Two in my year at school. Rumor is both were pregnant and both had parents who forced them to have the baby and give it up for adoption. And I graduated in '78. Roe was legal, but religion and a bit of punishment in one case.
I also had classmates that I know had abortions, and I’m sure there were many I didn’t know about as I attended a big high school and massive university.
In high school, I knew of a few. They would disappear for a while and come back. I don’t know if they had the kid or not in most cases, but occasionally I did find out, as she would sometimes wind up having to bring the kid to school with her.
The latter was more common in college. But I didn’t notice anyone actually disappearing. Either they’d already have their kid when school started, or they’d just keep going to college while pregnant. I did know of one woman who I knew got an abortion, but she didn’t seem to be gone from class long.
There likely were others who did get pregnant and I didn’t know, though. They wouldn’t need to be gone long to go somewhere and get an abortion, and I assume most people get one before they are showing. At the time, there were clinics in my state, after all. But no one I actually knew was close enough to confide in me about that.
I only knew about the one abortion in college because the father told me about it. He became so depressed he became suicidal, and they were threatening to kick him out of college for being suicidal. And, no, he wasn’t a bad dude. He did think of the fetus as his child, but was willing to pay for an abortion when she made her decision.
That’s one thing that people miss. The way people talk about it makes is more traumatic when it does happen. You have the woman who hates herself for doing it even though it was the best decision for her. And you have people who help them feel like they just aided in murder, even if it was the best decision for them.
I graduated in 1981, and it was already illegal to kick girls out just for getting pregnant; there’s a woman I sometimes see on Facebook who claimed that it happened to her, but she was always pretty much at the top of the People You Don’t Want Your Kids Hanging Out With list, and her FB posts have indicated that prior to that, she’d had a rather difficult life, to put it mildly. (The alleged father was in my grade; man, was he an oddball; he was of above-average intelligence, and she was not. Her mental disability was probably for the best, because it meant she wasn’t smart enough to get into really big trouble.)
My city had a, if you will, “maternity school” that was some kind of hybrid public school, although it was, at least at first, sponsored by the Salvation Army. Pregnant and parenting teens, in this case girls only, could go there, and they did provide free child care and contrary to some rumors, married girls could go there too.
Too late to edit: It was the first, last, and only time I ever saw the attitude towards a potential teen father to be, “How did this guy ever find a person who could stand being around him long enough to have sex with him in the first place?” I’m pretty sure he IS the biodad, because her daughter, who is now in her early 40s, is this guy’s spitting image. Don’t know if he was ever involved afterwards.
He was a neckbeard decades before the term was coined.
None that disappeared, because abortion became safe and legal when I was a young teenager, and the church my family attended was liberal and focused on social issues. We had access to good sex education both at school and in our church youth program, real sex education taught by experts, not the fake sex ed that focuses on abstinence and purity. (although the daughter of the teen sex expert, who was IIRC, a professor at Wake Forest, got embarrassed when he used anecdotes about her in his talk.)
We were encouraged to wait until we were emotionally ready, but when we were we knew how to prevent pregnancy.
I had two college friends who chose to carry their unwanted pregnancies to term. One hid the pregnancy from her family ( she was away at college and the timing worked), gave the baby up for adoption and never looked backed - she eventually married the father and they are still married after 40 years or so. The other was being supported by a Catholic family that intended to adopt the child, and she caused all kinds of drama when she decided to keep him instead of adopting him out - at which point the father’s family gave him an ultimatum to financially support the child, they ended up getting married but unsurprisingly, it didn’t last. She remarried and is very happy, I’m still in touch with her on Facebook.
I knew many more young women that chose safe and legal abortion. This is what choice looks like.
I graduated in the mid-1990s. My high school had somewhere between 400-500 students, and I only remember one girl who disappeared to have a child. And even then, I wasn’t sure she went to have a child until she friended me on Facebook and I learned the age of her oldest son. I don’t remember anyone disappearing from my senior high, but we had 2,000 students, and when your school is that large it’s easy for someone to disappear.
No disappearances. Two (known) pregnancies and births. Both moms graduated. Maybe late though? It’s been a while.
