3 Years Ago Today, We Had To Sign Grace's Missouri Abortion Consents. We Are Still Mad.

Three years ago today (November 18, 2016), Jim and I had to sign Missouri’s dangerous, judgmental, tone deaf consents in order to start the 72 hour wait before having our abortion.

These consents asked us if we had had a chance to hear a heartbeat, and see an ultrasound.

We had to sign saying we’d been given the Informed Consent packet, noting that we were terminating a unique and separate human life.

No where in any of this state, NOT medically mandated paperwork was information on the risks to my health by continuing the pregnancy, or data around what Grace would experience if we didn’t have an abortion when we did. No where was there any indication that the state officials that put this paperwork into place trust pregnant people to make decisions for themselves.

Missouri has only gotten worse on this front in the past 3 years: an unconstitutional and unpopular 8 week abortion ban passed earlier this year (it has since been overturned by a judge, which is the whole point: they want it to go to the Supreme Court to overturn/gut Roe v. Wade). When we tried to gather signatures to have a constitutionally guaranteed citizens referendum against it, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft twiddled his thumbs and ran out the clock on providing language for the signature gathering.

None of this is medically necessary, and it just serves to judge and shame pregnant people, including me.

You can see the paperwork we had to sign and read more about how it felt to go through it all right here:

The Day After We Learned about Grace's Disease: Missouri's Abortion Consents and Informed Consent Packet - Defending Grace

I wrote last week on the anniversary of learning that Grace had a life-ending disease , discussing how the day unfolded and felt along the way. It was an enormous blow and shock to the system.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft Blocking Missourians' Constitutional Rights

An Op Ed I wrote is in the St. Louis Post Dispatch today, discussing Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s unconstitutional delays making it impossible for Missourian’s to gather enough signatures to put abortion on the ballot, and let people vote on the issue.

The extreme abortion bill (House Bill 126) becomes effective next week,. It bans abortion after eight weeks with no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest, and certainly no exceptions for fetal anomalies like Grace’s. It’s utterly outrageous, and transparently shows that they want to control pregnant people, and want this to go to the Supreme Court.

I don’t know if I can express how hard it has been to watch our rights eroding around us after having our own abortion. We feel so strongly that we made the right decision for our desperately wanted daughter. Yet our lawmakers don’t care.

Jim and I repeatedly have testified both via correspondence and in person against bans like this, and our lawmakers don’t listen. They passed it anyway, despite us telling them what a horrible bill it is and how it’d hurt babies like Grace Pearl.

So we turned to the constitutional process next: Governor Parsons signing the bill into the law wasn’t the end: Missouri’s Constitution guarantees citizens the right to stop a new law from taking effect through the referendum process — a vote of the people. On May 28, the referendum process began. Under the Missouri Constitution, we should have had 90 days to collect 100,000 signatures in six different congressional districts. That isn’t what happened. Why? Because Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft chose to abuse the power of his office and join the race to ban safe, legal abortion in our state.

It is utterly unacceptable that Ashcroft is using his position to block the will of the people. His behavior is outrageous, manipulative and unconstitutional. Missourians deserve better, no matter where they stand on abortion. This is about protecting our constitutional rights.

You can read the full Op Ed here:

Robin Utz: Ashcroft's delay tactics defy Missourians' right to challenge abortion law

My husband Jim and I have been married for nine years, and we have wanted a baby more than anything. After four years of trying to conceive, including two rounds of in-vitro fertilization, three embryo transfers, a miscarriage and looking extensively into adoption, we finally got pregnant with our daughter, Grace Pearl.

BBC Newshour Interview on Missouri Abortion Ban - Listen Here

I posted a link to my BBC Newshour interview about Missouri’s 8 week abortion ban, noting it was at the 37:30 mark. It is now available to listen to directly here.

Please listen and share - it provides a great context on what the 8 week abortion ban means for Missourians and the overall goal of bans such as these.

Parents Magazine Covers Full Impact of Abortion Bans, Including Our Story

I have often said that Jim and I were lucky in the most heartbreaking experience of our lives: we had close access to excellent medical care, had good jobs, health insurance, and other elements of privilege protecting us. This article from Parents Magazine covers our story and how it will be impacted by the abortion bans here in Missouri, and likewise in Alabama, Georgia, etc., as well as how those far less fortunate than us will be affected. Please read and consider.

What New Abortion Laws Mean for Moms, Pregnant Women, and Women Who Want to Get Pregnant

Restrictive abortion laws in states across the South and Midwest threaten your right to choose. Here's what they mean for women considering parenthood. May 23, 2019 Robin Utz learned in November of 2016 that there was something wrong with her second-trimester pregnancy.

A Midterms Voting Guide with Grace Pearl In Mind

Photo by Parker Johnson on Unsplash

I have pulled together a voter guide for the upcoming midterms on November 6, 2018 that would focus on candidates and issues that would allow us the best possible rights to make the choice we did with Grace Pearl. I am focusing in Missouri because that is where I am most familiar with the candidates and issues, but for wherever you are, I ask that you take reproductive rights into account when choosing a candidate, and how much the individual will do to protect rights of families like mine.

