Nineteen-year-old Julie Mannix Von Zemeck was forced to choose between terminating her pregnancy or being committed to a mental institution. The decision would change the rest of her life.
Julie was expecting a child with her boyfriend, Frank, who, it was discovered, was married to somebody else. Abortion was illegal in 1963, and giving birth to a child out of wedlock was a scenario that Julie’s parents were not prepared to entertain. They decided to protect the family’s reputation; they left Julie in a hospital for the mentally disturbed and criminally insane, alone, for six long months.
