This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemitabasu outside Charlotte, North Carolina, in an evangelical Christian household.

She was really steeped in purity culture.

That's journalist T.J. Raphael.

She did a purity pledge to her father on her 13th birthday.

He presented her with a ring. It's the same ring that her two older sisters had received

after doing the same ritual where they pledged to remain virgins until they found a husband.

Abby was homeschooled and didn't receive any sex education. Then she met a boy

in her homeschool community named Nathan. By the time Abby turns 16, you know, sparks start to

fly between her and Nathan and they end up dating in secret because they're both not allowed to date.

Abby gets pregnant. She knows she doesn't want an abortion, but she hides her pregnancy at first.

She is terrified of what her parents are going to say, but eventually she tells them.

Abby's mother is shocked and Abby's father tells her that as her God ordained authority, the baby belongs to him, not to her.

And his choice is that she will place the child for adoption.

This is happening around 2008.

Abby's parents sent her to a maternity home in Lynchburg, Virginia, called the Liberty Godparent home.

Maternity homes are facilities that provide temporary housing and other services to pregnant

people, and in some cases, their newborns. It's at this home that Abby says she was coerced and

shamed into giving up her son for adoption. T.J. tells Abby's story and others who had similar experiences at the same home in the new

podcast Liberty Lost from Wondery.

It's a gripping look at maternity homes.

Their rise in the decades before Roe v. Wade, their resurgence after the overturning of Roe

in 2022, and the dangers of framing adoption as the only

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