People run into situations like mine every day, in every state. We deserve to be able to make the best choices for ourselves and our families without undue burden in terms of cost, geographical restriction, and time frame. If you vote for a candidate that is against reproductive rights, know you are voting to hurt babies like Grace and women and men like myself and Jim. There’s no way around that.

I’ll take this chance to say we also deserve honest, comprehensive medical care, not places that will blatantly lie to us like Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Please learn more about them here.

Important Voting Information:

The Missouri ballot is huge for the midterms, so I will only be listing out the things I’m best educated on, and then resources for the other issues.

✔️ Polling places will be open from 6 am until 7 pm
✔️ If you are unsure of your polling place, you can look it up here: https://bit.ly/2fg5NRR
✔️ You will be required to show a form of ID at the polls. See acceptable forms of ID here: https://bit.ly/2OdbZba

DO NOT LEAVE A POLLING PLACE WITHOUT VOTING —call this non partisan election hotline (1-866-OUR-VOTE) if you have any voting issues.

Now to the voter guide resources:

I’m going to go over my own personal recommendations, where I have them, in the next section. However I just don’t know enough about every issue to make an educated assessment, especially when the ballot is this long. So here’s what I do/resources I use:

• The League of Women Voters has a great resource at vote411.org. You type in your address & get a personalized ballot with info on each candidate/issue. I go through this list and select each item, and print it off at the end to take with me to vote. PRINT IT OFF OR WRITE IT DOWN in case you can’t look at your phone while voting. Many places ban phones in the polling area.

• For issues where I do not have an established opinion yet, I have trusted sources I use. They include:

  • ProgressWomen - Representative Stacey Newman puts a LOT of effort into her recommendations, and I value her opinion. She has also covered all Missouri AND county propositions, so this is a comprehensive resource.

  • Planned Parenthood MO voting guide - Planned Parenthood has protections of reproductive rights at top of mind, and this voting guide is consistent with that.

  • NARAL voting guide - they likewise carefully vet for pro-choice candidates and issues.

• You can see the Missouri Bar recommendations for each judge on the ballot on vote411 while you’re selecting the rest of your ballot. It will tell you each judge and their recommendation, and you can research more from there. There are a few that are not recommended for retention.

My Personal Recommendations/Endorsements:

• US Senator: Claire McCaskill. I am with many people in feeling that I wish McCaskill were different in some ways, but she has a solid voting record in terms of reproductive rights, and that means a lot to me. Additionally, I am terrified of what electing Josh Hawley would do to all sorts of social rights, including reproductive rights, and he is currently promising that pre-existing conditions will be protected as part of healthcare while entering Missouri into a lawsuit to undo the Affordable Care Act (which would undo the protections of pre-existing conditions). He’s blatantly lying to us.

• U.S. Representative, District 2: Cort VanOstran. I actually am not able to vote for Cort as I am not in his district, but I have still spend many volunteer hours pushing out awareness around him and encouraging people to vote for him because his incumbent oppoent, Ann Wagner, is THAT BAD. She’s pro-life all the way down the line, and would absolutely vote to hurt Grace, Jim and myself. Cort is endorsed by NARAL and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which goes a long way with me. These organizations support our right to make the choice we did, and fight for laws that protect us.

• State Auditor: Nicole Galloway. I saw Nicole speak at an event and was very impressed by her. She has done this job since 2015 and has done an outstanding job, as reiterated by the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

• State Representative, District 91: If you are in Sarah Unsicker’s district, I recommend her as a representative that is on the Children and Families House Committee and has fought for reproductive Rights

• State Representative, District 80: If you are Peter Meredith’s district, I recommend voting for him. I find him to be thoughtful, transparent, hard fighting and compassionate. He was hoping to propose a bill last year that would include infertility treatments in insurance coverage, which would be transformative for families like mine.

• Amendment #1 (aka CLEAN MISSOURI) = VOTE YES. I have personally worked on this campaign because I believe SO STRONGLY in it. It bans lobbyist gifts to General Assembly, requires open legislative records, lowers campaign contributions & limits committee donations, requires 2 year lobbyist waiting periods and ensures a non-partisan district map process (aka, limits gerrymandering, making sure our votes matter more). This is super important. VOTE YES. If you vote for nothing else, vote for this one. But vote for everything.  More info at CleanMissouri.org 

• YES on Proposition B – Increases the Minimum Wage to $12 by 2023. St. Louis Post Dispatch endorsement HERE. There are a lot of reasons that I agree with this, but in terms of reproductive rights, if you’re not aware, the Hyde Amendment prevents abortions from being covered by federal funds. If we want women to be able to exercise their reproductive rights asap in an unwanted pregnancy, they have to have the funds to do so. Economic equality is very important to me.

These are the issues that I am most comfortable making endorsements on, and I’m always learning more so if you feel I’m wrong about any of them, please reach out!