It’s hard to tell because I went to a Catholic high school, and there were a lot of transfers in and out by both male and female students each year for any number of reasons. There were persistent rumors that five girls in my class graduated pregnant, while two in the junior class were allegedly told not to come back.
There was also the very suspicious case of one girl whose family moved to Texas after her freshman year. Then she got married (in Texas, presumably with parental consent) in November and had a baby fewer than nine months later.
I recall 3 girls that “disappeared” because they got pregnant in high school. But disappeared isn’t exactly the right word, they just stopped attending, they didn’t run away or anything. And nobody was shocked that any of them got a belly full. All three were hyper sexual sure things. It was just a matter of time. I had been with 2 of them (but did not knock them up. I’m no fool. No siree)
Another girl got pregnant her sophomore year from her junior year boy friend that was in my class. She kept going to school. They got married and I know for a fact they are still married to this day and apparently quite happy. I was Class of ‘79.
I graduated from high school in 1978. It was a Catholic school and until my senior year any girl that got pregnant either dropped out or transferred to the public school. I’m not sure if they were told to or if they just felt they had to. My senior year my best friend got pregnant and stayed there and delivered a few weeks before graduation. She paved the way because after that girls no longer transferred.
My friend gave her baby up for adoption. Her parents were very staunch Catholics but told her they would support her decision if she wanted an abortion.
And clearly, so were you. Calling a female a sure thing takes me right back to this horrible era where females were talked about as sexual objects, goals to score. Pretty disgusting now, methinks. But being female, I can see how we females were desperate for attention and not good judges on how far was too far. And, of course, neither were the boys as they tried to out-macho each other.
So glad I don’t have to relive that.
Not to my knowledge (high school: 86-89, College 89-93). But then again I don’t recall anyone being pregnant and staying in school either. I don’t know whether it was because they left, got it “taken care of” , or just were really good at practicing safe sex. All I know is that it wasn’t that they weren’t having sex.
One in junior high, one in high school (that I knew of - there were 3,000+ kids), both in the 70s.
For reference I was in junior high/high school(Grades7 thru 12) from 87 to 93 in New Hampshire.
I don’t remember anyone disappearing who was pregnant. I do remember every year there was at least 3 girls openly pregnant. My three older sisters were in the grades above me and I would overhear then gossiping about them.
I know when i was in eighth grade there was a girl in 7th grade who became pregnant and she stayed in school until the last month of the pregnancy.
And when I was in high school two years in a row the salutatorian of their class became pregnant their senior year.
My sister, who graduated from HS in 1989, had a lot of friends who went to Catholic school, and of course she asked what happened to girls who got pregnant? The answer in unison? “They have abortions.”
I graduated from Catholic high school in 1977. Two girls from my homeroom had babies by the time we graduated.
No disappearances in either case. Both continued in school throughout their pregnancy. In one case, the father was also in our homeroom. They were still together as of graduation though I have no idea if they remained together. In the other case, the father was in our class (or maybe a year older? I did not know him). Her mother took care of the baby while she finished high school; she and the father did marry a year or so later, had 2 more kids, and are still married. Definitely beat the odds there.
A friend of mine, Class of '63, suddenly disappeared for a semester. When she returned to school, she miraculously had a baby brother, even though her mother was post-menopausal.
I was class of '76 in a small, preppy private school. (Only 33 kids in my graduating class.) So Roe v Wade, plus our privilege as white private school kids of affluent parents, gave us all the protection we needed.
No one disappeared; we didn’t need to, we had other options. As the children of well-off progressive parents, I’d characterize my classmates as a whole as slightly precocious for our era - we were probably more guilt-free sexually active than our counterparts at public schools - but also informed and responsible. I lost my virginity at age 16 but only after I’d taken birth control pills for 30+ days, as instructed. My experience was probably fairly typical.
I started high school in 1977, and as far as I know , zero girls disappeared. It was a big school and I certainly didn’t know all 4000 students so some could have disappeared without my knowledge - but I encountered plenty of pregnant students in my four years there who didn’t even “disappear” to the extent of attending the special high schools set up for pregnant students and new mothers.