After declaring on 60 Minutes her desire to never have children, Marcia Drut-Davis was fired from her teaching job and began receiving death threats from outraged Americans. Now, in her stirring new memoir Confessions of a Childfree Woman, Drut-Davis tells the story behind that national TV appearance and recounts the painful aftermath.

Along the way, Drut-Davis exposes and explores our culture’s rampant pronatalism and the stigma we continue to attach to childless women. By taking us deep into her own life and the emotions—positive and negative—surrounding her bold choice, Drut-Davis lays bare our society’s myth that true fulfillment and happiness can come only through procreation.

Reflecting on her 70 years, Drut-Davis takes a fair look at what she’s lost by not having children, but her focus always returns to all she has gained: a life lived with no regrets.