The Mormon Church Made Me Give Up My Baby w/ Myndee Tollefson | Ep. 2047
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2025
⏱️ 281 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join us today for a unique Mormon Stories episode that is the first of its kind. Myndee Tollefson was born in Bountiful, Utah to an orthodox Mormon family. At just 19, she became pregnant and, feeling immense pressure from the Church and her family, gave her baby up for adoption through LDS Family Services—only to later discover that her child's life in the adoptive family was not what the Church promised.
Topics include:
-Toxicity of purity culture
-Unplanned pregnancy in Mormonism
-Harsh backlash from her family and LDS community
-Adoption within the LDS Family services program
-The church's role in facilitating and encouraging adoption
-Being a "birth mom"
-Troubled teen culture within Mormonism
Her story sheds light on the emotional and spiritual costs of institutional coercion, and the healing that comes with breaking free from this control.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What happens when your church, in this specific case, the LDS for Mormon Church, shames and pressures you to give your child up for adoption in a teenage pregnancy? |
| 0:12.8 | Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast. I'm your host, John DeLyn. I'm here with my co-host Margie. Hey, Margie. |
| 0:19.7 | Hello. |
| 0:20.7 | And we are here today covering a story that I've heard hundreds of times in my 20 years doing Mormon stories podcast. And that is the legacy or the history of the Mormon church pressuring teenage girls, teenage women, |
| 0:40.8 | to put their children up for adoption, especially when it's an unwed pregnancy. |
| 0:47.6 | And on the one sense, I'm sort of like dismayed that has taken me 20 years to really cover this story. |
| 0:56.4 | I know that this is going to resonate with a lot of other people who have had similar experiences, but mostly Margie and I are |
| 1:02.5 | super grateful today to have with us on the show, Mindy Talleson. Hi, Mindy. Hi, thanks for having me. |
| 1:08.8 | And this is, did I get it, did I get that right? |
| 1:12.0 | So the only thing that I like to clarify is I actually wasn't a teenager. |
| 1:16.8 | Okay. |
| 1:17.5 | I was 20 when I delivered her, so. |
| 1:19.6 | 20? |
| 1:20.1 | Mm-hmm. |
| 1:20.6 | And you're, okay. |
| 1:22.3 | So I was pregnant during 19, or when I was 19, so technically teen pregnancy, but not a teen birth, just because I like to |
| 1:29.5 | distinguish that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And just to give people a bit of a teaser, we darkly |
| 1:38.1 | joked that a subtitle for this episode could be what? The Mormon Church stole my daughter. Yeah, which sounds pretty |
| 1:46.8 | aggressive, but, you know, I mean, there's a lot of big feelings inside of me that kind of stand |
| 1:51.9 | behind that. And those that are in my circle and know the story support that title too. So it's kind of, |
| 1:58.7 | it is aggressive, but it's warranted aggression. |
| 2:02.1 | Well, we are, we, Margie and I and our audience are all so grateful that you're willing |
... |
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