Missouri medical professionals including 500 doctors are endorsing Amendment 3, a ballot initiative known as the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative.” But their reasoning has nothing to do with actual health care.

The amendment states, “The Government shall not deny or infringe upon a person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which is the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.”

If it passes, the amendment will allow abortion on demand at any time during pregnancy for any reason in Missouri. While abortion advocates frequently deny that abortions happen late in pregnancy for anything other than dire or life-threatening medical reasons, research shows that abortions occur in the third trimester for the same reasons they do in the first trimester.

In an op-ed for The Kansas City Star, one pro-abortion doctor, Erin R. Lockard, who is not an OB/GYN but a geriatric medicine specialist, claimed that Missouri’s pro-life law is “preventing doctors from doing our jobs.”

Rape and incest
After claiming that a law preventing the direct and intentional killing of preborn children stops her from doing her job in geriatric medicine, Lockard claimed that abortion must be allowed for cases of rape and incest.

“Survivors of these unspeakable traumas are being denied the health care they need when they deserve compassionate, timely, private care the most. But some politicians in Jefferson City have decided that their beliefs are more important than survivors getting essential health care,” she wrote.

This is insulting to rape and incest survivors who refused abortion and carried their babies to term. It’s also insulting to individuals conceived in rape who are being told that they should have been killed in abortions as preventative health care for their survivor mothers.

Killing a child in the womb cannot erase the suffering mothers experienced due to sexual assault and will not help bring assailants to justice. Abortion is not healing. It is in itself an act of trauma. Introducing a second act of trauma in an attempt to heal the initial trauma is likely to exacerbate the suffering.

Women who had abortions after rape confirmed this when shared their experiences as part of Live Action’s Can’t Stay Silent series. Serena explained, “Abortion never undoes the trauma of sexual assault… I am so thankful for abortion recovery, but abortion never undid my trauma.”

After being drugged and raped at 17, Deana Schroeder learned she was pregnant and underwent an abortion that her family and counselors encouraged. “Even many pro-lifers approve of abortions in cases of rape,” she said. “So surely it must be the best choice, right? Not in my case. It just added more layers of trauma, self-doubt, grief and guilt. The negative impact lasted for years.”

Women like Daisy and Stephanie, and children like Jaelyn, who were conceived in rape, deserve respect.

“When someone says that children conceived in rape should be aborted, they are talking about me,” said Stephanie. “My mother saw that my life was not worth less than anyone else’s simply because of the way I was conceived, and that I should not be put to death for the crimes of my father.”