Reply #119: I know Texas used to, and there was a woman there who crusaded to stop the practice...

[Hekate]

... until finally it was ended across the country.

Frankly, it was just one more form of social control on women's sexual behavior, if you ask me.

I was only about 12 and I already was learning that there were few options for a "girl in trouble" -- you could be forced by your family (and social disgrace) to relinquish your firstborn child for adoption or you could keep it and have the whole world know it was a bastard and that you had transgressed. Or (and I didn't really know this until later) you could have a highly dangerous and illegal abortion in an attempt to forestall permanent social disgrace. Contraception was often only dispensed to married women. (When I was in high school the boys gossiped in front of me about P, whom they had witnessed visibly pregnant over the summer. I gave the ones who were my friends the sharp side of my tongue for acting like she did it by herself. But I was a "good girl," you bet, and they all knew it.)

As for how people knew -- well, in small towns everybody knows everything. And everywhere you seek medical help, from the doctor's office to the hospital, they want to know who your emergency contact person is and your marital status, along with who will pay the bills. And when it's time to fill out the birth cert, same thing. You name the father, and in those days NO ONE kept her own name when she got married.

Hekate