KARINA BLAND
54 years after abortion, no regrets for 'Romper Room' host, but still sadness
Karina Bland The Republic | azcentral.com
Published 9:04 a.m. MT April 15, 2016 | Updated 9:22 a.m. MT April 19, 2016

It was a Sunday night, and Sherri Chessen was watching television in her condominium in an ocean-side retirement community in La Jolla, California. ... Tears streamed down her face.

On TV was the British program “Call the Midwife,” a drama that follows the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London. A woman had just given birth to a baby, a daughter, with deformed arms and legs. The midwife’s face dropped. She spoke cheerfully but couldn't look the mother in the face. A nurse hurried the baby away.

Sherri picked up the remote and pressed the pause button, sobs shaking her whole body. After a moment, she pushed rewind and then play. ... She watched it again.

The scene took her back to the summer of 1962. Sherri was 30 then, married, already the mother of four and pregnant with her fifth child when she learned that a tranquilizer she had taken for morning sickness had been linked to severe birth defects. In July of that year, she made a life-altering decision that would generate international headlines, send her halfway around the world and turn her into a symbol in a fight that had barely begun. ... She would get an abortion.

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Sherri Chessen was "Miss Sheri {sic}" on the Arizona edition of the nationally syndicated "Romper Room" from 1958 to 1962. Photo By Digital Migration. The Arizona Republic File Photo.

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