Inside Liberty University's Secret Maternity Home
Imagine you’re a pregnant teenager in 1972. Abortion isn’t an option, and you’re not ready to get married … so you might turn to a maternity home for unwed mothers. You’ll live there until the baby is born, then give it up for adoption to redeem yourself from the so-called sin of premarital sex.
While they’re not well-known today in modern America, some people remember maternity homes from the 1950s through 1970s as places where mostly white, middle-class teenage girls gave birth in secret, then were forced to surrender their babies for adoption.
What even fewer people know is that these homes are not just a part of America’s Christian conservative past: They’re alive and well today. Many shut down in the 1970s after access to abortion became more widely available with Roe v. Wade. However, in the three years since the fall of Roe, the number of maternity homes in the U.S. has grown by 40 percent and now surpasses 450, according to reporting from The New York Times.
On June 23, podcast studio Wondery released the new series Liberty Lost, which investigates the well-kept secret of Liberty University’s Godparent Home, which opened in the 1980s and is still operating today. In the podcast, reproductive rights journalist T. J. Raphael explores the history of the maternity home on the campus of Liberty University, a private evangelical college in Lynchburg, Va. There, staff members coerce young girls into surrendering their babies for adoption by affluent Christian parents in exchange for a full-ride scholarship at Liberty.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/10/liberty-university-maternity-home-unwed-mothers-teenagers/