Heather Marshall (1)

Looking for Jane is an emotional roller coaster about motherhood and the choices women face while pregnant. It crosses several timelines, showing the inhumane treatment that some young girls faced when pregnant while single. It looks at the danger of poor medical care, and the homes that housed unwed mothers.
Reading this book made me sad for the women who underwent such treatment and for those that are facing difficult choices today, as to whether to carry a pregnancy to term.
The story also follows women who made a choice, willingly or not, and the consequences. It is also a story of a mother and daughter searching for each other.
Moving story.… (more)

Although set in Canada, this story is especially relevant in the United States after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which leads to untenable options for unwanted pregnancies. The timeline covers the early 1960s to 2017 for a variety of women. The homes for unwed mothers in the l960s meant family shame and often unwanted relinquishment of their babies for profit. We already have a broken foster care system, which is where too many children land when their parents cannot or will not be responsible for them. Now the burden is even heavier with unwanted children ending up in foster care.

This debut novel takes on difficult topics and the choices women make when abortions are illegal, often ending in death and infertility by unscrupulous abortionists. The courage evidenced by the doctors and volunteers who established the recourse for women to obtain legal, safe abortions in the "Jane" network is noteworthy then and now.

There is a memorable phrase in this book that would be a mantra in a perfect world - "Every child a wanted child, every mother a willing mother."… (more)