In a rare article, the usually pro-abortion Washington Post featured the story of a young woman whose failed, consecutive abortion attempts ended up leading to a story of birth, adoption and redemption.
The April 6 WaPo story, titled “Her failed abortion attempts helped answer another woman’s prayers” is a long read about how two Texas women, 25-year-old Evelyn (whose last name was withheld for privacy) and Carolyn Whiteman, a 44-year-old, ended up connecting around Olivia, a one-year old baby girl who Evelyn was not able to abort in part because of restrictive abortion laws.
Evelyn, a young woman of Native American and Black ancestry, and adoptee herself, found out in 2022 that she was pregnant after casual sex with a man she met via the internet.
Deciding to keep the secret away from her parents -both military veterans in their 70s living in San Antonio-, Evelyn found out at a San Antonio abortion facility that her pregnancy was a few days past the six weeks limit established by Texas laws.
She then decided to drive to Oklahoma as the second step in a series of failed abortion attempts that would lead her to Whiteman, an African American single woman and successful professional that was at that same time looking to adopt a baby.
Evelyn got an appointment at Tulsa Women’s Reproductive Services in Oklahoma, almost a month later.
The Post story tells that “the clinic’s doctor estimated that she was nine, possibly 10 weeks along and handed her a prescription for mifepristone… She should dissolve the pills under her tongue to start a medication abortion, according to the prescription she received from the clinic. She was told to take the remaining four pills, misoprostol, ‘orally’ at home within 48 hours.”
Two months after completing the painful process marred by stomach cramps and blood clots, Evelyn found out that she was still pregnant.
“Desperate, Evelyn found a website, Aid Access, that shipped abortion medication across the country. After speaking with a doctor by phone and paying $150, she waited for pills that were being mailed from India,” the WaPo story says.
But the chemical abortifacient did not work, probably because Evelyn was past 10 weeks pregnant. She emailed the Indian company. “In the email exchange,” says the story, “the company offered to send more medication to a pharmacy near Evelyn,” but she refused.
Past the halfway point in her pregnancy and approaching the third trimester, she found a clinic in Albuquerque (New Mexico) that offered second-trimester abortions. Evelyn connected with two abortion organizations that “covered the cost of her plane ticket, hotel, food and the $12,000 procedure.”
But she arrived at the abortion facility only to find out that she was “too far along, 32 weeks pregnant,” and the doctors at Southwestern Women’s Options “aren’t trained to perform abortions after 24 weeks,” explained the Post.
“She hadn’t seriously considered adoption until now, despite being adopted herself. But now that seemed to be the only option,” the Post also said.
After finally coming clean and receiving support from her parents, on Nov. 10, Evelyn gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
“It felt like whiplash,” the story continues. “She had tried for months not to have the child she was silently cradling. And she says she quickly discovered she was in love. She took selfie videos, with playful social media filters, holding her daughter. Her photo album quickly filled with videos of Evelyn bottle-feeding, learning to swaddle and admiring the baby’s fussy sounds.”
Meanwhile, “two hours east, in Houston, Carolyn Whiteman, the human resources executive for a chemical company, had been struggling with becoming a mother for years.”
When the two women finally met over a Zoom meeting arranged by the adoption company Carolyn had enrolled in, “they talked of spirituality, faith and the importance of family time,” the story goes.
The Post article, after giving details of the complex adoption process, describes at length the emotional process of Evelyn officially handing the baby to Whiteman.
Since then, the Post explains, “the clinic in San Antonio she initially went to for an abortion closed, and the Oklahoma clinic that gave her medication abortion pills relocated to Illinois;” while Evelyn enrolled in community college, where she has been passing all her classes with straight A’s.
According to the post, now she “goes to the gym four days per week, attends a midweek Bible study meeting on campus and is looking for a criminal justice internship.”
She has also visited her biological daughter for the first time and felt relieved at finding that little Olivia was happy and well taken care of.
After the visit, “on the car ride home, she received a text from Whiteman. It contained details about a garden brunch. Evelyn and her parents were invited to Olivia’s first birthday party the next month, where they would play Olivia Trivia. There was no doubt, Evelyn knew. She would be there,” the story ends.
