Senator Andrew Koenig Ignored Me While I Testified About My Tragedy

Hi! You might be here because I shared this video, and you want to know more.

Here is my story: My name is Robin Utz, and I learned in 2016 that our desperately wanted pregnancy with our daughter Grace Pearl was doomed by a fatal fetal diagnosis. After multiple doctors confirmed that she would be born into a life of certain agony and death, we decided to have a later abortion to spare our daughter this fate.

But the required process to get our abortion was one of the most cruel and insulting things we’ve ever been put through - we had to sign judgmental, biased consents and then wait 72 hours to give our daughter a peaceful passing. Because of this, I decided to testify in Jefferson City about my experience to try to help lawmakers make better, more inclusive laws.

I wrote a post about testifying for the first time in 2017, and how Missouri Senator Andrew Koenig of District 15 utterly ignored me played with his pen, and looked at his phone while I was testifying.

You can read both the testimony and the original post that I wrote below, and the key takeaway was that Senator Koenig refused to listen to me sharing how a heartbeat abortion ban would have hurt my daughter Grace Pearl, by forcing her to be born into a life of agony and death. Instead of listening and considering, he dismissed and ignored me, and furthermore has continued to push forward extreme abortion restrictions. These include the 8 week abortion ban that was put into place in Missouri in 2019, igniting outrage and strong push back from Missourians. (Koenig described it this wildly unpopular bill as “ one of the best pro-life bills across the whole country.”)

While I certainly didn’t expect Koenig to agree with my stance, I DID expect him to listen to me and show me respect, as a person that would have been gravely impacted by his draconian laws.

We deserve representatives that care about and listen to us even if they don’t agree with us. Please vote out Koenig, and vote IN Representative Deb Lavender. I’ve met with her multiple times, including one-on-one to discuss my concerns, and she has shown me every step of the way that she is a worthy representative deserving of the Senate seat.