2025-08-01
26 分钟This is In Conversation from Apple News.
I'm Shimita Basu.
Today, adoption, abortion, and choice in America.
In the early 2000s, Abby Johnson was a teenager living 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 was 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 turned 16, 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.