried, she.
Speaker
OK.
Amber Ferguson:
She always knew it was a possibility, but it was the night before the adoption day that her caseworker told her that Evelyn had signed the relinquished that Evelyn had signed, the relinquishment papers.
Krys Boyd:
And then it seems like that first meeting must have been beautiful, but also fraught with emotion. I mean, Carolyn’s grateful, but a little bit apprehensive. Evelyn is grateful, but a little bit sad. I mean, what did they tell you about that day?
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah, they told me it was kind of like 2 friends catching up, which was like kind of interesting. They got the same like chicken quesadilla dinner. Evelyn loves quesadillas, and it was around Christmas time in December. So they took a picture in front of the Christmas tree and they would just talked a lot about food and Evelyn just talked about how she wanted to go back to school and like her plan. And it wasn’t until the next day adoption day that things were like extremely emotional.
Krys Boyd:
And Evelyn and her mom had bought a special outfit for now, Olivia, to wear on the day she went to another mother.
Amber Ferguson:
Yeah, they went shopping too, when Carolyn was going shopping for supplies and a baby. Things Evelyn and her mom, they picked out this pink kind of frilly, fluffy dress for Olivia. That was too big for her, and they also went to a craft store. And Evelyn, like, hand tied, like hand knit a baby blanket. And she presented it to. Carolyn and when I visited them in Texas, I saw in Olivia’s nursery that same pink. The baby blanket had like rainbows on it. It was very cute.
So Carolyn is extremely grateful for Evelyn because, Evelyn, you know, adoption is not the easy way out at all. Evelyn made a hard decision after the adoption. She cried for like weeks in bed. She didn’t barely left her house. She felt that void of not having Olivia with her, but she really used that to motivate her to go back to school. And she even told me, you know, Amber, I’m really surprised by that myself. I didn’t think I was going to be able to go back to school. But she did.
She did, and she has thrived in the interim, right?
Do a lot of people in Evelyn’s new life as a college student know the full details of her story?
Which is not to say I would imagine that. She doesn’t have. Pangs of like what might have been.
Thank you so much for having me.
Again, I’m Krys Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.
