Lessons I’ve Learned as an Abortion Advocate

These days, I’m not sure how to honor my daughter, Grace.

I had a later abortion at nearly 22 weeks of pregnancy - a termination for medical reasons - in 2016, after our daughter, Grace Pearl, received a fatal fetal diagnosis, nine days after Donald Trump was elected president. 

It was a desperately wanted pregnancy - my husband and I had done IVF twice and I had suffered a miscarriage before becoming pregnant with Grace - and thanks to pre-genetic sequencing, after 10 weeks there was only a 1% chance of something going wrong with the pregnancy. Yet here we were, over halfway done with the pregnancy and facing our worst nightmare: we were told our daughter would never survive birth.  We decided our best option was to have an abortion.

The state of Missouri’s callous and judgmental abortion laws were soon inflicted upon us, and were breathtaking in their insult: we had to sign biased non-medical consents which had to be carefully scheduled around a doctor’s availability to walk us through them and then wait 72 hours; we were able to terminate our pregnancy one day before we legally couldn't anymore at the time. We were lucky we got care at all: it was an unnecessary and politically motivated game of logistical chutes and ladders to give Grace a peaceful passing.

Saying goodbye to Grace Pearl was enough to give me a lifetime of grief, and Missouri’s abortion laws were enough to give me a lifetime of righteous anger. 

At first the drive to honor both my grief and anger felt inevitable and unignorable. I posted on Facebook about Grace and the assumptions people make about abortion, and it went viral. From there, I became a reproductive rights advocate: I introduced myself to local and national reproductive rights organizations with the offer of sharing my story because it proved most of the anti-abortion talking points wrong in that I wanted my daughter, she would have suffered if I’d continued the pregnancy to birth, and 8 doctors confirmed the diagnosis. I testified against abortion bans to politicians who ignored and dismissed me. I lobbied elected officials to no avail. I was published and interviewed in dozens of publications. I spoke at rallies to thousands of people, to bring attention to those who were most (and disproportionately) impacted by abortion bans (minorities and lower income people). 

I truly felt like if enough people heard my story, anti-abortionists and conservative politicians would stop pushing insulting, dangerous abortion bans, and would realize that if they were wrong about my abortion, maybe they were making the wrong assumptions about every abortion and abortion seeker.  

I logically knew better, but I just couldn’t stop trying.

We all know where the story goes next: Roe v Wade was dismantled in June 2022, and the fallout was (and continues to be) awful in every way imaginable. Legal abortion has plummeted as dozens of states have passed draconian abortion bans. Doctors don’t want to practice in states where abortion is outlawed which impacts reproductive healthcare in a multitude of ways.

***

For myself and my fellow abortion advocates, the fallout is tense and awful in different ways. We are heartbroken, despondent, and so, so tired. The people that dismissed our warnings that Roe was on the line are stunningly silent now. And we can’t all agree on next steps, how to proceed, or what is even possible.

I’m asking myself ‘what now?’ a lot, these days.

I struggle with feeling like my efforts to share Grace’s story were for nothing, despite knowing this isn’t the truth. My goals in sharing were to improve abortion-related policy and reduce stigma. So many other pregnant people with similar diagnoses are being forced to continue their pregnancies now; it’s unnecessarily cruel and unsubstantiated by medical expertise. 

It’s all political. 

***

We are living in a continuous state of helplessly warning, and endless fallout.

And while it’s difficult to accept that I, like every other advocate right now, am both in a state of freefall as well as in a state of flux, I have a few things that are taking form as lessons learned, or at least things that feel true for me right now:

I have learned that my story still matters. A recent Moth Radio Hour airing resulted in my story getting widespread exposure again and some of the most supportive comments I have ever received. It was a relief to feel like Grace’s story still can make a difference, and like there are people that can still have their minds changed.

I have learned that participating in a community of people with shared experiences and objectives can be both deeply restorative and healing, as well as deeply painful and exploitative. I learned that politics exist everywhere, and spare no one. 

I have learned that I will never lend my support to any sort of abortion ban being codified into a constitution or law, including the restoration of Roe, in part because it leaves people like Grace and me, as well as my sisters by circumstance, firmly out in the cold. I have been told that we aren’t the people most frequently impacted by anti-abortion laws because privilege will allow people like me to always have abortions. But my access to health care should not depend on privilege, and in the search for equity, Grace and I are not bargaining pieces. Diminishing us is unacceptable, especially after asking us to lend our voices to the cause. Any person impacted by an abortion ban is one too many. And with more and more people feeling that states should not impose any restrictions around abortion, I wonder why my progressive allies are pushing for restoration of Roe over more expansive, reproductive justice-driven solutions, especially after decrying Roe as the floor, not the ceiling, for years.

I have learned that it’s hard to ever feel like I have done enough.

I have learned the signs of a broken democracy. And that this is just so much bigger than any of us.

I have learned that my humor is still present in the darkest of personal circumstances. My friends and I joke that my intensity makes me an 11, and I often joke that I am the best sort of representative in a medical power of attorney, as I have demonstrated in the past that I will make the hard decision to spare someone I love futile and unnecessary pain.

I have learned that because I have a living daughter now, she was for sure supposed to complete and heal me. Can you imagine the pressure? On both of us?

Finally, I have learned that sometimes that will mean doing the work alone. Maybe even often. But I suspect that’s not the case: there are a lot of mothers out there like me, and we all feel the isolation of being left behind by both laws and stigma. Many share my feelings of being left behind by our purported allies, which stings in a unique way. And I don’t think the answer is in making ourselves smaller or more palatable to others. We deserve to honor our pregnancies and ourselves in ways that feel true to us.

~Robin Utz