CHICAGO _ Shortly after nightfall, the 17-year-old girl joined her mother in the back seat of an unfamiliar car driven by a stranger to an undisclosed location on the South Side of Chicago.
It was a summer weekend in 1966. The recent high school graduate, by then more than eight weeks pregnant, had made her choice. But it required much stealth and secrecy at the time.
"My gut said this is my only option to not ruin my own life," recalled Leta Dally, now 70, of the city's Far North Side. "My life would have been over."
The car parked at a designated spot. On foot, the male driver escorted the mom and daughter through an alleyway to the back door of a nondescript building. Dally never knew the name of the doctor who terminated her pregnancy that night or the address of the site, an underground abortion clinic operating in the years before the procedure was permitted by law.
Over the next five decades, she rarely spoke of her illegal abortion. Yet Dally said she has been recounting that clandestine night more often lately amid mounting threats to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion across the country.
"It doesn't take that long for people to forget," she said on a recent weekday, her fingers brushing back wisps of white hair that had broken free from her ponytail. "If it becomes illegal, girls who are being born today aren't going to have options. And I had a relatively good experience. It wasn't a coat hanger. It was with a physician who wasn't a hack. ... Most damaging to me, psychologically, was that I felt as though I was damaged goods."
Abortion opponents across the country have rejoiced as states including Alabama, Georgia and Missouri recently passed near-total bans on the procedure, with the prospect of challenging Roe v. Wade, a cause supported by President Donald Trump. If the decision were overturned, the matter would then be regulated by individual states.
"With two new justices on the Supreme Court and more than 100 new judges on the appellate and federal courts, we can hope and expect that the coming years will see our Constitution not scorned and rejected for someone's personal opinion," said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, in a written statement last . "When it comes to protecting unborn children, President Trump is a man of his word."
Meanwhile, Illinois, Virginia, New York and other states have expanded abortion rights, widening the chasm between parts of the country with access to the procedure and those without. Last month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed sweeping abortion legislation solidifying the right to terminate a pregnancy in Illinois regardless of the fate of Roe.
Dally, though, said she worries that right is in peril in sections of the country threatening to revert to the laws and culture of her youth.
"Young women have so many options today that they don't realize they could all be taken away," she said. "Every time somebody refuses to fill a prescription for the morning-after pill. Every time somebody refuses to fulfill a prescription for contraceptives. It's just another bite out of the apple that could end up back to the way things were. And it's going to be a lot harder to get the rights back again."
