Everyone says I remind them of her.
She love heels as I love to
wear heels, love to dress and.
That's my mom when she was a baby.
Yeah, Kyle Humphries.
This is my mom when she
graduated from high school,
had so little time to get to
know her mother, Gertrude.
She was just nine when her mother
died in a New Jersey hospital room.
Remember my grandfather coming
to the school to Get Me Out of
school early? When I got home,
they told me that she passed away.
Gertrude and Yael's father Ernest
married out of high school.
This is me at 9:00 and by age 20,
my brother Ernest.
They had two small children.
When I met her, I found that she
does still fun loving and she
liked to laugh and tell jokes.
She just had a beautiful personality.
Mildred Taylor Morrison was
one of Gertie's dear friends.
But she was hanging in
there for her children.
I mean, it was hard to make ends meet,
but by age 29 there was about to
be even more pressure on their
marriage and their finances.
I remember her coming to me and telling
me she was pregnant and that she.
Did not want to bring
another child into the world.
The marriage was rocky and also they
could not afford another child.
She just felt that she just had to do it.
She had no other choice.
Did she ask you to to keep this secret?
Oh, definitely. In 1963,
abortion was against the law.
Women seeking to end unwanted pregnancies
were forced into dangerous situations
right after gurdies procedure,
Millie says she spiked a fever,
endured soaring pain and
ended up in the hospital.
Not long after her abortion,
gurdies organs shut down.
When you learned that Gurdy lost her life,
I was devastated that I was
not able to talk her out of
it. I was told that my mother died from
kidney failure and she was on dialysis.
Happy birthday. I'm Lily. That
all changed in 2020 at
Millie's 90th birthday party.
We had a glass of wine and her
daughter says, Mom, I think you
need to tell Yael your secret.
It wasn't an easy thing for me to do.
She told me that my mom.
Had an abortion. And got really,
really sick and she died.
I said to her, no,
no, no, my mom.
She had kidney failure and she says no.
I told her no, no, no, no, no.
That is not true.
It was because of the Bush.
She got the yellow jaundice because the
tools that they used was not clean.
Really concerned about. My kidneys.
So when not Millie told
me something different.
I was like, ohh God,
I don't have to worry about that.
Don't worry, I think
we both just sat with it for
a while and, you know, wow.
When Roe V Wade was overturned this
past summer, Yael and her daughter
Zahara were compelled to do something
to honor their matriarch and protect
other women's reproductive rights.
I'm a mother of three, but you know,
it was a thought to go to three, right?
And it was my choice to go to three,
to think about being a woman in the
circumstances that my grandmother was.
We wanted to empower those women to
take back agency over that decision.
They turned their nonprofit glue foundation,
The G is for Gertrude,
into an organization with a singular focus,
serving black women who need abortion care.
Where's your book bag so
I can see your homework.
And they've chosen to bring
Gertrude story out of hiding.
Tell me about your school day,
and to embrace this new revelation that
helps them see not just what they lost,
but what they've gained.
Yeah, I do. And she sounds like her mother.
Yes, so you say. So you say. I think it's
important for stories to be told
in their fullness. They spoke
so highly of her all my life.
It was just like that little
thing they just forgot to tell me.
And I don't think it would have made a
difference if I knew then. The truth.
And I'm just so happy and so proud of them
of what they are doing to help people.