I will never forget the day she came into my office, visibly pregnant, upset and wanting a third trimester abortion. At the time, I was a pregnancy center director in Northwest Missouri. That was almost a decade ago, but some stories really stick with you. They don’t ever really leave your thoughts. They definitely don’t leave your heart. “Nicole” was one of those.
You see, Nicole came to our pregnancy center for the first time really late in her pregnancy, long past what people now refer to as “the stage of fetal viability.”
I remember she was involved at her church and felt supported by them, but her situation with her boyfriend changed drastically. Suddenly, she found herself alone and crippled with anxiety about how she could actually, “go through with this pregnancy.”
It broke my heart to hear how upset she was, but I held on to this feeling of security with the fact that Missouri didn’t allow for abortions that late in pregnancy for reasons like the mental health of the mother. It gave me hope that we could protect Nicole and her nearly full-term baby from the local abortion facility . . . but it turned out my hope was unfounded.
In that first appointment at my center, Nicole disclosed to us that she wasn’t planning to go to the closest abortion facility. Instead, she had a flight booked and an appointment secured in Boulder, Colorado. The staff there had already committed to her over the phone that she could end the life of her child if she felt like her mental health was at stake should she deliver the baby. The only problem for Nicole is that the price tag was steep, a couple thousand dollars.
That was simply all it took in Colorado, an abortion tourism state known for abortions in the second and third trimester—a desperate mom doing desperate things in a place desperate to take her money and her baby.
I wish I could say that Nicole’s experience turned into a success story for our pregnancy center, one that we could share in the victory together a decade ago and today. However, not all stories have happy endings. Nicole didn’t come back for her next appointment with us, and she never answered our calls for follow up. All information indicates that she kept that appointment, traveling all the way to Colorado for her later term elective abortion and lives were changed forever.
While Nicole’s situation was tragic, it did seem extreme at the time, not the norm of what we usually saw in our center. I mean, most women cannot afford to purchase a plane ticket, pay for a hotel stay, and shell out a couple thousand dollars to an abortionist in another state . . . but I always wondered to myself how many more women like Nicole would pop up if there were more states like Colorado—with more situations of desperate moms doing desperate things in a place desperate to take their money and their babies.
Unfortunately, here we are a decade later, and that is exactly what is happening in states around our country that are enshrining abortion as a right in their state constitutions. Our home state of Missouri is no exception to the nauseating nonsense. We are now on the cusp of becoming a Colorado, where anything goes when it comes to abortion.
In fact, many states are battling this on November 5. Be sure to check abortionballot.com for what is going on in your state.
In Missouri specifically, Amendment 3 is a loophole-loaded attempt to undo fifty-two pro-life protections in the state. It looks ambiguous enough that you might not catch just how sinister this proposed constitutional amendment is.
At first glance, it looks like it will allow for abortions up until the stage of fetal viability, but if you look closer it allows for exceptions that include the mental health of the mother, through all nine months of pregnancy, including when a baby can feel pain . . . just like Colorado. It also removes parental consent for minors to have abortions without their parent’s knowledge, creating an environment for sex trafficking . . . just like Colorado.
Here’s the kicker, friends—the Missouri Amendment actually goes further than Colorado and also removes parental notification for when minors have an abortion. That alone should be concerning. We are moving to be more extreme than even some of the most abortion-friendly states in the country!
In fact, most of what will be allowed in Missouri, should this constitutional amendment pass, will be much like Colorado . . . or worse.
We are better than that.
At least, I hope we are.
I encourage you to VOTE NO in Missouri, Arizona, Florida, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Colorado, New York, Maryland, and South Dakota.*
And call and text your friends to ask them to do the same. Do it for all the Nicoles out there and their precious little ones.
Brandy Meeks
President/CEO
P.S. Please consider supporting our mission to create a culture of life to save women like Nicole from one of the most tragic decisions of her lifetime.
* As of publish date.