Q: Can you start by introducing yourself?
“My name is Wendy, and I live here in Kansas City. I’ve been here for about two and a half years now, but I’m originally from Texas.”
Q: Why did you want to be part of this storytelling today?
“Because it’s important. Women’s lives are at stake. There’s a date I’ll never forget—December 28th, 1986. I had two kids in diapers, a husband, and a mortgage. I had just opened my own business when we got a phone call. My daughter was diagnosed with an acute form of leukemia. She was only 20 months old.”
“About two or three months later, I realized I was pregnant. I couldn’t do it—facing two years of chemo, a pregnancy, and another child. We decided to have an abortion, and I’ve never had one second of regret. Never.”
Q: How did your daughter’s health journey progress?
“My daughter survived. She’s amazing—successful, educated, beautiful, and scary smart. She now has two kids of her own. Her path to motherhood wasn’t easy because of the chemo and cancer, but she was able to access the healthcare she needed after each of her miscarriages. That’s not the case for everyone today, and it’s shameful. That’s one of the reasons why I’m voting yes on Amendment 3.”
Q: Do you remember how you felt when you heard Roe v. Wade was going to be overturned?
“When I heard Roe was being overturned, it brought a pit to my stomach—just fear. Even though I’m well past childbearing years, my daughter has two small kids. It scared me, and it scares me for all young women. This affects everybody. Pro-life is a lie. It lets women die. The maternal mortality rate in this country is higher than any other developed nation. What about the women? What about me, my daughter, and every young family?”
Q: How did you feel when you heard we might get abortion access on the ballot in Missouri?
“When I heard about the effort to get abortion access on the ballot, I immediately looked into Missourians for Constitutional Freedom. I signed up to gather petitions, and I’m so proud to have played a small part in getting 382,000 signatures in 81 days. People were eager to sign—they’d almost snatch the clipboard out of my hands! People are upset, and I hope they show that by going to the polls and voting yes on Amendment 3.”
Q: Thinking back to your experience, what would you say to someone making the decision to get an abortion right now?
“It’s your decision. You can’t let others control your life. Whether or not to have a child is a big decision, and the circumstances of how you got pregnant sometimes matter, but it’s your choice. It’s more likely to be fatal having a pregnancy than having an abortion. If you want someone to be involved in the decision, that’s up to you—but it’s your body, your choice.”
“A corpse has more rights than women right now. If someone doesn’t want to be an organ donor, we can’t take their organs after they die—but we can force women to carry pregnancies they don’t want? Women aren’t the enemy here. We can have one baby a year, while a man can impregnate multiple women a day. And yet we’re the ones who are always villainized?”
Q: Would you like to make a closing statement about why you’re voting yes on Amendment 3?
“My name is Wendy, and I’m voting yes on Amendment 3 because women matter. The girls matter. We matter. We’re mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, nieces. We’re right here in front of you. We matter.”
Q: Do you resonate with the statement ‘abortion is an act of love’?
“Yes, abortion is an act of love. Self-love, if nothing else. You can’t save anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first. Women are the glue, whether at home or at work. We hold everything together, and we’re worth protecting.”