MOC Day26 - Tradition/Heritage

djp332, Jan 26, 2018

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This is a photo of my grandparents, Hilda and John Stokes, taken in their yard in Clairton, Pennsylvania probably around 1930. My John sent it to me several years ago, and it is the only picture That I have ever seen of my grandmother. I like to think that she is pregnant with my mother in this picture. She is only 21 years old, married just a year. 2 years after my mother was born, she gave birth to another daughter and just 3 years after that she had twin boys. All before the age of 24. What is the sad part to this story is that just 6 months after the twins were born, she was dead. She died on November 21 1935. I remember when my mother told us how her mother had died so young. She had just found out that she was pregnant again. That would be 5 babies in 5 years, so hard for anyone, I would think. How sad that she realized early on that she could not possibly take care of another baby, and that her only way out was a self-induced abortion using a knitting needle. How different the lives our my mother and her siblings would have been had this not happened. So many possibilities. This is a big factor in while now, after all these years, my whole family adamantly supports a women’s right to choose to have a safe, legal abortion if needed.

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