On nights my husband, Donald, desires of our daughter, he wakes up in a sweat and rushes to the nursery, solely to search out an empty workplace, our books and a set of houseplants staring again at him. There was by no means a crib there. We’ve by no means even had a optimistic being pregnant check.
I’m 36, which additionally means every passing yr makes her probability of existence even dimmer. However he desires of a daughter anyway, and in these desires, she feels as tangible as an empty workplace desk or a prayer plant earlier than daybreak, leaves folded collectively in some form of devotion. She’s a ghost trapped in his unconscious, an apparition solely made stronger by our choice to not have a second youngster.
It’s not for a similar causes most millennials supply — we aren’t leaning into wanting extra private or monetary freedom. It’s not even concern of future environmental disasters that stops us. As an alternative, our choice is formed by the dearth of security our residence in Missouri can supply me if I had been to turn out to be pregnant once more.
The autumn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 solidified our choice to keep away from being pregnant altogether, particularly after Missouri was the primary state to make abortion unlawful only a handful of minutes after the announcement — a choice introduced by the legal professional normal and bolstered by the governor. We had been in Vermont when it occurred, so I felt protected sufficient for the second. My husband was working because the director for a low-residency MFA program, and my son and I had joined him as a small summer season trip whereas he labored 17-hour days.
On our approach again to Missouri, I attempted to carry on to the picture of the individuals we’d seen within the streets of Montpelier holding indicators for reproductive rights: “PRO-CHOICE IS PRO-LIFE,” “WE ARE NOT OVARY-ACTING,” a picture of a hanger with the phrases studying: “NEVER AGAIN.” A gaggle of girls wearing bloodred cloaks and white bonnets walked with their heads down, mouths tight in silent protest on the garden of Vermont’s state capitol.
It was a stark distinction to what greeted us again residence in Columbia, Missouri. A gaggle of Christians preached about sacred unborn lives to unhoused individuals simply making an attempt to sleep on park benches. In entrance of our small Deliberate Parenthood, a girl sat in a garden chair along with her ible and a protest signal going through towards the door, a black gate separating her from the constructing. There was a late June sprinkling of rain, however she by no means budged, though that Deliberate Parenthood hadn’t carried out an abortion because the summer season of 2018, when new state laws required a doctor to be obtainable 24/7 and mid-Missouri couldn’t discover an OB-GYN keen to do the duty alone. By October of that yr, just one clinic remained in St. Louis, making it a 400-mile round-trip drive for pregnant individuals in additional distant elements of the state to get an abortion if wanted — a virtually not possible requirement for these coming from impoverished areas.
In 2024, Missouri ranks fortieth in girls’s well being and reproductive care, a quantity that additionally displays one of many “highest pregnancy-associated maternal mortality rates in the United States.” After reaching the age of 35, the probability of maternal mortality is even increased. Geriatric pregnancies are extra in danger for fetal genetic issues, hypertension and miscarriage. Because the age of eggs will increase, so does the opportunity of hazard for each the fetus and the pregnant particular person. Abortion bans exacerbate that hazard.
In August 2022, when Mylissa Farmer from Joplin, Missouri, felt her water break in her 18th week of being pregnant, she was refused emergency remedy at two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas as a result of her child’s heartbeat was nonetheless detectable, even if the being pregnant was not viable and her well being was endangered. She ultimately obtained remedy by driving nicely over 400 miles away to Illinois. After an investigation in 2023, each hospitals who denied her abortion providers had been deemed to be violating federal legislation. Fortunately, Farmer survived the traumatic ordeal; many usually are not so fortunate.
None of this was an element for my first and solely being pregnant. I had my son once I was 17, a decade earlier than I met Donald. I wasn’t in a relationship with the daddy. Having been raised as a Southern Baptist deep within the Ozarks, this was controversial. I needed to write a letter to my church, the place I ran Bible research, apologizing for getting pregnant out of wedlock. I additionally needed to get an ultrasound on the Being pregnant Care Heart, which was a conservative-leaning program masking itself as an alternative choice to Deliberate Parenthood. In the event you talked about you had been fascinated by an abortion, they’d write your identify down and proselytize to you.
I felt trapped, like I used to be the final one that had entry to my very own physique. A month later, when the Being pregnant Care Heart featured me of their publication as a result of I had chosen to maintain the newborn, I wished to succeed in out to the editor to make a small correction: I felt pressured to have a child, by faith and Ozarks tradition.
Photograph Courtesy Of Bailey Gaylin Moore
My husband fell in love with “Elm” as a possible child identify whereas I used to be visiting Colorado, perusing necklaces fabricated from gold-plated leaves within the memento part of a Rocky Mountain fuel station. On the telephone, I learn him the meanings of every tree: Aspen for transformation, Oak for stability, Elm for power. It was 2019, and we had been poor graduate college students removed from the considered having a child. Our focus was on ending college and offering an area for my teenager.
5 years later, Donald was supplied a tenure-track professorship at College of Missouri-Columbia, offering the safety we would want to have one other youngster. My son is in faculty now, and we’re all of a sudden empty nesters in a quiet home the place one thing is noticeably lacking. When Donald wakes up from one other dream, a looming guilt settles over me, even when he assures me that he’s discovered consolation in considering maybe a model of us has Elm in one other world, a parallel universe the place a geriatric being pregnant wouldn’t indicate hazard in a crimson state — in our residence.
I don’t love the identify Elm, however I really like how he loves it — the way it implies he needs to have a daughter who is robust. I additionally love that my husband loves me sufficient to acknowledge the trauma that got here with my first being pregnant and why I’ve sophisticated emotions about withstanding one other, extra harmful one. Despite the fact that he reassures me that my physique’s security, each mentally and bodily, is most vital, the guilt stays. The concern of what my physique may do to me outweighs it.
Photograph Courtesy Of Bailey Gaylin Moore
Even nonetheless, there are occasions once I consider Elm current — not in a parallel universe or one other airplane, however this actuality. In my thoughts, we’ll promote our side-by-side desks and change them with a crib, a cell with birds or whales or geometric shapes dancing above. We’ll discover someplace else in the home to put in writing and make room for a brand new life.
On Nov. 5, 10 states together with Missouri might be that includes payments voting on abortion rights or the additional safety of abortion rights already in place (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota). Missouri will vote on Modification 3, or the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative,” an act that was almost shut down within the state Supreme Court docket with a 4-3 ruling. If Modification 3 passes, abortion rights can be restored throughout the state, following the identical path as our Kentucky and Kansas neighbors. This election is a lot greater than a presidential one — it’s one that would present abortion opponents that almost all of our individuals need and wish entry to reproductive care, even in states that constantly vote crimson.
If it does move, our desires of Elm may turn out to be one thing extra tangible. Till then, the likelihood stays simply out of attain, another option to which I’ve misplaced entry.
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Bailey Gaylin Moore is a Ph.D. scholar in Artistic Writing on the College of Missouri-Columbia. Her debut essay assortment, “Thank You for Staying With Me” (College of Nebraska Press, March 2025), which navigates younger motherhood and loving her sophisticated residence of Missouri, is obtainable for pre-order. Discover her at baileygaylinmoore.com and @baileygaylin on Instagram.
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