Guests have included the homeless, pregnant and undocumented Tanzanian who showed up sobbing on the lawn of the sisters' retreat center in Stamford, Conn., and later likened the care at Sacred Heart to "angels planting a root and watering it every day." Then there was the Trinidadian nanny, six months pregnant with twins, whose boyfriend was trying to induce a miscarriage by kicking her down the stairs. There was the Polish immigrant who studied for the MCAT exam while living at the convent, as well as the former network journalist whose boyfriend split when she got a Down Syndrome diagnosis, and whose friends could not believe she'd throw herself so far "off-track" to have the child.

Another alumna had just finished a graduate program in England, gotten pregnant, been dumped by her law-student boyfriend and returned to the U.S. "in a horrible state of depression." For an educated woman with professional ambitions, she said "an abortion seems like the most practical thing in the world. But once you do get pregnant, it's not so easy."

She had a daughter, got a magazine job and a subsidized apartment.

Read it all.

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1. Ralinda wrote: What a beautiful story.  Planned parenthood sent me a solicitation (bad marketing decision on their part) and I’m saving the postage paid envelope so I can send them something on their dime!  A printout of this story is going into that envelope! July 29, 1:01 pm | [comment link]

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