Transatlantic Railroad

This story was first published in the Irish Times on 18 May 2018, immediately prior to the referendum on the Eight Amendment, and is reprinted with permission by the author and original publisher. It has been revised here for publication in Éire-Ireland. Set in 1992 and told through the first-person perspective of a young woman who is pregnant, the story narrativizes a little-known transatlantic journeying that Irish women made to the United States in the later stages of the twentieth century. Organized by Catholic organizations, women with unplanned pregnancies were sent to stay with Catholic host families for the duration of their pregnancies, and after birth the babies were then subsequently adopted in the United States. "Transatlantic Railroad" thus contributes to the historical accounting of the many exilic journeys that women have had to make from Ireland as a direct result of the illegalities of abortion services and the absence of comprehensive reproductive health care and medical services there.

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It is 1992. Too late in the century to be running away for the reason I am running and too late to be running so far. 500 years after Columbus and 400 years after the first university on Irish soil, from what I'm reading in the in-flight magazine. You'd think both Ireland and America would know better by now than to be transporting young women in my situation.

And I am 20. You'd think I'd know better by now than to have agreed to being transported.

Up the pole.

Bun in the oven.

In trouble.

I'm making a list in the journal the agency wants me to keep of all the vague terms the Irish have for unwanted pregnancy. The journal has a picture of the Virgin Mary on the cover with her hands clasped and her eyes thrown up to heaven, looking like this whole sorry business was sheer embarrassment. Never has a spokeswoman been so badly matched with her charity.

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A "host family" the agency called them. They are the host and I am the parasite. The foolish single Irish girl who got herself knocked up. (Knocked up. I must add that one to the list.) The Catholic agency that arranges for holy shows like me to hide out with a pious family until the baby has been quietly born and adopted by another Catholic family gave me a choice of available hosts: a farming family in Cavan or an Irish American family in Connecticut. Some local Catholic charity in Connecticut would take care of my expenses.

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Connecticut. In America, no less.

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Jesus Christ! Did they really think I'd choose a farm in Cavan over some place in America? I think I know Connecticut from the telly. Near New York. Rich. Big cars. Mansions. Macy's and Blooming-dales on the main streets of fancy towns.

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My hosts are Mr. and Mrs. Murphy.

"Welcome, Orla," Mrs. Murphy says at Arrivals, with what seems to be genuine warmth. Maybe this is going to be okay. But my heart sinks as they drive me from JFK Airport. With every few miles northward, we seem to get farther and farther from the possibility of department stores. We pass what they tell me with obvious pride is a large and famous Connecticut public university, but it is in the middle of nowhere. There are cows grazing in fields around the campus. In the name of God, where were the nightclubs and pubs that always huddled close to campuses? They talk at length about the Catholic church in their neighboring town. It seems I will be brought there every Sunday. I begin to see tractors on the road as we approach what they called their hometown. I had travelled thousands of miles to get away from tractors on the road and seeing cows up close. Why hadn't I looked up Connecticut in the World Book Encyclopedia at home? And that word "hometown" that they keep using. Once we approached the place I can see that this wasn't what I would've called a "town." If you call something...