The girl was my cousin. Along with me, at the end of this line of progress... How could it be that fifty years after her grandmother experienced the same shame, of a child out of wedlock, J was in a worse position? This was in 1978, after years of activism by women towards equality, after an alliance had been formed between the state and women, first with the Labor Government under Gough Whitlam and then with subsequent governments.An alliance that opened up some of the shameful secrets of abuse and reproduction and women's lives.There was no turning back. But in a small country town in Western Australia, a girl lost her life because of her shame.