The first time either of us ever had sex she became pregnant. It was the late 1960s and policy forbade a pregnant girl from attending high school. There was no such policy for the boy — me — who made the girl pregnant.
Her parents were devout Christians; mine were devout alcoholics. As teenagers, we had kept secrets from the world, and even from ourselves, but a growing belly was one secret we could not keep. We were pregnant with fear, shame and regret. We decided to figure this out by ourselves, keeping all options open.
We quickly ruled out marriage. We were high school students. We had no money or jobs; no one would rent us an apartment. We called the county “welfare office” but couldn’t navigate the system or the shame.
We considered abortion. We lived in a Midwestern city with a large university during the “Sexual Revolution.” We decided that it was I who should be the one to walk around a nearby campus, asking young women for information about abortion. We saw posters about ending “coat hanger abortions” but we found no one willing to talk about options to us two baby-faced teenagers about what was then an illegal process. Still, we ruled out abortion, admitting it would never be our choice.
The last option was to tell our parents. Her parents were sad and turned to prayer and scripture for guidance. My parents were angry and turned to liquor and lawyers to prepare for a likely paternity suit.
We decided she would go to a “home for unwed mothers” and offer the child for adoption. Her mother and father were in the front seat and we were in the back, as we drove to the home. I was alone in the back seat when we returned. We drove endlessly in empty silence.
After giving birth, my girlfriend held our daughter once before the adoption. I was not allowed to be there. We were treated kindly all through the pregnancy, but another message was equally clear: Abortion was illegal and sinful, but offering our own child for adoption was the right thing to do after doing the wrong thing. Everything was secretive, anonymous and transactional.
My girlfriend returned home with dripping breasts, a flabby tummy and no baby. She was as stunned and empty as I was, and we had no idea how to process what had happened to us. We loved each other very much but drifted apart, forever.
Years later, both of us married and had more children. One night, while putting my daughter to bed, I said, “You’re my favorite little girl!” She said, “That’s because I’m your only little girl.” I said nothing. The secret and the shame remained sealed.
Twenty-one years after our daughter’s birth, I located my long-lost girlfriend and got her permission to hire a search investigator. A couple of months later, I learned that my daughter’s name was Linda. I wrote a letter to Linda that began, “My name is Dwight Lee Wolter and I vow to never try to contact you again without your approval, but I believe I am your biological father.”
She wrote back immediately. At one point, she was living in San Diego. Coincidentally, I was to deliver a speech there on a book I had written about forgiveness. We met and the next day she sat next to me at a banquet table. I was introduced and as I walked to the stage, a woman at the table said to my daughter,
You must be very proud of your father.” My daughter said, “I am.” The woman then asked, “Has your father been doing this for long?” My daughter answered, “I don’t know, I just met him.
As I departed for home the next day, she hugged me and softly and tearfully said in my ear, “Thank you for not choosing an abortion.” She never knew, she told me, that I even knew I had a daughter. I was shocked. She also never knew I had carried her in my heart every day for twenty-one years.
Dwight Wolter’s daughters Linda, left, and Celeste, in 2019. Credit: Courtesy Dwight Lee Wolter
My daughter and I now know much about each other. Her adoptive mother is deceased. Her birth mother has also passed, but not before they were reunited. While he was still alive, her adoptive father was a guest in my home, and he and I worked it out that he would call himself her dad and I would call myself her father. I thanked him and his wife for doing a wonderful job, raising Linda. And I remain immensely grateful that he welcomed my sudden appearance in his life.
Linda and I have very different experiences, feelings and beliefs about several things, including abortion. The choice my girlfriend and I once made is obvious. But it was a choice. And like any choice ever made by anyone, it was made in part out of conviction and also of circumstance. It would have been disastrous, for many reasons, if we had chosen to try to raise Linda and we knew it. Shame, stigma, pain, and regret resulted from having “given her away”; the same would have happened if we had chosen abortion.
Dwight Lee Wolter. Credit: Courtesy Dwight Wolter
I am now an ordained pastor. I have an opinion about virtually everything. And yet, I remain deeply convinced that it is not my right to violate the sanctity of a woman’s body, to force her to carry her pregnancy to birth or to force her to abort. I may have an opinion as a citizen and a father, but a woman’s choice concerning her own body and pregnancy is not my choice to make. The people, especially the women, in situations like mine from many years ago, are not merely fodder for arguments in churches or the Supreme Court. They are real people trying to navigate very difficult situations. They deserve compassion, mercy, and the freedom to choose.
This guest essay reflects the views of Dwight Lee Wolter, pastor of the Congregational Church of Patchogue.
